 emily.w's logs
Digressing on Frank O'Hara - wednesday, december 09, 2009 - 21:36
My final paper for my poetry class in my first semester here at Sarah Lawrence is an essay on Allen Ginsberg and Frank O'Hara. It's due next week. I should really be writing it, but publishing my favorite O'Hara poems on the internet is kind of like writing an essay, right?
Poem
Light clarity avocado salad in the morning
after all the terrible things I do how amazing it is
to find forgiveness and love, not even forgiveness
since what is done is done and forgiveness isn't love
and love is love nothing can ever go wrong
though things can get irritating boring and dispensable
(in the imagination) but not really for love
though a block away you feel distant the mere presence
changes everything like a chemical dropped on a paper
and all thoughts disappear in a strange quiet excitement
I am sure of nothing but this, intensified by breathing
From Meditations In an Emergency
"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"
"Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?)"
He was so fantastic. "The Day Lady Died" about Billie Holiday, is also really, hauntingly good. He manages to write about such mundane things, and people who I don't know, and make it not only interesting, but moving. I wish I could go back in time and be his friend.
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