Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast.

Regular listeners will know that I have in the past been moved to tears on this podcast by various passages of poetry.

Only yesterday I was moved to tears again. This time not by a poem, but by a till receipt.

And it's from Waterstone's bookshop. And what happened was I was given a 25 pounds book voucher and I bought the translations of

Seamus Heaney, a big fat, exciting book, Beowulf, etc. in there. And you know, when you buy

something on a voucher and you've got a bit of money left over i don't like to

leave that i like to spend it so i had whatever eighteen ninety nine from twenty five pounds is

left about five six quid and i was looking around for another book I could buy. And what I spotted

was lunch poems by Frank O'Hara. Now, I knew of Frank O'Hara, but couldn't remember ever reading any of

his poetry. But it just pushed the 25 voucher to 2598, so I knew I'd have to

pay an extra 98p, but I was getting a poetry book for 98P, and even if it was awful, who cares?

And the thing was, also it was pocket-sized, and it was part of the pocket poets series, in fact,

which has in the past included someone I really love, Alan Ginsberg.

And so, yes, that's what happened. I bought lunch poems by Frank O'Hara. And when I first read it through,

I wasn't sure I had done the right thing. It didn't really grab me. And then it started. I started to get

more and more into these poems in lunch poems, to the point where I

downloaded the book on Audible, the audio version of the book, and just let it play in my ear

over and over and over. Whatever I was doing, there was Frank O'Hara's launch

poems sort of happening behind it. Okay, so obviously today, I want to read you something from

Frank O'Hara's launch poems. By the way, the reason I became emotional when I saw the receipt was that that purchase was only three months ago.

And I was really taken aback that now I feel utterly consumed by Frank O'Hara's Lounge Poems. And then it was just bought on a whim. and then it was just bought on a whim as a sort of extra

to make up the book token. Yes, different people are moved by different things. So what can I tell

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