Lunch Poems Audiobook By Frank O'Hara cover art

Lunch Poems

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Lunch Poems

By: Frank O'Hara
Narrated by: Matthew Weiner
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Frank O'Hara was a pioneering modern American poet and playwright - an art critic, a musician, and a curator at the Museum of Modern Art - who defined New York City in its post-WWII heyday. For many these poems defined the city's midcentury zeitgeist. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in remarks on the 50th anniversary edition, said that the poems "established a certain tone, a certain turn of phrase, a certain urbane wit, at once gay and straight, that came to identify the New York school of poets in the 1960s and '70s".

O'Hara's wit and cool inspired the creator of AMC's hit television show Mad Men decades later - and writer Matthew Weiner performs the poet's work with charm and reverence, adding his own unique spin on the classic material.

©1964 Frank O’Hara (P)2016 Audible, Inc. LGBTQIA+ Creators Literature & Fiction United States World Literature

Critic reviews

"Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems, the little black dress of American poetry books, redolent of cocktails and cigarettes and theater tickets and phonograph records, turns 50 this year. It seems barely to have aged.... This is a book worth imbibing again, especially if you live in Manhattan, but really if you're awake and curious anywhere. O'Hara speaks directly across the decades to our hopes and fears and especially our delights; his lines are as intimate as a telephone call. Few books of his era show less age." (Dwight Garner, The New York Times)

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Sublime Lyric Metamorphosis • Beautiful Resistance • Excellent Reading • Wry Observations • Musical Verse • Sensual Tone
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What a pleasure to hear these poems spoken aloud! The reading sheds new light for me… intonation, interpretation and a little revelation too. I’m sort of new to Frank O’Hara and his poems and this is a nice way of finding an entry into them.

It’s fun to listen to poems that I have only read inside my head

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Got to love the wry observations of Frank O'hara's poems and the musicality of his verse. The narration here is a bit dry, but it is serviceable. There's a lot of humanity captured here, and that's mostly the point of Poetry. Highly engaging and enjoyable.

Great poetry

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Ada Calhoun’s book Also A Poet got me interested in Frank O’Hara and I’m glad it did.

Also A Poet turned me on to O’Hara

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Weiner reads every poem in the landmark City Lights publication of New York School poet Frank O’Hara; poems presumably written on the poet’s lunch break in the 1950s/60s while working at MOMA in midtown Manhattan. As a collection the poems offer an accurate and honest look at their time and place—a perspective not always flattering to the poet and his crowd. Wiener’s reading is good but a bit understated for my taste. Incidental jazz music is a nice touch and allows the listener a chance to absorb what they’ve just heard. Well worth your attention.

Great collection nicely read

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There’s a sadness in this collection, if only by implication: Frank O’Hara would die not long after writing and publishing this volume of clear-eyed, celebratory poetry about his beloved New York City, struck down randomly by an automobile. The poems themselves deliver a robust portrait of a busy city now lost to time — a beautiful place with many tarnished surfaces and edges, creatively alive, but still firmly rooted in its history, life pulsing in, under, and through it. Matthew Weiner provides an excellent reading.

New York from a poet’s POV

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I will always love him-- one of Murica's finest poets. Sit down & Read this too. Don't only Listen to it...

I will always love him

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O’Hara’s ‘Lunch Poems’ is a sprezzatura lyric masterpiece. It is gasp after gasp of sublime lyric metamorphosis in the middle of the breathless workday, and as such, ‘Lunch Poems’ speaks of beautiful resistance of the soul in otherwise soulless conditions.

This said, I do not feel the selected narrator was a good match for these poems. Neither the speed and delivery struck me as working in tandem with O’Hara. However, this narrator would definitely excellent with Kerouac or Bukowski.

Mismatched*~

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The interesting part of these poems is all of the references to film stars, artists, musicians and writers of the Forties, Fifties and Sixties. His mentions of their names bring flashes of familiarity to the listener’s mind as do the scenes of New York City life of the Period: the Village, Times Square, The Met.

There’s something in his tone that sings of the bawdy, dissolute, sensual Lifestyle of the Art Scene denizens of the Time. Interesting to observe from the outside. Perilous to partake from within.

Dated but Fun!

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This is so bad because it’s boring soooooooooooo bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad

Boo boo so bad jnjnjnjnjnjnjniminijiminimmnjn

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Extremely well read. However the dated content from the 1960’s provides unfamiliar settings and contexts that made much of it non-understandable to me. Many bodily function references make it less desirable as “lunch” listening--more like “cocktail hour” poems

Dated, unfamiliar references

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