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Meditations in an Emergency
Frank O’Hara was one of the great poets of the twentieth century and, along with such widely acclaimed writers as Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, and Gary Snyder, a crucial contributor to what Donald Allen termed the New American Poetry, "which, by its vitality alone, became the dominant force in the American poetic tradition.�
Frank O’Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in New England; from 1951 he lived and worked in New York, both for Art News and for the Museum of Modern Art, where he was an associate curator. O'Hara’s untimely death in 1966 at the age of forty was, in the words of fellow poet John Ashbery, "the biggest secret loss to American poetry since John Wheelwright was killed.� This collection is a reissue of a volume first published by Grove Press in 1957, and it demonstrates beautifully the flawless rhythm underlying O'Hara’s conviction that to write poetry, indeed to live, "you just go on your nerve.�
Frank O’Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in New England; from 1951 he lived and worked in New York, both for Art News and for the Museum of Modern Art, where he was an associate curator. O'Hara’s untimely death in 1966 at the age of forty was, in the words of fellow poet John Ashbery, "the biggest secret loss to American poetry since John Wheelwright was killed.� This collection is a reissue of a volume first published by Grove Press in 1957, and it demonstrates beautifully the flawless rhythm underlying O'Hara’s conviction that to write poetry, indeed to live, "you just go on your nerve.�
52 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
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About the author
Frank O'Hara
111Ìýbooks686ÌýfollowersCollections of American poet Francis Russell O'Hara include
Meditations in an Emergency
(1957) and
Lunch Poems
(1964); playfulness, irony, sophistication, and a shared interest in the visual arts mark works of the New York School, an active group that included O'Hara during the 1950s and 1960s.
Parents reared O'Hara in Grafton, Massachusetts. O'Hara served in the south Pacific and Japan as a sonar man on the destroyer United States Ship Nicholas during World War II.
With the funding, made available to veterans, he attended Harvard University and roomed with artist-writer Edward Gorey. He majored in music and composed some works despite his irregular attendance was and his disparate interests. Visual art and contemporary music, his first love, heavily influenced O'Hara, a fine piano player all his life; he suddenly played swathes of Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff when visiting new partners, often to their shock.
At Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery and began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love for music, O'Hara changed his major and graduated from Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English.
He then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. At Michigan, he won a Hopwood award and received his Master of Arts in English literature 1951. In that autumn, O'Hara moved into an apartment in city of New York with Joe LeSueur, his roommate and sometimes his lover for the next 11 years. Known throughout his life for his extreme sociability, passion, and warmth, O'Hara had hundreds of friends and lovers throughout his life, many from the New York art and poetry worlds. Soon after he arrived in New York, the Museum of Modern Art employed him at the front desk, and he began to write seriously.
O'Hara, active in the art world, working as a reviewer for Art News, and in 1960 was made Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. He was also friends with artists like Willem de Kooning, Norman Bluhm, Larry Rivers, and Joan Mitchell. O'Hara died in an accident on Fire Island in which he was struck and seriously injured by a man speeding in a beach vehicle during the early morning hours of July 24, 1966. He died the next day of a ruptured liver at the age of 40 and was buried in the Green River Cemetery on Long Island.
Parents reared O'Hara in Grafton, Massachusetts. O'Hara served in the south Pacific and Japan as a sonar man on the destroyer United States Ship Nicholas during World War II.
With the funding, made available to veterans, he attended Harvard University and roomed with artist-writer Edward Gorey. He majored in music and composed some works despite his irregular attendance was and his disparate interests. Visual art and contemporary music, his first love, heavily influenced O'Hara, a fine piano player all his life; he suddenly played swathes of Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff when visiting new partners, often to their shock.
At Harvard, O'Hara met John Ashbery and began publishing poems in the Harvard Advocate. Despite his love for music, O'Hara changed his major and graduated from Harvard in 1950 with a degree in English.
He then attended graduate school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. At Michigan, he won a Hopwood award and received his Master of Arts in English literature 1951. In that autumn, O'Hara moved into an apartment in city of New York with Joe LeSueur, his roommate and sometimes his lover for the next 11 years. Known throughout his life for his extreme sociability, passion, and warmth, O'Hara had hundreds of friends and lovers throughout his life, many from the New York art and poetry worlds. Soon after he arrived in New York, the Museum of Modern Art employed him at the front desk, and he began to write seriously.
O'Hara, active in the art world, working as a reviewer for Art News, and in 1960 was made Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. He was also friends with artists like Willem de Kooning, Norman Bluhm, Larry Rivers, and Joan Mitchell. O'Hara died in an accident on Fire Island in which he was struck and seriously injured by a man speeding in a beach vehicle during the early morning hours of July 24, 1966. He died the next day of a ruptured liver at the age of 40 and was buried in the Green River Cemetery on Long Island.
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June 1, 2024
In the second season of Madmen, Don Draper, awash in the chaos of his own identity, recites these lines from "Mayakovsky," the last poem in this book:
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
Frank O'Hara's poetry does not have to wait--quietly or otherwise. It is always beautiful and interesting. And, sixty years later, it still seems modern too.
Most 20th Century verse lovers, if asked what midcentury poet inherited the legacy of Whitman, would pick Allen Ginsberg, the iconic embodiment of the Beats. But my vote goes to the New York School's Frank O'Hara.
Ginsberg loved Whitman, adopting both his long lists and his long verse lines and self-consciously donning the Whitmanesque mantle of American Prophet—half soapbox shouter and half Hindu holyman—who celebrates the human body, alternative sexuality, and the teeming variety of the American street. But in spite of his guru-style blessings and his hipster humor, Ginsberg's poems are still pervaded by an ancient—albeit syncopated—Hebrew melancholy, as if the prophet Jeremiah had copped a gig with a cool jazz band.
Frank O'Hara, on the other hand, writes verse suffused with optimism. He celebrates the same things Ginsberg does, but unlike Ginsberg—and like Whitman--he immerses himself in every moment, in every detail, joyously relishing the opportunities for pure sensation and passionate friendship that New York has to offer. (I suspect that, handed a prophet's cloak, Frank would have simply collapsed, helpless with laughter.)
O'Hara, raised in Massachusetts and educated as a Catholic (a church he describes in one of his poems as “at best, an over-solemn introduction to cosmic entertainment�), worked as a Navy sonar technician during WW II, went to Harvard on the G.I. Bill, and eventually sought his fortune in New York City. He got a job at MOMA—first selling postcards in the gift shop, later as a curator of painting—and threw himelf into the social whirl of the NYC art scene.
A devoted friend and prolific lover, he introduced poets to painters (and vice versa), reveling in personal and artistic freedom. O'Hara may have died three years before the Stonewall riots (a poet's death: run over by a car on Fire Island, where no cars are allowed), but he lived in a small, liberated enclave well ahead of its time. And his love for his world and his love for New York City shines in every line he wrote.
Although this 1957 collection is the one most of his contemporaries knew him by, it came before his chattier, more colloquial “Personism� period, before Donald Allen's revolutionary anthology The New American Poets (1960) proclaimed him as a leader of The New York School, and before his small City Lights book Lunch Poems (1964) was published, a book which contains many of his best known pieces.
Nevertheless, this earlier volume shows O'Hara to good advantage. Its poems possess the characteristic O'Hara virtues--the conversational tone, the manic enthusiasm, the gentle humor, the name-dropping--but, since the inspiration here is more Rimbaud than Mayakovsky, these poems are grandly, often bafflingly surrealist. Unlike much surrealist poetry, however, these pieces show a painter's respect for form: each outrageous improvisation is placed artfully upon the canvas of the individual poem.
February 27, 2019
Mayakovsky
4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.
*
Sleeping On The Wing
...
Curiosity, the passionate hand of desire. Dead,
or sleeping? Is there speed enough? And, swooping,
you relinquish all that you have made your own,
the kingdom of your self sailing, for you must awake
and breathe your warmth in this beloved image
whether it's dead or merely disappearing,
as space is disappearing and your singularity.
When I saw O'Hara's name next to Allen Ginsberg's, I have to admit, I wasn't exactly thrilled. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the former's poetry more than Mr. Ginsberg's and would probably try another one of his books. Within his ode to New York City, there were some gems I liked, a few lines I identified with. His love for the city, the idea of loving a place so much, however unconnected it is with me, is heartwarming somehow.
Jan 27, 19
* Also on
December 23, 2020
I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
*
Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of
someone else for a change?
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless
love.
Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under
them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.
*
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I'll stare
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
*
Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of
someone else for a change?
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless
love.
Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under
them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.
*
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I'll stare
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry
December 7, 2019
"It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve
set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over"
set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over"
April 25, 2010
Modern poetry is for advanced people. If you're not advanced, put this slim volume of "fractured", "delicate", "touched" poems down. These are not for you. You best stick with your "prose."
Try this as a test: "That's funny! there's blood on my chest/oh yes, I've been carrying bricks/what a funny place to rupture!/and now it is raining on the ailanthus/as I step out onto the window ledge/the tracks are smoky and/glistening with a passion for running/I leap into leaves, green like the sea."
See what I mean? that's like reading the back of a cereal box for advanced people, but for non-advanced people that's like reading modern poetry.
Other people who should not read these poems: anyone named Jane Freilicher. She seems to be the muse responsible for Frank O'Hara's descent into difficult if understated madness.
Finally, if anyone says they like these poems, ask them what they liked. They'll probably say the line, "Now I am quietly waiting for/the catastrophe of my personality/to seem beautiful again, and interesting and modern." Don't let these non-advanced posers fool you. They're really fans of the show Mad Men. Don Draper reads these lines from the last poem in the collection. They're faking it. Don Draper is advanced. The fans of the show are not necessarily advanced. They might just happen to like dapper threads and Tom Collins and Lucky Strikes.
Try this as a test: "That's funny! there's blood on my chest/oh yes, I've been carrying bricks/what a funny place to rupture!/and now it is raining on the ailanthus/as I step out onto the window ledge/the tracks are smoky and/glistening with a passion for running/I leap into leaves, green like the sea."
See what I mean? that's like reading the back of a cereal box for advanced people, but for non-advanced people that's like reading modern poetry.
Other people who should not read these poems: anyone named Jane Freilicher. She seems to be the muse responsible for Frank O'Hara's descent into difficult if understated madness.
Finally, if anyone says they like these poems, ask them what they liked. They'll probably say the line, "Now I am quietly waiting for/the catastrophe of my personality/to seem beautiful again, and interesting and modern." Don't let these non-advanced posers fool you. They're really fans of the show Mad Men. Don Draper reads these lines from the last poem in the collection. They're faking it. Don Draper is advanced. The fans of the show are not necessarily advanced. They might just happen to like dapper threads and Tom Collins and Lucky Strikes.
Read
June 4, 2009There are exactly 115 exclamation points in this collection (114 if you don't count an epigraph). Here are all of them:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
February 12, 2011
I don't read poetry too terribly often, and the primary reason I even KNEW of this particular book was from the show Mad Men. So sue me. I'd bet most people who've recently read it have the same exact reason.
Anyway
Each poem has a particular flare of pure 1960's energy. Having studied that era in relative detail, I still can't quite put my finger on what exactly tickles my fancy about it... There's a definite sense of ambivalence that occasionally lingers on the precipice of depression mixed with the disjointed confusion that I would associate most strongly with The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Unfortunately, I have no deep or interesting thoughts to offer about this collection. I would suggest it to anyone who I knew was interested in poetry - but, as I said, I can't help but feel like something is lost on me, not being a child of the times.
Anyway
Each poem has a particular flare of pure 1960's energy. Having studied that era in relative detail, I still can't quite put my finger on what exactly tickles my fancy about it... There's a definite sense of ambivalence that occasionally lingers on the precipice of depression mixed with the disjointed confusion that I would associate most strongly with The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Unfortunately, I have no deep or interesting thoughts to offer about this collection. I would suggest it to anyone who I knew was interested in poetry - but, as I said, I can't help but feel like something is lost on me, not being a child of the times.
April 18, 2025
"Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth."
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�
O'Hara explores unrequited love, lack of connection, and emotional detachment in 1950s New York through abstract and matter-of-fact poems. Occasionally humorous, often soulful, and always coming from a deeply personal place.
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�
O'Hara explores unrequited love, lack of connection, and emotional detachment in 1950s New York through abstract and matter-of-fact poems. Occasionally humorous, often soulful, and always coming from a deeply personal place.
July 28, 2016
Of all the New York School brats, from Beat Gen to Greenwich Village, O’Hara is my favorite. He was a curator at MOMA and his poetry shows a visual style that the others lack. He incorporates pop culture, especially Hollywood celebrities. He's subtle. He conveys dark humor without shouting, a la Ginsburg. His chief concern is the middle class identity crisis. His works are daydream-like and sometimes-alcoholic trances with flickering stars of screen and stage.
O’Hara’s world is less polished but still imaginative. In Meditations... the working-class horrors of the 50s and the looming revolution of the 60s are only visible in retrospect. Shock and disgust are muted � unlike Bukowski � and vulgarity is only hinted at. Now I understand what people mean when they refer to this style of writing as comparable to jazz.
My favorite work in the book is “For James Dean�, an ode to Hollywood’s sadism (and don’t think Hollywood isn’t us). In this poem O’Hara indicts our habit of idolizing the life out of our most lively men and women. “He [James Dean] has banged into your wall of air, your hubris…� To O’Hara, Dean was a prophet of the coming age, maybe even its messiah, and a requisite sacrifice for the entertainment world's consumption.
Most of the poems in ²Ñ±ð»å¾±³Ù²¹³Ù¾±´Ç²Ô²õâ€� call for a resetting of the stale life of the 50s. O’Hara says, in a sense, that we’ve been struggling against the current, and all we need to do is let go â€� fall back and relax. As he says in "River", we need only to “sink back upon that brutal tenderness that bore me on, that held me like a slaveâ€� upon the open flesh of the world.â€� Also in Sleeping on the Wing:
The final and best work in the book is "Mayakovsky", another ode but one with more self-reflection than tribute. The final stanzas sum up the entire volume and O’Hara’s writing as a whole. They state the desire of a generation, but on an individual level.
O’Hara’s world is less polished but still imaginative. In Meditations... the working-class horrors of the 50s and the looming revolution of the 60s are only visible in retrospect. Shock and disgust are muted � unlike Bukowski � and vulgarity is only hinted at. Now I understand what people mean when they refer to this style of writing as comparable to jazz.
My favorite work in the book is “For James Dean�, an ode to Hollywood’s sadism (and don’t think Hollywood isn’t us). In this poem O’Hara indicts our habit of idolizing the life out of our most lively men and women. “He [James Dean] has banged into your wall of air, your hubris…� To O’Hara, Dean was a prophet of the coming age, maybe even its messiah, and a requisite sacrifice for the entertainment world's consumption.
I take this
for myself, and you take up
the thread of my life between your teeth,
tin thread and tarnished with abuse,
you still shall hear
as long as the beast in me maintains
its taciturn power to close my lids
in tears, and my loins move yet
in the ennobling pursuit of all the worlds
you have left me alone in, and would be
the dolorous distraction from
while you summon your army of anguishes
which is a million hooting blood vessels
on the eyes and in the ears
at that instant before death.
Most of the poems in ²Ñ±ð»å¾±³Ù²¹³Ù¾±´Ç²Ô²õâ€� call for a resetting of the stale life of the 50s. O’Hara says, in a sense, that we’ve been struggling against the current, and all we need to do is let go â€� fall back and relax. As he says in "River", we need only to “sink back upon that brutal tenderness that bore me on, that held me like a slaveâ€� upon the open flesh of the world.â€� Also in Sleeping on the Wing:
And, swooping,
you relinquish all that you have made your own,
the kingdom of your self sailing, for you must awake
and breathe your warmth in this beloved image
whether it’s dead or merely disappearing,
as space is disappearing and your singularity.
The final and best work in the book is "Mayakovsky", another ode but one with more self-reflection than tribute. The final stanzas sum up the entire volume and O’Hara’s writing as a whole. They state the desire of a generation, but on an individual level.
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.
March 22, 2021
The title of this book sums up the last year, pretty much. Review to come!
Also, I'm writing this here to create a sense of obligation: today is the day before the Israeli elections. If the Religious Zionism party passes the threshold, I'm going to take all of my rage and use it to volunteer with Palestinian LGBT+ refugee seekers, time constraints be damned.
Also, I'm writing this here to create a sense of obligation: today is the day before the Israeli elections. If the Religious Zionism party passes the threshold, I'm going to take all of my rage and use it to volunteer with Palestinian LGBT+ refugee seekers, time constraints be damned.
September 25, 2010
"Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change?
"I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love."
How can you not, at the very least, give an extra moment's pause to enjoy the beauty and raw emotion of those lines?
"I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love."
How can you not, at the very least, give an extra moment's pause to enjoy the beauty and raw emotion of those lines?
Read
February 4, 2011<------------------------This book------------------------->
<-------------------------My head-------------------------->
<-------------------------My head-------------------------->
September 23, 2018
Very good, though I’m still more partial to Lunch Poems.
November 3, 2018
O Hara's style is intimate yet universal, pathos in the everyday ordinary, particular, sentimental yet aloof. His poetry is modern, very modern, in the best way, filled with beautiful contradictions and a generous helping of mirth.
December 28, 2022
every time I read Frank I want to cry
August 3, 2016
"I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life."
Still the best introduction to O'Hara. the Collected Works is very disorganized and inaccessible to newcomers and Selected Poems just doesn't have the flow of O'Hara's original publications, of which Meditations is certainly the finest. O'Hara's signature pop culture lightness just cascades from page to page, even the more unassuming poems feed into others and the work as a whole.
and "Mayakovsky" is the greatest poem not written by Mayakovsky himself and thats just it.
O'Hara is THE post-war American poet and is as a whole the most consistently excellent; always powerful and complex (contradictory hehe) while FUN(NY) AND CUTE AND ENDEARING...he's the closest thing to the perfect American poet except for his poor taste in art (AbEx bleck). But I mean even when he's dumb/silly he's great.
So yeah if you're inspired to read this because of Mad Men that's awesome! the inclusion of that excerpt is so perfect in that episode and its about time new york school poets get more recognition (and people grow up and stop reading Beat). O'Hara has really changed the the way I look at culture, love, authenticity, and writing. I hope you develop a similar attachment to Frank O'Hara and this collection.
Still the best introduction to O'Hara. the Collected Works is very disorganized and inaccessible to newcomers and Selected Poems just doesn't have the flow of O'Hara's original publications, of which Meditations is certainly the finest. O'Hara's signature pop culture lightness just cascades from page to page, even the more unassuming poems feed into others and the work as a whole.
and "Mayakovsky" is the greatest poem not written by Mayakovsky himself and thats just it.
O'Hara is THE post-war American poet and is as a whole the most consistently excellent; always powerful and complex (contradictory hehe) while FUN(NY) AND CUTE AND ENDEARING...he's the closest thing to the perfect American poet except for his poor taste in art (AbEx bleck). But I mean even when he's dumb/silly he's great.
So yeah if you're inspired to read this because of Mad Men that's awesome! the inclusion of that excerpt is so perfect in that episode and its about time new york school poets get more recognition (and people grow up and stop reading Beat). O'Hara has really changed the the way I look at culture, love, authenticity, and writing. I hope you develop a similar attachment to Frank O'Hara and this collection.
February 11, 2015
I had to go to Downtown Los Angeles yesterday for a new passport photograph, and needing something to read on the bus to go back home, I went to the library. I picked up Frank O'Hara's "Meditations in an Emergency." Due to the nature of bus riding, I prefer reading poetry, because it is the perfect medium for a public transportation ride. O'Hara has been a long-time fave of mine, and oddly enough I never read this volume of poems by him. I mostly read collected or selected poem collections, and I think the only original collection I read by him was "Lunch Poems." That book is my favorite of mine, and I believe this edition came out before "Lunch." O'Hara just had that "it" quality - I think in everything. But his poetry is both witty, profound and very observational on daily life. His look at nature is both very common and uncommon, in that it conveys the mood of what is taking place. His relationshilp with the visual artists comes through these poems. A superb bus/bath/couch reading experience!
November 5, 2023
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
February 10, 2024
Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency is a dazzling collection of poems that vividly captures the essence of mid-century New York City life. With a blend of wit, intellect, and raw emotion, O'Hara paints a vibrant portrait of urban existence, exploring themes of love, loss, and the human experience. His fearless experimentation with language and form, combined with his acute sensitivity to the nuances of human emotion, creates a poetic tapestry that resonates with authenticity and poignancy. In essence, Meditations in an Emergency is a testament to the enduring power of poetry to illuminate life's hidden corners and capture its fleeting beauty.
July 6, 2020
Read some of these poems over and over and over. They made my heart ache so powerfully.
Will revisit again and again.
And the rooftops are falling apart like the applause
of rough, long-nailed, intimate, roughened-by-kisses, hands.�
Fingers more breathless than a tongue laid upon the lips�
in the hour of sunlight, early morning, before the mist rolls�
in from the sea; and out there everything is turbulent and green.
Will revisit again and again.
And the rooftops are falling apart like the applause
of rough, long-nailed, intimate, roughened-by-kisses, hands.�
Fingers more breathless than a tongue laid upon the lips�
in the hour of sunlight, early morning, before the mist rolls�
in from the sea; and out there everything is turbulent and green.
September 13, 2022
“I’m glad that the rock is heavy /
And that it feels all right in my heart /
like an eye in a pot of humus.�
And that it feels all right in my heart /
like an eye in a pot of humus.�
January 15, 2024
Honestly just another O'Hara with which I didn't completely vibe... I do feel like I liked it more than Lunch poems but in general we were not made for each other... He did have some film-related poems in there this time and others about being silly with your friends that I really liked, but they don't feel especially touching or emotional to me personally. I love to see my sister in them though! I do understand her love for this poet
Read
November 7, 2024“Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change?
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves�
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves�
October 20, 2008
"To the Harbormaster, my ship was on the way, it got caught up in some moorings...'Call me, call when you get in!'...at best an over-solemn introduction to cosmic entertainment...long may you illumine space with your marvellous appearances, delays...
We, in secret play
affectionate games and bruise
our knees like China's shoes
And thus they grew like giggling fir trees...Haven't you ever fallen down at Christmas?...placing my fingers tenderly upon your cold, tired eyes. There is a geography which holds its hands just so far from the breast and pushes you away, crying so. Writhe and bear the fruit of screaming. He steps into the mirror, refusing to be anyone else, and his guests observe the waves break... those were intricate days.
...paddling up and down the Essequibo in our canoe of war surplus gondola parts...
...a bundle of armayllis quite artifically tied. Jane and I plotz! What a mysteriosabelle! dropped aspirin into this sunset of roses the tiger leaps on the table and without distrubing a hair of the flowers' breathless attention, pisses into the pot.
Next time my face won't come with me... I want to take your hands off my hips and put them on a statue's hips, the joyousness of being cruel, never again delicately to entomb a tear... an eagerness for the historical look of the mirror.
I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy.. some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over. Passions will become turrets, to you.
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern."
- What I will take away from the Meditations.
I had difficulty with some of it, and I am /not/ normally a poetry person. I found this a worthwhile challenge. I will carry the image of the war-surplus gondola for a long time. Thanks, Matt Weiner.
We, in secret play
affectionate games and bruise
our knees like China's shoes
And thus they grew like giggling fir trees...Haven't you ever fallen down at Christmas?...placing my fingers tenderly upon your cold, tired eyes. There is a geography which holds its hands just so far from the breast and pushes you away, crying so. Writhe and bear the fruit of screaming. He steps into the mirror, refusing to be anyone else, and his guests observe the waves break... those were intricate days.
...paddling up and down the Essequibo in our canoe of war surplus gondola parts...
...a bundle of armayllis quite artifically tied. Jane and I plotz! What a mysteriosabelle! dropped aspirin into this sunset of roses the tiger leaps on the table and without distrubing a hair of the flowers' breathless attention, pisses into the pot.
Next time my face won't come with me... I want to take your hands off my hips and put them on a statue's hips, the joyousness of being cruel, never again delicately to entomb a tear... an eagerness for the historical look of the mirror.
I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy.. some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over. Passions will become turrets, to you.
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern."
- What I will take away from the Meditations.
I had difficulty with some of it, and I am /not/ normally a poetry person. I found this a worthwhile challenge. I will carry the image of the war-surplus gondola for a long time. Thanks, Matt Weiner.
July 7, 2018
O'Hara is an odd one. One moment its "Mayakovsky", and O'Hara is so concrete and beautiful about this world. A sense of time slowing in that emotional interior, biding his time for someone beautiful to come along.
I understood completely. They always pass me by.
The next moment you get a poem from O'Hara. The sun is talking to him, and the poem is flighty and weird. Not a good time to be talking about an anthropomorphic sun. This is an emergency, remember?
I am unhappy. When I was especially unhappy, I took a bus to the library, tried to read some Camus. Rebel against the absurd? Fuck that. Fuck Camus and his stupid trench coat.
There are no epiphanies in emergencies. Only meditations.
"Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern."
And here I am.
I understood completely. They always pass me by.
The next moment you get a poem from O'Hara. The sun is talking to him, and the poem is flighty and weird. Not a good time to be talking about an anthropomorphic sun. This is an emergency, remember?
I am unhappy. When I was especially unhappy, I took a bus to the library, tried to read some Camus. Rebel against the absurd? Fuck that. Fuck Camus and his stupid trench coat.
There are no epiphanies in emergencies. Only meditations.
"Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern."
And here I am.
May 24, 2025
Jane Awake
The opals hiding in your lids
as you sleep, as you ride ponies
mysteriously, spring to bloom
like the blue flowers of autumn
each nine o'clock. And curls
tumble languorously towards
the yawning rubber band, tan,
your hand pressing all that
riotous black sleep into
the quiet form of daylight
and its sunny disregard for
the luminous volutions, oh!
and the budding waltzes
we swoop through in nights.
Before dawn you roar with
your eyes shut, unsmiling,
your volcanic flesh hides
everything from the watchman,
and the tendrils of dreams
strangle policemen running by
too slowly to escape you,
the racing vertiginous waves
of your murmuring need. But
he is day's guardian saint
that policeman, and leaning
from your open window you ask
him what dress to wear and how
to comb your hair modestly,
for that is now your mode.
Only by chance tripping on stairs
do you repeat the dance, and
then, in the perfect variety of
subdued, impeccably disguised,
white black pink blue saffron
and golden ambiance, do we find
the nightly savage, in a trance.
The opals hiding in your lids
as you sleep, as you ride ponies
mysteriously, spring to bloom
like the blue flowers of autumn
each nine o'clock. And curls
tumble languorously towards
the yawning rubber band, tan,
your hand pressing all that
riotous black sleep into
the quiet form of daylight
and its sunny disregard for
the luminous volutions, oh!
and the budding waltzes
we swoop through in nights.
Before dawn you roar with
your eyes shut, unsmiling,
your volcanic flesh hides
everything from the watchman,
and the tendrils of dreams
strangle policemen running by
too slowly to escape you,
the racing vertiginous waves
of your murmuring need. But
he is day's guardian saint
that policeman, and leaning
from your open window you ask
him what dress to wear and how
to comb your hair modestly,
for that is now your mode.
Only by chance tripping on stairs
do you repeat the dance, and
then, in the perfect variety of
subdued, impeccably disguised,
white black pink blue saffron
and golden ambiance, do we find
the nightly savage, in a trance.
June 10, 2024
This slim book of poetry is dedicated to Jane Freilicher, whom I‘d never heard of before but googling her sent me down a mini rabbit hole; what beautiful art - and the colour choices in her paintings are so gently satisfying.
Frank O‘Hara himself paints great images with his words and I enjoyed his way of expression all in all, despite not deeply connecting with most of the poems.
My favourite was For Grace, After A Party.
Frank O‘Hara himself paints great images with his words and I enjoyed his way of expression all in all, despite not deeply connecting with most of the poems.
My favourite was For Grace, After A Party.
February 23, 2022
This is an example where one book leads to another and the result is immense gratitude. Thank you Garth Greenwell's "Cleanness" for nudging me to O'Hara.
January 27, 2024
Bury me with this book
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