Frank O’Hara uses poetry to take a snapshot of his life in New York during a time where there is a struggle between the ancient and the modern as well as the perfect and the imperfect. To say the least, it seems that O’Hara has quite a love/hate relationship with the city. In his poems “A Step Away From Them” and “Personal Poem,” from his Lunch Poems Collection, this idea of New York City is expressed through extreme detail of personal life, all alluding to different, greater themes.

“A Step Away From Them,” for example, displays a New York in-between the old and the new. As he walks just around the corner on his lunch break he experiences a city that is constantly reinventing and renewing itself, never stopping to focus on the beauty of what has already been accomplished. O’Hara writes, “…and the posters for BULLFIGHT and the Manhattan Storage Warehouse which they’ll soon tear down. I used to think they had the Armory Show there.” O’Hara’s free verse is picked up in speed as the city moves too fast around him, to the point where he can’t keep up, causing the love/hate relationship. Similarly, the song “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down,” by LCD Soundsystem encompasses this struggle between New York being perfect but also imperfect.

James Murphy, lead singer of LCD Soundsytem, wrote a song that resonates with a lot of New Yorkers struggling to make it. Murphy is disappointed with New York and goes on to list many reasons about why the city is not all people think it is, “…Take me off your mailing list/For kids that think it still exists/Yes, for those who think it still exists.” However, towards the end of the song he admits, he is still undecided about the city, “Maybe I’m wrong/And maybe you’re right.” O’Hara has similar negative feelings about New York in his “Personal Poem,” he writes, “I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go back to work happy at the thought possibly so.” O’Hara and Murphy both struggle with New York’s fast changing environment, where both often feel lonely in the big city.

Another song that captures O’Hara’s spirit of taking giant ideas and themes, and turning them into intimate personal narratives is Susanne Vega’s, “Tom’s Diner.” This song purely describes a morning routine in New York City, yet is a popular tune among New Yorker’s for how relatable and telling it really is. All while sitting in this diner with a cup of coffee, the New York lifestyle is just as exposed as O’Hara did in his poems “A Step Away From Them” and “Personal Poem.” In “Step Away From Them,” O’Hara writes, “On to Times Square, where the sign blows smoke over my head, and higher the waterfall pours lightly.” This short and simple line reveals Midtown perfectly to any New Yorker who truly knows, he manipulates every detail is say something more. Vega describes everything she witnesses through the windows of this diner, a true snip it of New York, she sings that the waiter only pours her coffee half way, and before she can complain, he is already gone. Furthermore, she reads the headlines of the New York Post, watches a woman fixed her ripped stocking, and hear the cathedral bells a block away, which make her reminiscent of a past lover. Finally, she ends the song with the line, “I finish up my coffee, it’s time to catch the train.” This line makes the listener reflect on time, as all of this happened during the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. Even for such a minor morning routine, the detail in her descriptions illuminate greater themes of New York.