Point of View

Lunch Poems is told entirely in the first person, and by and large the poems exist in the present tense. The speaker of all but one poem in the collection is Frank O'Hara himself. As such, the collection is autobiographical in nature and - true to the title - takes on the air of musing jotted down on a lunch break.

A notable exception to the present tense in Lunch Poems is Poem en Forme de Saw, in which O'Hara is relating an experience in a park that takes place in the past. Besides this piece, the assembled works are told in the present, signifying two things. The first is that the collection has immediacy. O'Hara is tossing these anecdotes and meditations to the reader moment by moment. Secondly, these poems are meant to be theses on the present. The poet has a clear agenda: to...