For Jasper Johns’ Birthday: Frank O’Hara’s “Dear Jap”

Today is the 85th birthday of the painter Jasper Johns.  In honor of that occasion, here is “Dear Jap,” poem Frank O’Hara wrote in 1963 for his friend Johns (who O’Hara called by his nickname, Jap).

And here is Jasper Johns’s 1963 piece, “Skin with O’Hara Poem,” which includes the text of O’Hara’s poem “[The clouds go soft]” alongside imprints of the artist’s own hands and face: