Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

When he died in a car crash on New York's Fire Island in 1966, Frank O'Hara was just 40. The loss was great because he had found his voice — a one in which he mixed the private with the public and the seemingly trivial events of everyday life with the greater happenings in the wider world.

Animals

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

i wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)

Gilbert Sorrentino described Frank O'Hara's work as "moving in a world of wry elegance, of gesture, a world made up of a certain kind of strictly New York joie de vivre: slightly down at heels and rumpled, but with the kind of style always a step above current 'style'."