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Having a Coke with You Is Even More Fun Than Ideology Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Brian Glavey
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Abstract

This essay addresses the recent reception of Frank O’Hara's poem “Having a Coke with You” to examine the much-maligned concept of relatability as a potentially useful aesthetic category. If the reactions to it on Twitter and YouTube are any indication, O’Hara's Coke poem has become his most famous piece, immensely popular both online and, in a strikingly different way, in the work of contemporary queer theorists. Whatever the context—queer utopian criticism, an anarchist journal, a wedding ceremony, or even an official Coca-Cola public-relations campaign—readers tend to respond to the poem's general mood rather than to its specific content. This reception speaks to the fact that O’Hara pursues what I would label a poetics of relatability: “Having a Coke with You,” like many other O’Hara poems, models ways of valuing art by relating it to other things and people. O’Hara explores this relational aesthetic by constantly negotiating between modes of reception that are self-reflective and modes that are social and intersubjective.

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Information
PMLA , Volume 134 , Issue 5 , October 2019 , pp. 996 - 1011
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2019

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