CUTTY SPOT

[words on FRANK O’HARA’s LUNCH POEMS]

I’ve loved Frank O’Hara since I first read him

I don’t actually know when that was

I checked out his COLLECTED from a library last year & felt like he kept getting better as he got older

which is interesting, in my opinion, because often writers’ early stuff is the most exciting

I am more excited with O’Hara’s later stuff – 1959 into the 1960’s

that’s when he finds his ‘sweet spot’

I just read LUNCH POEMS for the third time

for the time being, it’s one of my favorite books of poetry

I think younger people today who are getting into poetry should read this book

it still feels ‘hip’ & ‘relevant’ & ‘exciting’

he channels a fearless type of frankness & humor

one thing too I like about his ‘work’ is that it’s ‘mobile’ – it shifts around a lot

he’s not afraid to ‘leap’ around in a single poem

I’ve heard people say that he wrote the poems in LUNCH POEMS during his lunch breaks at work in New York City

I don’t know if this is true

either way, his style is that of immediacy, as if he did write each poem during a lunch break

somehow they still read as smart & effective & captivating

I do know City Lights published the book in 1964 in their ‘Pocket Poets’ series

the same series that put out Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL AND OTHER POEMS etc.

I love pocket-sized books

LUNCH POEMS contains poems written from 1953 – 1964

the only poem not in here that I wish was is ‘Meditations in an Emergency’ (great title too – you can read it here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/15741)

I think O’Hara is my favorite of the first New York School poets (check out more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_School)

besides poetry, O’Hara was enthusiastic about visual art & wrote art reviews in New York

his poems talk about New York a lot & are what one may call ‘urban’ in tone

you can watch him on YouTube reading poems, smoking cigarettes, & talking about art

but he comes off as ‘genuine’ & not ‘pretentious’

so does his poetry, even when he’s making obscure references – don’t know how he pulls that off

he’s not afraid to talk about his buddies in his poems

sometimes that feels annoying & ‘isolating,’ but here I feel like I’m not pushed out but let in to his world

apparently Lawrence Ferlinghetti (owner of City Lights in San Francisco) waited 5 years for O’Hara to finish & send the manuscript for LUNCH POEMS

O’Hara wrote one of my favorite manifestos ever, called ‘Personism: A Manifesto,’ in which he says, among other great things, ‘You just go on your nerve’ &, ‘The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it.’ (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20421)

my favorite moments from the book:

‘I am ashamed of my century / being so entertaining / but I have to smile’

‘I historically belong to the enormous bliss of American death’ (sounds like Kerouac or Ginsberg here, huh?)

‘what of ‘Hart Crane’ / what of phonograph records and gin // what of ‘what of’ // you are of me, that’s what / and that’s the meaning of fertility / hard and moist and moaning’

‘I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it?’

‘what went was attributed to wandering aimlessly off / what came arrived simply for itself and inflamed me/ yet I do not explain what exactly makes me so happy’

‘I can’t even find a pond small enough / to drown in without being ostentatious / you are ruining your awful country and me / it is not new to do this it is terribly / democratic and ordinary and tired’

‘how can anyone be more amusing that oneself / how can anyone fail to be’

‘but I didn’t really care for conversation that day / I wanted to be alone / which is why I went to the mill in the first place / now I am alone and hate it’

‘I’m so damned literary / and at the same time the waters rushing past me remind / me of nothing’

‘am I nuts / or is this the happiest moment of my life?’