In music
In First Aid Kit's song "To A Poet", there is the lyric, "But Frank put it best when he said 'you can't plan on the heart'", a reference to O'Hara's poem, "My Heart".
In Martha's song "1967, I Miss You, I'm Lonely", the lyric, "I look at you and I am confident that I'd rather look at you than all the portraits in existence in the world, except possibly O'Hara by Grace Hartigan,[30]" references both O'Hara's poem, "Having a Coke With You", and Grace Hartigan's portrait of O'Hara.
Rilo Kiley's 2004 album More Adventurous is titled after a line in O'Hara's poem "Meditations in an Emergency": "Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous..."[31] The title track references the same line: "I read with every broken heart, we should become more adventurous"[32]
Frankie Cosmos's music is influenced by O'Hara's works, visible in two of her albums, Zentropy and Next Thing. Greta Kline has stated that her stage name derived from the poet.[33]
The song Frank O'Hara by the band Sea Wolf (band) describes a relationship with the Poet.
In film
In the 2011 film Beastly, the lovestruck main characters read O'Hara's poem "Having a Coke with You" aloud to each other.
In literature
O'Hara is a minor character in William Boyd's 2002 novel Any Human Heart.
O'Hara's Lunch Poems is the basis of Paul Legault's Lunch Poems 2.
In television
In the season 1 episode of the HBO series Bored to Death, "The Case of the Missing Screenplay", the main character loses a screenplay written by Jim Jarmusch about the life of Frank O'Hara.[34]
In the last episode of the series Normal People, based on Sally Rooney's novel of the same name, Connell's gift for Marianne's birthday is said to be a Frank O'Hara's collection of poetry. [35]
Several episodes of Mad Men (season 2) reference O'Hara's collection of poetry, Meditations in an Emergency. The first episode shows a character reading from it over lunch in a bar (recalling O'Hara's 1964 collection Lunch Poems) as does the last episode, which uses the book's title as its episode title.[36] In the twelfth episode, Don Draper finds his copy of Meditations in an Emergency in Anna Draper's home in California.
In plays
The poetry of Frank O'Hara features prominently in Rachel Bonds's 2017 play At the Old Place.
Landmarks
On June 10, 2014, a plaque was unveiled outside one of O'Hara's New York City residences, at 441 East Ninth Street. Poets Tony Towle, who inherited the apartment from O'Hara, and Edmund Berrigan read his works at the event.[37]
