Deepest City

"Up in the heights of the evening skies I see my
City of Cities float
In sunset's golden and crimson dyes: I look and
a great joy clutches my throat!
Plateau of roofs by canyons crossed: windows by
thousands fire-furled--
O gazing, how the heart is lost in the Deepest City
of the World!"
James Oppenheim, "New York, from a Skyscraper," Monday Morning, and Other Poems

No Regrets

Record store in the Village

"One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes -- I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life."
Frank O'Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara

How Funny You Are

Central Park

"How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left."
Frank O'Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara

Paranoia

"Developing Tray #2" by Anne Collier

"Of the cities I know
New York wins the paranoia award."
David Lehman, The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry

New York is a Woman

Statue of Liberty seen from Battery Park

"New York is a woman holding, according to history, a rag called liberty with one hand and strangling the earth with the other."
Adonis, The Pages of Day and Night

Walks and Joys

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park

"City of orgies, walks, and joys."

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass