oh o'hara

a : Oh, don't buy Frank O'Hara Poems Retrieved!
k : no?
a : No, it's on its way to you.
k : what?
a : Yup.
k : you didn't
a : Yes, I did! Merry Christmas!
k : oh, how sweet, thank you so much
a : You're most welcome!

k: thank you so much for my present, it came today :) i will try really hard to not read it all before my trip, but no promises. you're awesome!

a: Oh, I'm so glad you got it. And don't bother hold back.

PS: You're awesome, too!

k: thank you so much for this collection of frank's poems... i think i have found some evidence that, had i been of his generation, i might have had a chance with him even though i am a girl!

3 Violet Lang

Image of all felinities
and Grand Lady of the
turnpikes, in decadent verse
you'd be a giantess but I,
in good health, exclaim you
mine! and speak familiarly.

Dancer always, to me, and
tea room's despaired-of voyou,
you are my Bunny and other
people's Violet, a saint of
circumstance and the dangerous
Birthday Party. I quote you
back to yourself in all women
and love you as if Symposium
had not been writ in jest.

Kiss me. We'll never again fight
in a cafeteria of friends. I want
your voice in my ear so the sun
will be hotter, and as Bermudas
make su dizzy we'll clamber over
mountains as red and yellow as
clowns, shouting to John and Jack:
"Hurry up! Poo, poo! Tra la!"

i can hear him say "Kiss me" in my mind's ear and i'm all like ooo and aaa and oh frank. (okay, and the picture on the cover isn't hurting either!)

oh, thuogh i would have been a hopeless wreck around him in person i'm sure.

a: I thought that O'Hara poem was cute (and I don't mean that in a pejorative way; I just mean that it was quite quirky and playful). But what I thought was even cuter was your reaction to it! I think it is touching that you relate to poetry at such a personal level (though I have to admit that one main reason that book is on my Wish List is that cover photo... Rrrrr!!!) In any case, I always wondered if straight women have the same fantasy about gay men that straight men have about gay women... Or is it just Frank? :) But aside from that, I have to admit that I find his poetry rather difficult to follow (I'm not sure why...)

k: ah, on the matter of boys... as far as i'm concerned, when it comes to those sort of "i'll never ever, but i can still think about it" kind of fantasies, it doesn't matter whether the person is gay or straight or dead or living, because i'd never ever (that's the whole point). i can't imagine i'd ever be as happy with someone, anyone, else as i am with ryan. but it's still fun to let myself get all weak kneed at the thought of, oh my, kissing frank o'hara!

i don't know what kind of fanaties guys have about girls... though i know one of my more ... eccentric friends has a bit of a fetish for asian lesbians, but like i say, he's eccentric. as for the rest, i don't know. and i can't speak for other girls either.

"(though I have to admit that one main reason that book is on my Wish List is that cover photo... Rrrrr!!!)"

what was that about my reaction to frank? i believe you just beat me in 'who can be cuter'.
i think there is something in his poetry, in his poet's voice, that draws me in to his world, but i can't define it. i just get him. he's the poet i want to know everything about, him and the lovely Mina Loy (she is so sexy and drivin... this powerhouse of femininity, i can't imagine a better idol)

We might have coupled
In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Where wine is spill't on promiscuous lips

for me to read her words out is to lose my breath.
and just look at her... she's beautiful!

someone, i forget who, some graduate student, brought up the concept of a poetry father and poetry mother, the two voices (if you can limit such a thing to only two) who influence and inspire you. i think (however incestuous this may come across) frank and mina would have to be my choice for poetry pa and ma.

...

as promised, here's a whole bunch of bits of things...

pound's study on gender, or as rachel so eloquently put it "pound's semen theory":
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/gender.htm

what i have in my notes beside my printed copy of this essay is as follows:

male = invention; will to form; abstraction
female = convention; habit; utility; chaos or formless
gender + sex = form the culture and ideas themselves
yet = he himself values form (gives it "high principle")

i haven't reread the article, but there you have it, i don't need to quote it. i'll probably read it over tonight. how i remember it, though, is that pound's point is that the human mind is inactive without stimuli and then he peppers in the idea of females being nothing but breeders.

by the way, i'm a card-carrying "down with pound" club member. he's infultrated every modernist text, yet he's awful. i personally don't feel that his work should be so unjustly glorified in the education of poetry. he was full of ideas and rules and regims, but never have i really felt he's fulfilled his own requirments. i'd prefer if more people know who the lovely zukosky was instead of the wretched pound.