Walk with Frank O'Hara

Susan Aizenberg is the author of the poetry collections Quiet City and Muse and the coeditor of The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women.

“Susan Aizenberg is a poet with a wonderfully distinct voice—the poems in A Walk With Frank O’Hara have that difficult-to-achieve illusion of effortlessness I deeply admire, with no fussiness or straining for effect, but rather a clean elegance that allows Aizenberg’s natural lyricism to shine. Aizenberg is one of the most accomplished poets writing in America today.”—Erin Belieu, author of Come-Hither Honeycomb “These beautifully detailed yet restrained poems smolder with the force of resistance—against ‘good-girl rules,’ against the indignities of death, against what the news brings us every day. Aizenberg’s is a sensibility grown brave, empathic, and supple, flinching from nothing, and able to hold but not surrender to the pain of not flinching.”—Leslie Ullman, author of Unruly Tree: Poems “Susan Aizenberg embraces influences—including Denise Levertov, Stephen Dunn, and Louis Simpson—to create exquisite narratives about human freedom. . . . Her poems shimmer with clarity. Her meditations marvel.”—Denise Duhamel, author of Second Story: Poems

• A Walk with Frank O’HaraHungerSympathetic MagicSongThe Beautiful American Word BabyThere but for FortuneEleanor Remembers Her SoldierEleanor Can’t SleepLa LiseuseIn My Other Life My Mother FailsMichael Corleone Prepares for BedWesternTea BoysJane County CorrectionsErrataIICharm against RecollectionThe Worn-Out Dancing ShoesThis Morning My Friend WritesPoem Beginning with a Line from Louis SimpsonChildhoodDish Pigsonly here. only now.OdeAt the Chicago Art InstituteFrom Her Chair in a Hoop of Pale-Yellow LamplightShameekaThree RispettiPoem Beginning with a Line from Adelia PradoFirst LightPeople Knew How to Dress in the FortiesIIIMondayFor Ruth Ellis, Last Woman Hanged in EnglandNot One Woman I Know Hasn’t These StoriesOn Reading That, According to the Jewish Calendar, Days Begin with NightNow That You’re NowhereBlackhawk ParkPostcard from New HampshireAutobiographobiaOn Your Wedding Day You Must Fast and Weep: A Found PoemLines Written during a PandemicForced MarchAfter Reading the News this Morning, I Turn to the Curses of My Ancestors: A Found PoemDream Poem Beginning with Three Lines from Stephen DunnThis SideOn ProspectAcknowledgmentsNotes