A take on the poem: Having a Coke with You by Frank O' Hara

In his poem “Having a Coke with You,” Frank O’Hara addresses the superfluousness of one’s surroundings when in love, and more specifically the superficiality of art in comparison to love. He achieves this by referring to a simple gesture as "having a coke" to a more serious sign of love as comparing a loved one to a work of art: "I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world". Here Coke is rendered not as global brand but as object-event, whose value for the speaker is inadequately comprehended by the theory of commodity fetishism. There’s something about having a Coke with you, about this ordinary act of consumption, that makes it a “marvelous experience” for the speaker and his beloved, an experience that is intensely theirs but also somehow yours, the grammar of the poem interpellating you as participant. The title “Having a Coke With You” seems to suggest that the poem could fit many relationships, the actual content just doesn’t create a “one-size-fits-all” love poem. Not only is it specific as to the identity and experiences of the speaker (his travels, his stomachache), it is also very specific as to the identity of the “you” (his love of yoghurt, his orange shirt). O’ Hara personalizes things by making them objects of affection hinges on the idea that this affection retains a sense of purity distinct from commercial consumerism and here he makes the Coke personal by placing it as an object mediating his and Warren’s love. O'Hara's use of stream of consciousness resembles a stereotypical person in love captures the speaker's natural thoughts and his intensity of being in love. The title "Having a Coke with You," ties in perfectly with the opening lines, "is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne." The extraordinary nature of the mysterious “you” mentioned in the poem is also revealed by the author's interesting use of enjambment. The total lack of sentence-ending punctuation would make the poem read like one entirely run-on sentence, if it were not for the interesting line breaks that the author uses to show where certain thoughts end, as well as to give added emphasis to certain points. If we are to read “but not really for love/though a block away you feel distant” to be one thought and “the mere presence/changes everything” to be another thought, the lover falls in convincing himself of love’s fulfilment use of repetition, even though is a small portion just like the use of comparison, creates an important meaning in the poem. The speaker repeats “partly because…” various times to mention the reasons why he loves his lover. 

In the second stanza, the poet discusses how art can never really capture the gravity of love. Using "fluorescent orange tulips," "smiles," "tree," "heavens," and "sun" in the poem, O'Hara is conveying that love is like art--beautiful, enchanting, and mesmerizing. Citing two very contrasting artworks, the "Polish Rider," which portrays a carefully detailed, painted man on a horse, and the "Nude Descending a Staircase," showing a very rough sketch of a man, he draws a line of when love is easily seen, controlled, and young; and when it's an uncontrollable jumble of inexpressible emotions. The comparison of the speaker's lover and art shows that the poet has observed and carefully examined his lover, and has seen the hidden beauty, paid attention to the usually missed details, and knows of the concealed flaws. The use of comparison ties into the meaning that when people are in love, their love can be compared to something as simple as artwork, yet to the couple in love it has many layers. Thus, as with the mood and register of a poem, warmth attracts a viewer or reader, while coolness repels. The poem is referred to as one of O’Hara’s “warmest” poems, as it is affectionate and generous in tone – however, it is also significant that this is a poem that uses the colour orange twice something that Marjorie Perloff calls "floating modifiers". 

     O’Hara invites the reader to personally feel what he feels, using a second-person point of view, on a sentiment our-letter through art. In almost every line of the poem, the speaker says “you or your”, referring to the person he loves. This point of view makes the meaning of the poem all that more obvious and relatable. Though at times he is not specific to the particular person he is talking about, the “subject” is left broad and open to whomever. In one continuous and never seizing flow of words, Frank O’Hara proclaims that love, the four-letter, somewhat overrated human emotion does not need the presence of beauty found in art or places to be experienced but rather it is adequate to just spend time doing something so banal as “having a coke” together and thus the lover’s extraordinariness transfigures the ordinariness of everyday life.