Music, Alma, On Rachmaninoff's Birthday, Poem (1) Summary

Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara is an autobiographical collection of poems concerning the passions, fears, and neuroses of the author, framed often as lines hastily written during O'Hara's lunch break.

In Music, O'Hara pauses for a liver sandwich at The Mayflower. The days are wet and chilled, while the author is short on cash and mired in a general malaise. He sees Christmas trees being erected and looks forward to the bright lights.

Alma is a four-part poem that veers among different images on the theme of a dancer called Alma. It opens with an image of her spinning under three multicolored suns. In Part 2, the author travels from Nice to Detroit - each beautiful in its own way - making subtly dirty rhymes along the way. Alma continues to dance and sing...