I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

100. Having a Coke with You by Frank O'Hara - A Friend to Michael Shaeffer

Friends - it is our 100th episode!

We are so pleased to be here with you, sharing, listening, celebrating.

We have a very special conversation to mark the occasion: our very own Michael Shaeffer, host of The Poetry Exchange, talks about the poem that has been a friend to him - 'Having a Coke with You' by Frank O'Hara.

10 years...100 episodes...countless more poems, stories, converastions...and now Michael shares his story of connection with O'Hara's gorgeous poem.

We're thrilled and immensely grateful to Michael for sitting 'in the other chair' for this one, and sharing the story of his friendship so openly. You'll be hearing Michael in conversation with Roy McFarlane and Andrea Witzke Slot.

Our thanks to the Alfred A. Knopf and the Frank O'Hara estate for allowing us to share the poem with you, and to the South London Gallery for hosting the conversation.

Michael talks about his appearance in the re-staging of London Road at the National Theatre, which runs 7th - 21st June. Get your tickets while you can if you're in or around London during this time!

As Michael says in this episode, we will be taking a pause from the podcast for a while after this episode, having reached this extraordinary milestone. Michael will also be stepping back from hosting at this point, having co-hosted The Poetry Exchange with Fiona since the very beginning.

What an enormous journey it has been for Michael, for us all, and we are so grateful for all your friendship and support along the way.

The Poetry Exchange is continuing, and for now we will be focussing on some new collaborations that create live, intimate encounters between people and poems....something that has always been at the heart of The Poetry Exchange.

Keep in touch with us to find out more about as these new adventures as they unfold, including ways of being involved. You can sign up to our mailing list at www.thepoetryexchange.co.uk, follow us on Instagram @PoetryExch, or drop us a line any time on hello@thepoetryexchange.co.uk.

For now, thank you so much for being with us over the years...for all your love, support and companionship. Here's to living life filled with poems as friends.

Thank you for listening,

Michael, John and The Poetry Exchange Xx

Having a Coke with You

Frank O'Hara

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

Frank O’Hara: ‘Having a Coke with You’ from Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara, edited by Donald Allen, Carcanet Press, 2005 (UK); ‘Having a Coke with You’ from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara by Frank O’Hara, copyright © 1971 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara, copyright renewed 1999 by Maureen O’Hara Granville-Smith and Donald Allen. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. (US).