Dear Laura,
Thank you for your letter about the project to raise money for the International Rescue Committee. I think it’s great that you’re helping with it, and I’m glad you invited me to choose a favorite poem for the anthology.
Actually, there are a lot of poems that could qualify as my favorite, depending on how I’m feeling at the moment. But I’ve picked Frank O’Hara’s “A Step Away from Them,” a poem that I’ve loved ever since I first read it more than thirty years ago. I like the way the poem uses everyday talk to describe a real guy out walking around looking at things on his lunch hour. This is probably the first time a cheeseburger got into a poem! I also like the way the poem is both light and serious at the same time. It all makes me feel happy, as though I had been lucky enough to get to walk around with the poet.
With best wishes,
A STEP AWAY FROM THEM
It’s my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET’S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell’ attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they’ll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.
A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.
— Frank O’Hara
