JUMP TO EXAMPLES OF “SOMEDAY I’LL LOVE” POEMS
[updated December 2025]
When I was finishing my most recent poetry manuscript, I was drafting poems about my name and my nicknames and how we come to know and love (or sometimes, know and loathe) different aspects of ourselves. I knew that a good path into this work would be to check out the poems that have, in recent years, come tumbling out of a line by Frank O’Hara. In “Katy,” he writes, “Someday I’ll love Frank O’Hara.”
A New York School of Poets interpretation of that poem and its famous line indicates O’Hara wrote the line as Katy, the speaker in the poem. She, not O’Hara, is the one saying, “Someday I’ll love Frank O’Hara.” But I really dig how other poets reposition it, how they use it to mean someday I’ll love myself.
Part of the reason I gravitate toward these poems with the poet’s own name in the title is the word “someday.” By definition, it means the poets’ self-love hasn’t happened yet. They’re not there yet… but aren’t we all trying?
At the moment, I don’t plan on ending up with a “Someday I’ll Love Carolee Bennett” -titled poem, but I do plan on using the idea as a generative writing prompt to see where it takes me and what fodder it may give me. (If you try it, don’t forget to include an epigraph about the poet/variation you’re writing “after.”)
Origins of writing “Someday I’ll love” poems after Frank O’Hara
The lineage, as far as I understand it, starts with Roger Reeves and is picked up by Ocean Vuong. (Please correct me if I’m wrong on this, and I will update the post accordingly.) I first learned about the “Someday I’ll love [Name}” homages through a book by Susan Rich and a poem by poetry pal January O’Neil, but there are several additional examples, as this has traveled around. Its echoes are spectacular.
Richard Osler is right when, writing about the Frank O’Hara line and the poems that borrow it, he says, “Such a great line to steal as a title for a poem.” And I also enjoy the story Rich tells about how, after reading versions by Reeves and Vuong, she was inspired to use the borrowed title:
“I was really struck by the fact that all of the poems were by men… It felt very risqué to write a poem with that title; I don’t think I thought that title would stay. I’m sure it was a writing date with Kelli Agodon that got that poem started. Sometimes when [I’m] with a friend poet, I get braver, like, why not? It’s not like you have to publish it. It’s not like anyone’s ever going to see it. It can rest in the notebook by itself. There was something counterintuitive about writing ‘Someday I’ll Love Susan Rich’ compared to the way I am. I think of myself as someone who doesn’t like the spotlight, who is very begrudgingly on social media. To write a poem and claim that voice felt like an outrageous act. That’s the thing: aren’t we all braver on the page? Isn’t it easier to be courageous when it is you and the pen and the paper?”
Here’s to all the poets who’ve been brave enough on the page to submit and publish their versions of this poem!
14 “Someday I’ll Love…” Poems Written After a Line from Frank O’Hara
These variations, which have been published in literary magazines, are listed alphabetically by poet’s last name.
- Diannely Antigua: “Someday I’ll Stop Killing Diannely Antigua”
- Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake: “Someday I’ll Love“
- Trish Hopkinson: “I Know I Have Loved Patricia”
- Fiona Jin: “someday i’ll throw fiona jin off a building“
- Youngseo Lee: “someday i’ll love youngseo lee” (currently offline)
- Daniel Liu: “Someday I’ll Love [REDACTED]“
- Sage Marshall: “Someday I’ll Love Sage Marshall“
- Elaine Mei: “Someday I’ll Love Elaine Mei“
- January O’Neil: “Someday I’ll Love January O’Neil“
- Dean Rader: “I Never Knew I Loved Dean Rader“
- Roger Reeves: “Someday I’ll Love Roger Reeves” (audio available via poets.org)
- Susan Rich: “Someday I’ll Love Susan Rich” (available in print in Crannog Magazine and in Rich’s Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems.)
- Claire Schwartz: “someday i’ll love claire schwartz“
- Ocean Vuong: “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” (video available via The Last Magazine)
I’m happy to continue adding to the collection of examples. Got a fave that I’ve missed? Let me know!
You may also like to check out these lists: 70+ list poems for writing inspiration, 20+ different types of poems you probably never imagined and the one with 70+ poems for the end of the world!
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