Layered Meaning or Fleeting Impressions? The Case of Frank O’Hara

Frank O’Hara’s poetry has always left me uncertain about its merits. I’ve given his work a try and ultimately found that its casualness and prosaicness, while often praised as clever or subversive, lack the transformative depth I associate with poetry. For me, O’Hara’s work feels like prose arranged into lines, lacking key poetic elements such as ambiguity, symbolism and metaphor. But this is, of course, a subjective view, and I realise that his appeal lies elsewhere for many readers. Let’s explore these missing elements in the context of O’Hara’s work.

A hallmark of poetry, as I see it, is its ability to suggest layers of meaning, inviting readers to engage in interpretation. O’Hara’s poems, though, are straightforward and journalistic. For instance, ‘The Day Lady Died’ recounts O’Hara’s emotional response to Billie Holiday’s death. Its opening lines, filled with mundane details of his day, is more like a diary entry than a poem designed to evoke multiple interpretations:

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

Some might argue that the stark specificity and cataloguing of errands reflect the fragmented, distracted state of grief, and that these plain details accumulate emotional weight. But for me, the poem doesn’t seem to invite further engagement beyond its surface narrative. 

Also, his poetry lacks transformative qualities. Rather than elevating mundane moments into something transcendent—an ambition Wordsworth attempted, though arguably without success—O’Hara doesn’t even make the attempt, if he was aware of such a possibility. In contrast, his poetry seems uninterested in this kind of transformation. For instance, in 'Having a Coke with You', a love poem that celebrates intimacy through straightforward, conversational language, O’Hara remains firmly grounded in the literal.

  I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits

      in the world

except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and

      anyway it’s in the Frick

which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go

      together for the first time

For admirers of O’Hara, this unadorned honesty is (probably) precisely the point—why dress up emotion in metaphor when you can express it directly, they might ask? Yet compared to poets like Wallace Stevens or Sylvia Plath, who mingle dense symbolic frameworks with metaphor into their work, O’Hara’s style feels limited in scope. The simplicity of his language, while charming to some, leaves little for readers who enjoy creating individualised meanings from poems.

I appreciate that much of O’Hara’s appeal lies in the personal nature of his work. He records fleeting moments of his life with a conversational intimacy that feels confessional. But unlike T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, which uses personal experience as a lens for exploring universal themes of despair and renewal, O’Hara’s poems seem content to remain on the surface of individual experience.

Critics of this perspective might argue that O’Hara’s personal focus is itself a reflection of his era. As a central figure of the New York School, his work aligns with a broader cultural movement that celebrated the everyday and rejected the “self-serious” ambitions of modernism. In this sense, his lack of universal themes could be seen as a deliberate rejection of poetic pretension. But this interpretation risks overstating the intent behind his simplicity; rather than rejecting pretension, O’Hara’s work often feels content to remain in the realm of fleeting impressions, offering immediacy at the expense of the layered richness that sustains deeper engagement.

If O’Hara’s poetry doesn’t fit traditional expectations, what is it? Perhaps it’s best understood as textual reportage, capturing fleeting moments of urban life with wit and immediacy. In this sense, O’Hara is akin to a literary Andy Warhol: both artists elevate the mundane and present it without pretence. O’Hara’s work also evokes the sharp wit and conversational charm of Truman Capote. While his poetry may lack the depth that draws me to other poets, it remains of interest for its immediacy, humour and charm.

The Poetic and the Political

Back in the late 2000s, I took part in a few online discussions about poetry and politics, or more accurately, the intersection of politics and poetry. In these discussions, I argued that the inclusion of overt political content in poetry often detracts from its aesthetic value and risks reducing poems to mere propaganda. I pointed out that if such poetry could effectively change the real world, then the protest song movement of the early 1960s would have been more effective in bringing about political change. None of the other participants agreed with me. I still hold the view that there is a necessary distinction between poetry as art and poetry as political rhetoric.

In these discussions, several objections were voiced against this view. A common objection was that all art, including poetry, is inherently political because it reflects the society and culture from which it emerges. While it's true that no work of art exists in a vacuum, this does not mean every poem must explicitly engage with political themes. For me, poetry's power lies in its ability to express enduring human concerns, emotions and aesthetic experiences that transcend immediate political concerns.

One rebuttal to this viewpoint is that poetry cannot avoid politics, as even silence or neutrality is a political statement. However, this conflation of the implicit and the explicit misses the point. A poem that incidentally reflects societal conditions through its imagery or themes differs fundamentally from one that overtly proselytises. The former allows for multiple interpretations, while the latter risks becoming didactic and one-dimensional.

Another argument presented in these discussions was that political poetry serves as a platform for marginalised voices, offering a means to challenge oppressive structures. While this is an admirable goal, it raises the question of whether poetry is the best medium to achieve this. As I have written about many times before, poetry excels in ambiguity, metaphor and layered meanings—qualities that are often at odds with the clarity and directness required for effective political communication.

However, advocates for political poetry argue that it can simultaneously inspire change and retain aesthetic depth. While this is theoretically possible, most overtly political poems prioritise message over form, resulting in work that might resonate with a specific current political issue but fails to achieve lasting artistic significance.

Several participants in these discussions claimed I was imposing a restrictive definition of poetry that excludes diverse voices and styles. They argued that my preference for aesthetic value over political engagement reflects an elitist bias rooted in traditional notions of art. However, this critique misunderstands my position. I am not advocating for a rigid, exclusionary definition of poetry but rather emphasising the importance of artistic integrity. Political content in poetry is not inherently problematic, but it must be integrated in a way that serves the poem as a work of art, not as a vehicle for ideological dissemination. Poetry’s primary obligation is to its craft, not to any external political agenda.

Other participants cited examples of celebrated poets—such as W.H. Auden, Pablo Neruda and Langston Hughes—who infused their work with political themes. They argued that this tradition validates the role of politics in poetry and challenges my argument. I fully acknowledge the contributions of politically engaged poets, but their success lies in their ability to transcend their immediate political contexts. Auden’s ‘September 1, 1939’, for instance, is deeply political yet achieves universality through its exploration of fear, hope and human frailty. The best political poetry balances specificity with timelessness, an achievement most politically charged contemporary work fails to replicate.

Some participants contended that in moments of social or political upheaval, poets have a moral obligation to address the issues of their time. While this sentiment is understandable, it risks reducing poetry to a tool for activism. Art, including poetry, functions best when it is free to explore, question and reimagine, rather than being used solely for the service of a cause. In addition, political engagement, when forced or expected, diminishes spontaneity and authenticity.

The relationship between poetry and politics is complex, and I am not denying the validity of political themes in poetry. Rather, I am questioning the prioritisation of political content at the expense of aesthetic and artistic considerations. Poetry’s enduring value lies in its ability to connect with readers on a deeper, more universal level—something that overtly political works often fail to achieve.

The counterarguments raised in these discussions highlight valid concerns but ultimately overlook the fundamental issue: the tension between art as a mode of expression and art as a tool of persuasion. In my view, poetry’s role is not to instruct but to illuminate—not to advocate, but to inspire. Reducing poetry to a mere vehicle for political expression risks undermining its integrity. Instead, we should strive to preserve poetry as an art form that transcends its immediate context, capable of expressing enduring human concerns and timeless insights.

From Folk Ballads to Dylan and Cohen

The evolution of song lyrics from simple folk ballads to complex poetic forms, is one of the most significant transformations in the history of popular music. Songwriters like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen were instrumental in transplanting pre-1935 poetic ambiguity into the songwriting form, and, thus, reimagining lyrics as a serious art form. This introduction of lyrical ambiguity to songs has not only expanded the expressive potential of music but has also filled a void that modern mainstream and some avant-garde poetry, perhaps paradoxically, has failed to maintain.

Historically, song lyrics served as communal stories or refrains, intended for accessibility and for easy memorisation. Folk ballads, for instance, utilised repetitive structures and unambiguous language to convey themes of love, loss or societal injustice. Songs like ‘Barbara Allen’ or ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ are timeless thematically, but they are nevertheless unambiguous, focusing on narrative rather than interpretive introspection. Their impact lay in their thematic universality, using unambiguous language that could resonate broadly within the oral tradition.

However, the late 20th century saw a significant shift with the rise of the singer-songwriter “movement”. Dylan and Cohen’s work especially exemplifies this shift, as they introduced themes and structures more usually encountered in text-based poetry. Dylan’s lyrics, influenced by the Symbolists, Jack Kerouac's poetry and some of Allen Ginsberg’s “word chain runs” in Howl, enabled him to infuse into the song form surrealist landscapes and ambiguous narratives that moved beyond direct narrative structures. Songs like ‘Visions of Johanna’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ rely heavily on metaphor, symbolism and an obscurity that invites listeners to interpret meaning.

Cohen, also, did similarly, imbuing his lyrics with spiritual and existential undertones, as seen in songs like ‘Suzanne’, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ and ‘Night Comes On, the latter of which I have written about elsewhere. Unlike Dylan, he does this with an economy of words, that is more akin to “formal” poetic norms than Dylan’s lyrics are. Yet both writers achieve peak ambiguity via their respective approaches. The ambiguity in their lyrics, and their refusal to convey explicit messages, introduced a new dimension into the song form.

In many ways, this ambiguity reflects the qualities of pre-1935 poetry, which often specialised in open-ended meaning and interpretive possibilities. Poets like T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas exemplified this approach in their work, leaving readers with a sense of mystery and with numerous possibilities for the interpretation of their works. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an obvious example of this, and is dense with symbolic imagery and fragmented voices, where meaning is not predominantly explicit, but rather suggested in flashes of insight after reader-engagement with the text. Similarly, Dylan Thomas’ 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion' expresses themes of defiance and transcendence in the face of death through a sophisticated and mainly ambiguous form. His repeated use of the line 'and death shall have no dominion' evokes a strong emotional response, but he leaves it to the reader to explore the full range of its meanings.

Since 2005, I’ve argued that poetry’s shift toward precision and explicitness after 1935 left it less accessible to mystery and symbolic depth. The result has been that contemporary poetry, mainly mainstream and popular poetry (and even some avant-garde poetry in recent decades), has largely avoided the kind of ambiguity that Dylan, Cohen, Thomas and Eliot embraced.

It must be emphasised, that Dylan and Cohen are not isolated in this poetic approach to music, and dozens of artists since them have carried this aspect forwards to varying extents, including: Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Neil Young, David Byrne, Tori Amos, Patti Smith, Beck, Lana Del Rey and dozens more; including bands like The Grateful Dead, The band, The Rolling Stones etc.

The impact of this development has been profound. Music has become a medium where ambiguity is not only tolerated but celebrated; where listeners are encouraged to engage in the same interpretive acts once largely reserved for poetic texts. Unlike much contemporary poetry, which tends towards precision and explicitness, song lyrics remain a laboratory for ambiguous expression. Dylan and Cohen helped to make this possible by expanding what lyrics could achieve. 

The ambiguities in song lyrics allow listeners to find resonance and meaning without dictating any singular interpretation, which is why songs have replaced poetry as a culturally significant art form.