Hello my literate friends.

I want to tell you something. This is a book of poems and I should not be writing a review for it. It is famous everywhere except here, and we are here. But I will tell you what you should know to buy this book. That is my job. Now that we have that clear.

These poems are beautiful and good. They are also talky, which is a word my friend Mark Halliday uses, which means that they might sometimes seem close to prose. They are called Lunch Poems because that is the idea, poems that you might compose on your lunch break, walking around New York with some change in your pocket, if you are Frank O'Hara. They seem silly sometimes, and they are, but they are not meaningless: they convey a voice which is suitable and believable and honest.

I think you will like this book.

I will tell you a secret: in my copy of this book, City Lights has increased (somehow) the font size, or the kerning or whatever, so that some lines run-over onto the next. In the original version this did not happen. This is a minor detail that I want to tell you about because you deserve to know. City Lights if you are reading this: hello, and, please fix it.

Thank you.

Frank O'Hara's _Lunch Poems_ contains a number of greats including the famous poem, "The Day Lady Died." Each verse is infused with spirit and life and peppered with O'Hara's keen sense of urban observation.

What I especially like about this particular edition is its diminuitive size -- great to sneak into any bookbag or briefcase for a quick dose of O'Hara on the morning train ride.

I'm only writing the obvious here because I couldn't believe people were giving this book only four stars when they give all kinds of mediocre books five. This book contains the best poem of mid-20th century America--"The Day Lady Died"--and is a quintessential example of New York School poetics. Terrific, fun, funny, exciting, moving poetry.

It's not surprising that Brad Gooch, a professional homosexual, writes a book that makes Frank O'Hara appear to be nothing more than another professional homosexual. Actually, Gooch may be right. O'Hara is an incredibly minor figure in American poetry, and this books devotes too much print to a third-rate writer who would probably best be forgotten.

This book focused way too much on O'Hara's sex life and not enough on his work. The prose style is tedious, and I found myself skimming it through all the excruciating details about the poet's various lovers. The reader snoozes, O'Hara loses.

City Poet goes past the Frank O'Hara that readers get to know so well through his poetry. If you have read and enjoyed O'Hara's work, this book gives you the biographical background to bring your appreciation full circle. It is no quick read, but it allows you to appreciate the man behind the words through meticulous interviews with everyone who knew him.