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Lunch Poems

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Lunch Poems

Written by: Frank O'Hara
Narrated by: Matthew Weiner
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About this listen

Frank O'Hara was a pioneering modern American poet and playwright - an art critic, a musician, and a curator at the Museum of Modern Art - who defined New York City in its post-WWII heyday. For many these poems defined the city's midcentury zeitgeist. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in remarks on the 50th anniversary edition, said that the poems "established a certain tone, a certain turn of phrase, a certain urbane wit, at once gay and straight, that came to identify the New York school of poets in the 1960s and '70s".

O'Hara's wit and cool inspired the creator of AMC's hit television show Mad Men decades later - and writer Matthew Weiner performs the poet's work with charm and reverence, adding his own unique spin on the classic material.

©1964 Frank O’Hara (P)2016 Audible, Inc. Literature & Fiction Poetry World Literature Classics United States New York Museum
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What the critics say

"Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems, the little black dress of American poetry books, redolent of cocktails and cigarettes and theater tickets and phonograph records, turns 50 this year. It seems barely to have aged.... This is a book worth imbibing again, especially if you live in Manhattan, but really if you're awake and curious anywhere. O'Hara speaks directly across the decades to our hopes and fears and especially our delights; his lines are as intimate as a telephone call. Few books of his era show less age." (Dwight Garner, The New York Times)

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Hugues Dufour

Amazing

This is, of course, an amazing poetry collection, but the performance is exceptional. Matthew Weiner's heartfelt and passionate reading brings Frank O'hara's poetry to life. Strongly recommended.

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Profile Image for K. Huth

Great book, but...

Frank O'Hara published few books during his lifetime, and this is the best known of them, a selection of poems that came out two years before his death. And it really is fantastic.
But then there's Matthew Weiner. His baseline performance is OK—it could do with being a little more New Yorky, but he gets by. Except when he doesn't. One thing he can’t handle is French, of which there’s quite a bit. You can almost hear his panicky calculations on the way to the train wreck that is each and every French word, name, or passage. It's one thing to have an English accent, but Weiner doesn’t have the faintest idea what he's saying, and the somewhat-less-frequent German and Italian bits receive the same treatment. Then there are O'Hara's breezy references to classical music, or to the art and literature of his time. Weiner, his voice rigid with panic, massacres them all, and not at all breezily. Quelle horreur!

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