“Devoted New Yorker Frank O’Hara” quoted in today’s NY Times

Another sign that Frank O’Hara is on the New York Times’ (and everyone else’s) mind these days.  In this morning’s “Fashion & Style” section, there is a light piece by Matthew Schneier about the legions of New Yorkers who have never learned to drive, and the challenges they face in the summer.  It begins with a little nod to O’Hara:

“On any given Friday afternoon in the New York summer, offices clear out early, weekend bags are hoisted onto shoulders, and many of those city dwellers who are, in colder months, perfectly happy to live concrete-encircled lives — they who, like the poet and devoted New Yorker Frank O’Hara, ‘can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy’ — slide into cars and head out of town.

Some of them just happen to be riding (inevitably, bashfully and maybe a bit anxiously) in the passenger seat.”

As many of you know, these quintessentially New York lines from O’Hara’s “Meditations in an Emergency” are prominently displayed in lower Manhattan, inscribed in bronze along the water in Battery Park at the World Financial Center: