Poem

Frank O’Hara toys with the reader’s concept of time in his poem “Poem”. He begins with the note on the door, but soon changes his perception of time from being, “headed straight out the door,” to, “It was autumn / by the time I got around the corner.” Again he changes the perception of time after giving a detailed depiction of his host’s greeting by noting he was invited, “several months ago.” O’Hara builds up the details of the moment in order to wreak havoc on the reader when he fast-forwards through time seeming only to have moved around a corner.
The reader must ask why O’Hara does this. By changing one’s perception of time the instant is only as good as the objects attached to each instant, because time and space are, in the poem, indeterminate. This allows the reader to fully appreciate each moment of the reading as an independent image.