giving semblance to those passing thoughts

Lunch Poems, by Frank O'Hara 2.0

Lunch Poems, by Frank O'Hara. Number of pages: far too many.

Since every review I have read on Frank O'Hara mentions his cause of death, I suppose I should too. Frank O'Hara died tragically in his early 40s when he was hit by a dune buggy while on a beach at night.

Frank O’Hara possesses one of those clichéd things, the soul of a poet, and it is evident in the passing thoughts and tossed-out phrases of his poems, in the unmistakable joy he takes in narratives that sometimes make no sense. He writes in the last stanza of “Pistachio Tree at Chateau Noir,”

it is because of you so I can watch you smile longer

that’s what the Spring is and the elbow of noon walks

where did you go who did you see the children proclaim

and they too gradually fill the sepulchre with dolls

and the sepulchre jumps and jounces and turns pink

with wrath

While his unpunctuated rhetoric is filled with many strong images in this poem, primarily his words seem to be there because the sound of them struck his fancy; he likes the idea of “the elbow of noon” walking, and so he jots it down, smiling to himself, expecting me to smile with him and forget that the poem has the aimless crawl of a mindless insect walking over all sorts of things.

At his most difficult to follow, such as in “Hotel Particulier” or “St. Paul and All That”, O’Hara chats mock-solemnly of his midday musings in continuously enjambed lines with terse, off-aligned phrases thrown in as if he is speaking between sudden sharp inhalations of air, narrating in one breath this real time, whimsically haphazard sensory show of his life. This may be endearing in children of a certain age, but with O’Hara’s tone and vocabulary, the rambling, boyish impetuosity of thought ceases to enrapture, and grates instead of charms.

Verdict: 2.0 I should have left the book in the recycling bin when I accidentally dropped it there.

posted by alice @ 5:23 PM