Missed Connection, Adrian Tomine | Romantic Comedies, Mark Leidner

Frank O’Hara, Having a Coke With You & Mark Leidner, Having ‘Having a Coke With You’ With You

frank o'hara's "having a coke with you" / mark leidner's "having 'having a coke with you' with you"

You asked me if I knew the poem “Having a Coke with You” I said I vaguely remembered it but didn’t really so you recited it in its entirety. We were walking from somewhere up by City Hall down toward South Street and the whole time you were reciting it I was wondering “Was that the last line of the poem?” after each line and each time I thought that, I thought it even more because as the poem got longer the fact that you were reciting it from memory became incrementally harder to believe until about two-thirds of the way through the poem I stopped thinking about how long it was and just started listening which I had been, but only a little, because of all that. Anyway then I started listening to it completely, believing the poem itself to be the sole reason you were reciting it but as soon as you finished you started to talk about how you used to think that that poem was just about how liberatingly banal being in love with someone was but then you said you’d started to think more recently it was more about the idiocy of caring about art at all when you could spend all that energy caring about someone you loved instead, and you said you were wondering where I stood on that question now that I had heard the poem and I was as struck by the question as I was stunned that you could so casually recite such a long good poem and that you hadn't even recited it primarily to solicit appreciation for your recitation so much as to ask what I thought about what you had thought about it then, versus how you thought about it now, and this was when I knew I wanted to be with you forever.

Mark Leidner on "Having a 'Having a Coke with You' with You"

from "being with you", mark leidner (x)

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