Question 1

I believe that O'Hara is both a 'man of the world' and an 'artist' according to Baudelaire. Baudelaire describes a 'man of the world' to be "a man who understands the world and the mysterious and legitimate reasons behind all its customs". This seems to be true for O'Hara in the sense that in his poems he describes his surroundings in detail and notices everything that is going around him as he walks about the city. At the same time I could argue that although O'Hara observes everything around him- he might not necessarily understand it, because I fell that in some of the poems such as A step away from Them it seems as if he is just observing and appreciating his surroundings. As for being Baudeliare's 'artist'- "a specialist, a man tied to his palette like a serf to the soil"- O'Hara's poem Why I Am Not a Painter declares that "It is even in prose, I am a real poet", and the whole poem is stating that he is a poet, and writing is what he does. So, in a sense O'Hara is almost blatanly saying that he is tied down to his work as a poet because that is what he does.