Aviya Kushner, the poetry editor for Neworld Renaissance Magazine, earned an M.A. in creative writing fromBoston University. In the following essay, Kushner discusses O 'Hara's interest in painting and its enormous influence on his life and writing as well as his desire to be perceived as what he truly was: a poet. She also compares the process of O'Hara writing a poem to Mike Goldberg creating a painting, as portrayed in "Why I Am Not a Painter."

Lunch hour. That is when O'Hara wrote many of his poems, while on break from his job as a curator at the Museum ofModern Art. His famous volume, Lunch Poems, includes descriptions of coffee with "a little sour cream in it," bare-chested construction workers downing a sandwich, and women walking over subway grates as the afternoon wind blows their skirts up over their knees. These mid-day moments fit in...