One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in prose. I am a real poet.
                                         from 'Why I Am Not a Painter'

Frank O'Hara composed poems 'any time, any place', collaborating with - or directly inspired by - a vibrant circle of artists, dancers, musicians and poets. For O'Hara, the city was a place of endless possibility, and he brilliantly captured the pace and rhythms, the quandaries and exhilarations, of mid-twentieth-century city life. His work radiates wit, immediacy and the grace of living 'as variously as possible'. As Mark Ford notes in his introduction to this new selection, 'O'Hara's hip, glamorous, freewheeling self-celebrations both reflected and helped disseminate a new kind of confidence and daring in American poetry.'