Love
Love, the most powerful theme driving "Having a Coke With You," motivates and characterizes the tone of the poem. The work is rooted in the speaker's profound recognition that his lover's face before him is suddenly more perfect than any work of art he has ever seen. In the poem, love is a transformative, inspiring force; it is also a shared experience that renders the moment the speaker describes monumental.
Transience and Permanence
Much of the beauty and subtlety of "Having a Coke With You" is derived from the tensions between transience and permanence throughout the poem. Like O'Hara's juxtaposition of art and life, the difference between moments made permanent by great works of art and the fleeting afternoon that marks the poem's occasion is emphasized by the speaker's decision to "tell" the reader and his lover about his feelings.The value O'Hara's speaker places on this moment is heightened by of his awareness of its transience: he is not an artist, so cannot create a portrait to seal his love in time, but he can use language to record this moment, preserving it forever.
Art and Life
Throughout the poem, the speaker frequently explores the distinction between art and life, often calling attention to the difference between his lover and the young men he's seen in famous portraits. The speaker's love transforms his lover into a form beyond the perfection of art's greatest masterpieces; life, suddenly, is preferable to art. At the same time, by composing a poetic portrait of his lover, the speaker captures the afternoon in his creative medium of choice. As a whole the poem captures in art just that quality—the momentary experience of great love—that the speaker had described as being beyond art.
