Poems Retrieved Excerpt

7/30/2019 Poems Retrieved Excerpt

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POEMS RETRIEVED

Frank OHara

Edited by Donald Allenwith an Introduction by Bill Berkson

City Lights / Grey FoxSan Francisco


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Copyright 1955, 1956, 1967, 1970, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1996, 2013 by Maureen OHara, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank OHara.All rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright Conventions.Introduction copyright 2013 by Bill Berkson.

Cover photograph by Richard O. Moore, 1965. Copyright by Richard O. Moore.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

OHara, Frank, 19261966.

[Poems. Selections]Poems retrieved / Frank OHara ; edited by Donald Allen ; with an introduction by Bill Berkson. pages ; cm.ISBN 978-0-87286-597-6I. Allen, Donald, 19122004. II. Title.

PS3529.H28A6 2013811'.54dc23

2013003673

City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133www.citylights.com


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CONTENTS

Editors Note xv

Introduction xviiNoir Cacadou, or The Fatal Music of War 1A Doppelgnger 3Poem (Green things are flowers too) 5Entombment 6A Slow Poem 7In Gratitude to Masters 8

Poem (Suppose that grey tree, so nude) 9Poem (Poised and cheerful the) 10Song (Im going to New York!) 11A Pathetic Note 12Poem (Just as I leave the theatre) 13Windows 14A Byzantine Place 15Lines Across the United States 18

An Epilogue: To the Players ofTry! Try! 19Poem (I cant wait for spring!) 21Poem (This vessel Ive chosen) 22Voyage Paris 23A Party Full of Friends 24A Curse 26A Portrait 27Mr. OHaras Sunday Morning Service 29The Soldier 31Parties 32[In the street of children the sun is cold] 33Form and Utterance 34Round Objects 35Sky Rhymes 36The Air and Sex of Early Day 37

A Virtuoso 38A Classical Last Act 39


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The Ideal Bar 40The Painters Son 41A Military Ball 42

Poem (Green oboes! the parrot cries,) 43Serenade (Starlings are singing) 44Vernissage Jane Freilicher 45Shelter 46Schoenberg 47[It is a weak cold morning and I roll] 47Poem (The tough newspaper boy will wear) 48On a Friends Being Insulted 49

To Dick 50The Puritan 51A Romantic Poet to His Muse 52A Greek Girl at Riis Beach 53Poets up in the Air 54[I walk through the rain] 55Chanty 56Grace and George, An Eclogue 57Its the Blue 61 Jacob Wrestling 64Poem (Rats nest, at home bungling, up) 65A Darkened Palette 66Poem (Its only me knocking on the door) 67The Beach in April 68A Wind at Night 69

Prose for the Times 70[Tent-digging on the vacant lakes we appled] 71Maurice Ravel 72Red 73Serenade (This night this forest) 74A Sunday Supplement 75Kra Kra 77A Protestant Saint 79

What Sledgehammer? or W. C. Williamss Been Attacked! 80


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Latinus 81The War 82The Builders 83

[With the minute intentions of a boa heroic constrictor] 84Changing Your Ways 85Study of Women on the Beach 2 85Poem (The rich cubicles enclosure) 86August Afternoon, A Collage 87[The azure waves grumble and languish] 88[Fish smells in the hallway] 89Poem About Jane 89

[Rooftops blocks away from me] 90A Birthday 91[Of all community of mind and heart] 92A Wreath for John Wheelwright 93[See the tents and the tanks and the trees of March!] 95Intermezzo 96[My country, leafy and blue with infinite breaths,] 99Clouds 100Causerie de Gasp Peninsula 101St. Simeon 102Light Cavalry 103Addict-Love 105[En route to the burial in Long Island] 107Perfumes 108[Lace at your breast] 109

Joseph 110Spleen 111Forest Divers 112The Weekend 113The Lights Over the Door 114Bridlepath 117Indian Diary 118Light Conversation 119

Southern Villages, A Sestina 120


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Green Words, A Sestina 122Tschaikovskiana 124Palisades 125

Bills Body Shop 126A Little on His Recentness 127[Theres such an I love you!] 128Poem (Water flow strongly O clouds) 128Dear Bobby 129To Bobby 130[So the spirit of music, the cascades!] 131Sonnet (O at last the towers!) 131

[A face over a book] 132[Into the valley they go] 133[She hefted her leg onto the table and] 133On a Back Issue of Accent 134The Last Day of the Zoo 134To the Meadow 137Benjamin Franklin, or Isadora Duncan 138Augustus 139Poem (The paralysis of power and ease) 139The Mike Goldberg Variations 140Room 141[Dumb urns in syncamore temples] 142Lexington Avenue, An Eclogue 143[In the pearly green light] 146Poem (Here we are again together) 147

[Pussywillows! Oh youre still here,] 148Movie Cantata 149[O resplendent green sea! I slowly pierce] 150[Five sobs lined up on the doorstep] 151Epigram for Joe 151Ode (I dont eat wheat) 152 Jackie (After John Gower) 153[The brittle moment comes] 158

[On the worlds first evening] 158


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F# 159[Now It Seems Far Away and Gentle] 160Corresponding Foreignly 161

Song (Jarrive au casserole at je casse une crote) 163Bagatelle, or The Importance of Being Larry and Frank 164Pitcher 165Collected Proses, An Answer 166Une Journe de Juillet 171[Dusk. Dawn. The land. An albatross thinks of Spain.] 172Attacca 172Chopiniana 173

[She, has she bathed in sound] 174[It is 1:55 in Cambridge, pale and spring cool,] 175To John Ashbery on Szymanowskis Birthday 176Poem (Flower! you are like synthetic feelings,) 177Un Chant Contre Paroles 178[And leaving in a great smoky fury] 179[Three Parodies] 180Episode 182The Stars 185Springtemps 187To Ned 188Platinum, Watching TV, Etc. 189[Theres nothing more beautiful] 190[Have you ever wanted] 191Fou-rire 192

Two Poems and a Half 192Callas and a Photograph of Gregory Corso 193To Violet Lang 194Poem (I could die) 194University Place 195[It is 4:19 in Pennsylvania Station] 196Maria Kurenko (Rachmaninoff Sings) 197[Why is David Randolph such a jerk] 197

Kein Traum 198


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[On the vast highway] 199Poem (Well probably pay for it in August the radio says) 200Poem (You do not always seem to be able to decide) 200

Old Copies ofLife Magazine 201Chez William Kramps 202Young Girl in Pursuit of Lorca 203[How wonderful it is that the Park Avenue Viaduct is being

rehabilitated] 204A Trip to the Zoo 205Dear Vincent, 206[The fondest dream of] 206

What Happened to The Elephant Is at the Door 207After a Meeting ofThe 2nd Coming 208Poem During PoulencsGloria 209The Trout Quintet 210F.Y.I. #371 (The Nun) 212F.Y.I. #371a (Haiku Day for the Nuns) 213F.Y.I. #371b (Parallel Forces, Excerpted) 214Le Domaine Musical 214[Like a barbershop thats closed on Saturday, me heart] 216Off the Kerb & After Emily Dickinson 216Shooting the Shit Again 217[How poecile and endearing is the Porch] 217Conglomerations in the Snow of Christmas Eve 1961 218Un Homme Respectueux 219Le Boeuf sur le Toit 220

My Day 221[I will always remember] 222Poem (Hoopla! yah yah yah) 223Poem (Its faster if you late but may never occur) 223To Lotte Lenya 224Lawrence 225Song (I ate out your heart) 226Pedantry 227

Poem (In that red) 227


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[What strange cataract the peculiar] 228[The ancient ache, quick false move] 229Poem (lost lost) 230

[I know that you try even harder than I] 231[Not to confirm dolors with a wild laugh] 232[Long as the street becomes] 233[Just as I am not sure where everything is going] 234[Why are there flies on the floor] 235

Notes on the Poems 237

Index of Titles and First Lines 245


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xv

Editors Note

Frank OHara was never very sanguine about publishing his poems. Asearly as the late spring of 1951, when his M.A. thesis, A Byzantine Place 50 Poems and a Noh Play, won a major Hopwood award at the Uni-versity of Michigan, he began to have doubts. On June 6, 1951, he wrote Jane Freilicher: No publication goes with the Hopwood award, alas, and both Alfred Knopf and Herbert Weinstock of the same firm told me itwas next to impossible to publish poetry in our time. I think of this with

absolute delight when I think how embarrassing my letters will be formy relatives when they have to dig my poems out of them if I ever do getpublished. Anyway you could fit the people I write for into your john, allat the same time without raising an eyebrow. (An irony of history: it wasthat firm, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., that published OHarasCollected Poems in 1971.)

As though to make certain his prediction would come true he pro-ceeded throughout his short life to send poems to friends, to composers,to editors, often without bothering to retain a copy. (This, of course, was before the Xerox machine.) Many poems survive only because they wereincluded in the Hopwood award thesis, for instance, or were carefully pre-served by devoted friends and by curators of manuscript collections.

One puzzle was the Poem beginning Here we are again together,which OHara wrote in April 1954. When Ben Weber the next year want-ed poems to set as songs, OHara gave him his only copy of several poemsincluding this one. Weber composed music for the first stanza and pub-lished it as his Song Opus 44, inFolder , No. 4, 1956. (His setting of thesecond stanza was not completed.) And it is only through the late BenWebers great kindness and generosity that I am now able to present thewhole poem in this volume.

When I set out to edit theCollected Poems in the late sixties I felt I hadlittle or no indication of what OHara himself might have included in sucha volume had he livedapart, that is, from the poems he had already pub-

lished in books and magazines. True, I had studied a manuscript of some


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100 early, short poems in 1961 when he wanted my advice on what toinclude inLunch Poems. And he had shown me at various times the poemsthat were later published asLove Poems, as well as some longer poems for

possible publication inEvergreen Review , The New American Poetry , and otherprojected collections. From correspondence with his contemporaries andfrom his own lists of poems for various proposed publications I was able toadd most of the poems that fill outThe Collected Poems.

But there remained many poems of which I had never heard, or doubt-ed that he would have published without revising, ones that seemed toosimilar to other poems of the same period or were too fragmentary. In thecourse of restudying the manuscripts and collecting his correspondence,

however, I came to realize that OHara at one time or another would mostlikely have published all of his poems, and that the present volume was thelogical and necessary completion of their publication. (It is of course en-tirely possible that more unknown poems may yet come to light.)

Dates of composition from the manuscripts are given in brackets be-low the poems; undated poems are placed where any evidence suggeststhey belong.

I am greatly indebted to Robert Fizdale, Joan Mitchell, Lawrence Os-good, Larry Rivers, Ned Rorem, Ben Weber, and Mary E. Cooley (Secre-tary, The Hopwood Room, University of Michigan Library), and Mary E. Janzen (MSS Research Specialist, Special Collections, The Joseph Regen-stein Library, University of Chicago) for copies of lost poems. And I amvery grateful to Maureen OHara, John Ashbery, Bill Berkson, Zoe Brown,Margaret Cooley, Jane Freilicher, Mike Goldberg, David Kermani, JosephLeSueur, Duncan MacNaughton, Merle Marsicano, Roger Shattuck, Alex

Smith, Patsy Southgate and Anne Waldman for warmly appreciated assis-tance in preparing this volume for publication.

Donald Allen1977/1996


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Introduction

Bill Berkson

One is always eager to know more of the ins and outs and specific circum-stances of Frank OHaras poems, including the relations between indi-vidual poems and others that they sometimes surprisingly connect to. Themore complete the telling, it seems, the greater the mystery of detail. Justas OHara could write, What is happening to me, allowing for lies andexaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poemsa statement

at once as mysterious and practical as there has ever been of the relationof poetry to experiencethe poems make you curious about their occa-sions because they are so clear about what happens in them. Of course, asOHara also insisted, a poem is its own occasion, and between one poemand the rest, in the wide span of his poetic output, occasions and the poemsthat rise to them combine and refract in lifelike ways. Poetry is life to me,after all, was another way of OHaras telling what went into his poems.

Many of the poems inPoems Retrieved are refractive with others inOHaras huge output, as the book itself is with the other compendious books that show his range, thematic, formal and otherwise. Types of po-ems occur both in and out of sequence; there are surges into new territoryand doublings back. The editor Donald Allens dedication of the book ForEdwin Denby who asked, And when will we have thecomplete poems ofFrank OHara? suggests that, together with its companion volumeEarlyWriting, which appeared concurrently under Allens Grey Fox imprint in1977, he meant both volumes of previously uncollected work to be hingedto the originalCollected Poems until a new edition (complete, per Denbysurging) could be prepared. Lacking that, the three books stand together asrepresentative of such completion.

Frank OHara once speculated that the entirety of William Carlos Wil-liamss poetry was one continuous epic expressive of the mans existence.Similarly, even while returning regularly to the discrete [discretionary?] de-

lights of one or another of OHaras poems, to imagine the whole run of


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them as bearing the logic of a unitary creation is helpful, too; it reinforceswhat one early lyric refers to as this meaning growing, an articulation ofthe curiosity and necessity that bind one work to the next. Some of the piec-

es inPoems Retrieved are very slightfragments, really. Others, especiallythe very early ones, feel overly convoluted in their rhetorical maneuverings.Yet none are false. BothEarly Writing andPoems Retrieved have their drasticside; as ultimate retrievals, they bypass whatever reservations OHara him-self might have had about seeing these largely unpublished and otherwisefugitive works in print, even in so candid a setting as each edition proposes.Whatever he may have felt about those poems, the fact is, he retained them.Because you dont throw it away it is a poem, he said once when the issue

came up of what to do with things that dont quite make the grade. Then,too, you can see why he never committed them to print and also why hekept them, because each has something in it distinctly worth keeping.

The retrievals that Donald Allen made of Frank OHaras poems be-gan in 1968 with his sorting through the manuscripts of poetry and prosein cartons and files that Kenneth Koch took away for safekeeping in twosuitcases from Franks loft at 791 Broadway the night in July 1966 afterFrank diedthe nearly 700 items that first Kenneth and I and then Frankssister Maureen and her husband at the time, Walter Granville-Smith, subse-quently photocopied a few weeks later. Together with the versions alreadypublished in books, magazines and anthologies, these manuscripts formedthe textual basis for what Donald AllenDon, as I came to know him asa neighbor in Bolinas in the 1970swould call, when it first appeared, in1971, the splendid palace known asThe Collected Poems of Frank OHara. Apared-down volume,The Selected Poems of Frank OHara, also edited by Don,

came out in 1974, followed the next year by the book of uncollected prose,Standing Still and Walking in NewYork. It was in the latter book that Don firstused the term retrieved.

Donald Allen and Frank OHara became friends during the planningstages ofThe New American Poetry , for which OHara served as one of theprime consultants and in which he shares pride of place, by dint of spaceallotted (fifteen poems on thirty-one pages), a close second to the in-clusions of Charles Olsons poetry. Like Frank, Don had been with the

U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II; after enlisting in 1941, he


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worked with Navy Intelligence, gathering codebooks and data from inter-rogations and captured soldiers diaries. By 1957, as the main instigatorand editor ofEvergreen Review , he had printed some of OHaras most im-

portant poems, including Why I Am Not a Painter, A Step Away fromThem and In Memory of My Feelings, and OHara sought his adviceon at least two books published in the mid-1960s, as well as two moreprojected collections that were left unrealized at his death. By no meagercoincidence, Don began work onThe New American Poetry in 1958, at justabout the same time asThe New American Painting exhibition, on whichFrank had worked for the Museum of Modern Art starting in 1957, em- barked on its two-year tour of eight European cities. Following onTheNew American Paintings status as the signal gathering of first- and second-generation abstract expressionists to travel overseas, Don claimed thatthe poets showcased in his book represented the dominant movement inthe second phase of our twentieth-century literature and already exertingstrong influence abroad.

We do not respond often, really, and when we do it is as if a light bulb went off. Nature and the New Painting, 1954

The presentPoems Retrieved follows the lead of the second, revised 1996Grey Fox edition by comprising 214 poems, including two added to thosealready in the first: the 1952 satire Its the Blue and an alternate versionof the poem from 1956 inspired by a Philip Guston painting. Each of thoselater additions furthers an understanding of the general culture OHara

made for himself and the uses he put it to, all part of the biography of thework. The relation, for instance, between the title line Its the Blue, aliteral translation of the phrase Cest lazur from Andr Bretons Au re-gard des divinits, and the character John Myers, the target of OHarasquatrains, may appear obscure until you recall that the actual John BernardMyers, beside being a puppeteer and, as director of the Tibor de NagyGallery, the publisher of OHaras first book, also had been managingeditor of the New York Surrealist magazineView and the main proponent

of the idea that, for OHaras work and that of the poets of the New


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York School generally, Surrealism was the main antecedent. (Myers, aman whose gushing definitiveness could hardly be kept in check, was alsoresponsible, nearly a decade later, for foisting the infamous school label

on the poets he published.) The situation becomes a little clearer once itsnoted thatView had published Bretons poem in Edouard Roditis transla-tion, accompanied by drawings by Arshile Gorky, in 1946. Indeed, the dic-tion in OHaras poem, although more pointedly on the attack, stays closeto Bretons sublime French extravagance (my heart is a cuckoo for God).

In the two versions of the Guston poem, on the other hand, the dic-tion is peculiarly mixed between formality (To be always in vigilanceaway) and the vernacular (So I had to break his wristwatch) that had

by the mid-50s become characteristic of OHaras poetry. The issue be-tween the two may have been whether or not to unmix the modes of utter-ance, as well as where to make an ending. (I keep recalling a third version,my fantasy perhaps, that ends succinctlyand so perfectly for Gustonsimagea surface agitation of the waters/means a rampart on the oceanfloor is falling.) The lines of the flush-left stanza OHara cancelled in onetypescript (about the fate of the bully who broke my nose) appear in theother as drop lines:

I hit him it fell off I stepped on itso he will never again know the time.

Interestingly, this poem is one of two written on the same day (December20, 1956) about pictures OHara looked at in the Museum of Modern Art,the other beingDigression on Number 1, 1948, which found its way intoOHaras monograph on Jackson Pollock three years later. There the sea isenough beneath the glistening earth/to bear me. . . . Whichever poemcame first, the distance in moodemotionally catty-corner, so to speak is significant: the Guston one is all reverie, the one on Pollock cleaves to


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the moment and ends with a vision of the future/which is not so dark.The I in front of two separate paintings sees differently, markedly altered.In Collected Poems, Donald Allen placed the Pollock before the Guston, fol-

lowed in turn by the well-known Why I Am Not a Painter. Part of theinterest in these art-inspired poems is the idea that whatever occurs to onein front of anythinga work of art or another person, for that matterisnot just a valid response, but probably the truest one.

This sense of someone in front of things extends to that of the poethimself before his poem, deciding, as he can, what happens there. Towardthe end of the notes, probably from sometime in 1956, for a talk calledDesign Etc., OHara proposes the act of writing a possible poem (one

that may yet become identifiable among those he actually did write) as wellas defining what that poem wont be. In practice he envisions Design as anear-mythological force of

clearheaded-poetry-respecting objectivity, without which the mostsublime and inspired love lyrics or hate-chants would just be muddyrantings. As the poem is being written, air comes in, and light, the formis loosened here and there, remarks join the perhaps too consistently

felt images, a rhyme becomes assonant instead of regular, or avoided alltogether for variety and point, etc. All these things help the poem meanonly what it itself means, become its own poem, so to speak, not thetypical poem of a self-pitying or infatuated writer.

The breadth of what Frank OHara took to be poetry is reflected in themany kinds of poems he wrote. The quick release from riveted (and rivet-

ing) attentiveness to direct response being his mission and mtier, the rateof response, as well as the wide net cast by his attentions throughout, isextraordinary, as if the world would stop without his continually remark-ing on its activities. Turning the pages of any of his collections, you wonderwhat he didnt turn his hand to, what variety of poem he left untried ordidnt, in some cases, as if in passing, anticipate.


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I see my viceslying like abandoned works of artwhich I created so eagerly

to be worldly and modernand with it

About Frank OHaras earliest writings John Ciardi, whose workshopsOHara took at Harvard, recalls: He showed his brilliance rather thanhis feelings. That was a point I often made in talking about his writing. Ithink, in fact, it was when he used his brilliance to convey rather than tohide behind that he found his power. What John Ashbery calls OHaras

period of testing continued for some time beyond his student years,and, sensibly enough, a good three-quarters ofPoems Retrieved is takenup with poems dating from that time (roughly 19501954), after whichanything he wrote was less prone to fall short of the mark. As late as1952 in New York, he is still signing poems with his Hopwood Award penname Arnold Cage. The run-of-the-mill poem of this period is liable tofeature an array of theatrical posturings, all the while betraying the intentof summoning, by way of letting an adopted artificial language play out,consistencies of real wit and eloquence. Part of OHaras youthful testingwas his willingness to try out, beside a slew of poetic personae, any avail-able forms and genres: accordingly, among the poems here are epigrams(many of those spot-on), eclogues, calligrams, sestinas, sonnets, quatrainsand tercets and rhymed couplets, birthday poems and envois, poems inprose, one-liners and lines of great mystery and beauty (Sentimentality,arent you sunset? Do you know what the phiz really/looks like?).

There are fragments that stay fragments and have a kind of inviolablestrength, like bits of antique parchment, of the fragment as such. Themore extraneous early poems tend toward bumpy rides accelerated bymock exclamations and questions that go nowhere, along with nasty artyquips and fripperies that echo Franks readings inamuse-bouche modernistslike Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett. What is striking, however,is the sheer number of such poems and their earthier counterpartshowintent he was, by way of experiment traditional and otherwise, on work-

ing through to the tough heart of art, the real right thingand also


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how attuned he was to the existential stakes involved. Meanwhile, themethod in such silliness as some of the poems proclaimedthe serious-ness with which OHara was already protecting his gift from mess and

measurewould be apparent to anyone used to the drab alternatives ofself-seriousness and pretense as normally (then as now) rampant in theofficialese of American poetry.

As Kenneth Koch recalled, the poems of Franks he first read in theearly fifties were sassy, colloquial and full of realistic detail; realistic, onemight add, because so quick to register the gists of the going styles:

We loved our bodies,

navyblue sneakers Frank Sinatra and pistachio frappes,its all in our heart and dirtied there

The later fifties, by comparison, show all the same qualities combined witha new assurance as to how they go together, which allows for the candor of

What I really love is people, and I dont much care whomexcept for a few favorites who t, which you understand.Its like the sky being above the earth. It isnt abovethe moon, is it? Nor do I like anyone but you and you.

and:

if there were no camerasI would not know this boy but hatred becomes beauty anyway and love must turn to power or it dies.

By 1956, the year OHara turned 30, pretty much all the archness andother signs of struggle towards being, in Rimbauds classic phrase, ab-solutely modern were abandoned in discovering an originality so with

it in his own regard as to leave outside determinations behind. Not that


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posturing was gone, but that he had realized the postures appropriate forhim and the poems. The work, with its various turns of autobiographi-cal patter and declaration, had become, as John Ashbery put it, both

modest and monumental, with something basically usable about it. Right before the readers eyes, so to speak, diverse textures of feeling comeinto focus in the imaginary present tense of another persons energeticconsciousness:

Why are there ies on the oor in February, and the snow mushing outsideand the cats asleep?

Because you cameback from Paris, to celebrate your return.

San Francisco, 2012


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POEMS RETRIEVED


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Noir Cacadouor the Fatal Music of War

We were standing aroundwith guitars and mandolinswhen the war ended. Yes.

The sea was calm and pale.Almost polite. Whateverhad it meant to us, what

will you mean to me, doesnothing end? It was dullas a spiders banquet. Just

twangings and a wave ortwo. Japee! someone calledthrough his high red beard

and the Admiral said Menyou were admirable. Weloved him as I love you. More,

and it meant nothing, simplya remark after another war.We were gay, we had won, we

dressed in stovepipes anddanced the measure of beingpleased with ourselves. That is

why I want you, must haveyou. Draw the black line whereyou want it, like a musical


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string it will be love and lovelyand level as the horizon fromour exotic and dancing deck.

Your beard will grow veryfast at sea and you willnot know what instrument

you are patting. It will meana lot to you until the linesstop vibrating and become

a thin black cry that ends.But no admiral will speakyet, weve a lot to do first.

Im not ready for my costume.Well beat the gong, yellout our uneatable tongues,

wallow lasciviously in arms.Youll see how easily weprovoke the waves, although

the sextant shakes and positionsget difficult. And every dawn

the whine will go up, the blacklook that means love is near.Well draw our own linesand be what the sea tries

to talk about. Then afterwardswell help each other dress, lay

flowers at the dummys feet.


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3

A Doppelgnger

Do you mean thatmy gaze is not a lookand my clothes decidelike a Delacroix bannerwhat will happen to-morrow although theyare quite foreign to mehide thoughtful flesh?

Do you mean thatmy yellow hair likethrashing wheat hangswild over my foreheadand blue limpets peerabove my cheekbonesRilkean discoveries?

Do you mean thatone fierce hand drags by a thumb from myappendix while theother photographs oldladies and my blackeyes roll and swaggerdown Washington Street?


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Or do you mean thatmy head is too highI throw my plate about

the restaurant talktoo loud and bouncethe balls of my feetmy own worst enemy?

is it any of these myfriends you visit whenyou think you think of me?

[Ann Arbor, November 1950]


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5

Poem

Green things are flowers tooand we desire them more thanGeorge Sands blue rose notthat we dont shun poison oak

but if its a question of locoweed or marijuana why howcan we not rush glad and wildeyes rolling nostrils flaring

towards ourselves in an unknownpasture or public garden? itsnot the blue arc we achievenor the nervous orange poppy at

the base of Huysmans neck

but the secret chlorophylland the celluloid ladder hid-den beneath the idea of skin.

[Ann Arbor, November 1950]


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6

Entombment

The wind is cold and echoes a bansheeoff the red wall that peers into cemeteries.And the yellow hearses arrive, ladenwith nails and pikestaffs for decoration

of the alabaster bier into which yourrivulets of tears still eat their seams.Poor shroud! that will be pleated bythe first dallying wind, thus unprotected

thus glamorized. Anything worth havingis worth throwing away they taught inthe synagogues and though He took ropeto their backsides they did not shut up.

Now they stand paling into a future

which will melt their crosses, caught by the fish in their throats, gargoylesthemselves. Their cocks drop off. They cry.

[November 1950]


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7

A Slow Poem

I wonder if you can die ofsadness What a way to go

A split-leaved plant bulgesout of the gloomy fireplace

and the three wide windowsare embarrassed by darkness

A few objects project themselvesinto a sinister scatter, just

a corkscrew a can openera pen knife but all lethal

And my books and pictures

yearn toward me mentally as if

they were toys or games whileI stare at this green ceiling

And whine helplessly of sadness What a way to go


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8

In Gratitude to Mastersto Professor Roy Cowden

SonnetAs the learned snow falls lightly on treesand obscures them, seeming fragile at first,intellectualitys modest thirstembellishes its coronation frieze

upon human aspirations. And lest

the icy sun burn naked up the rootsthis music through the whining wind so mutesflailing gales that we are safe and seem best

to ourselves despite ambiguities,for may we not call down protecting skiesat will? not blind, not rigid and screaming

may we not beg from subtletys dreaminglight our lack? Finding in art that strength snowclears, warming the barren earth, roots, fallow.

Envoi

Thus to the Professorfly our small hands, notspilling the soul to a confessornor in a mold caught

nor in training for flight.But he leads us to the light,there where it so naturallyfalls upon the unknown sea.


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9

Poem

Suppose that grey tree, so nudeand desperate, began to waltzslowly in time to something weare deaf to in the thickening snow.

Would it be merely trying to getwarm and true, as it seems onedoes while dancing, or would this bean invitation from the inanimateworld our bones, trying not to achewith foreboding, seemed to warn us ofin early childhood?

Then, unenlightened by desire andsatisfied by very real dreams, wewere able briefly, as from a window,to look bravely upon the baroque willof objects, not knowing, in our cleversmile, who really felt the cold.


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Poem

Poised and cheerful thesquirrel moves in the greytree passing upward intothe worlds leafy aerialaway from us and eager forthe infinite

berry hisvolatile eye rolls shylycomprehensive and seesus as specks in a cornermidway between the dullearth and birds rarenests now

empty forever

fading into wider skyleaves are all belowhim wires farther fromeach other our antennaeno longer conduct himcold and gone

oh squirrelwhy didnt you tell usyou knew how to get there!


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11

Song

Im going to New York!(what a lark! what a song!)where the tough Rockys eaveshit the sea. Where thAcro-polis is functional, the trainsthat run and shout! the booksthat have trousers and sleeves!

Im going to New York!(quel voyage! jamais plus!)far from Ypsilanti and Flint!where Goodman rules the Empireand the sunlights eschato-logy upon the wizards bridgesand the galleries of print!

Im going to New York!(to my friends! mes semblables!)I suppose Ill walk back West.But for now Im gone forever!the citys hung with flashlights!the Ferrys unbuttoning its vest!

[New York, January 1951]


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12

A Pathetic Note

Think of all the flowers youve ever seenand remember me to my mother, or be kind

to some white-haired blue-eyed old ladywho might remind me of Grandaunt Elizabeth

were I with you. When you go down WestFourteenth Street think of Africa and me,

why dont you? and be careful crossingstreets. Keep photographing the instant

so that in my hysteria I will know whatit is like there; and while my teeth rot and

my eyes seem incapable of the images Id

hoped, I will know you are at least all right.

While I write this eleven windows stare,clothes hanging on the wall stir testily.

The ceilings miles away. Im sitting onthe floor. Since I last saw you things

are worse. What can I do without love,without honor, without fame? Can you see

me? It is evening. Other peoples lightsare going on, I think. But not your friends.

[New York, January 1951]


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13

Poem

Just as I leave the theatreyou come in the door. Or I

receive a letter saying youare a policeman. My day retches

amidst its studies and youare rigid with hauteur for

months. But then by expertmontage, a mountain growing

out of a diamond, the sameprinciple, you appear before me.

I spill your whiskey: you are

beautiful! When my back is

turned you still love me.Mirrors go blind in our flame.

[New York, February 1951]


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14

Windows

This space so clear and bluedoes not care what we put

into it Airplanes disappearin its breath and towers drown

Even our hearts leap up whenwe fall in love with the void

the azure smile the back of awomans head and takes wing

never to return 0 my heart!think of Leonardo who was born

embraced life with a total eye

and now is dead in monuments

There is no spring breeze tosoften the sky In the street

no perfume stills the mercilessarc of the lace-edged skirt

[Ann Arbor, February 1951]


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15

A Byzantine Place

1 At a Mondrian Show

How excited I am! My piggyheart is at a traffic intersection

However I run a mirror slapsme in the face Im not tired

of being told Im beautiful yetShall I ever be that ghost of

a chance the right money onthe right nose Our portraits

hang restlessly and kick theirfeet while we run around alas!

2 My Face in the Street

That I must do these thingsfor you find the fortunate birdand kill where he flies so strong

is there any simple event thisdoes not answer? As stilloh my people as still life Imyour bowl of bread and your black thought Do not questionme Sustain my panic my grope


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16

3 A Sketch of Mallarm

Theyre not funny

the unfled flightsthe unlaughed laughsthe eye on the beach

thats forever awashand I can no longersnigger, Ted, as whenyou gave me the picture

then it was easieronly the flesh was sadand these white silenceshadnt pinned me down

Its for ever I write because the struggle mayknock the breath out of meI want someone to know

4 A Program for Music

Have you heard musicthats like a hand aroundthe heart a lace hand?

not a maker or pusher but an unzipping of imagesin the vulgar grottos

an essential passionthat ignores no tear or whimand addresses the hobbyhorse


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17

as elegantly as the bridgeand cries beware the blue skysometimes love gets lost

5 The Naked Element

Move the mountainsover closer I intendto dance if I wish

I climb on pierstakeshigher eagles to lovein an airplane of clouds

and we do wingdingson the wind

get bloodyrolling over stars

its all in your heartand here if I pleaseyou are all my love

[Ann Arbor, February 1951]


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18

Lines Across the United States

The nights getting blackThe train is coldMy back aches already

I dont want to smokeWere going too fastOur windows hurt the air

Last night I was sickAnd this morning worseI threw my self into this coach

The wheels slice quicklyThe rails do struggleThe mirrors shake like puddles

Im sitting all nightI didnt buy a pillowMy watch got broken last week

Ive not done muchIve loved too littleAnd Im tired of running

[Between New York & Ann Arbor,March 1951]


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An Epilogue: To the Players of Try! Try!

1 John Ashbery

If I get sick youll flyto me, John, and not eat dinneron the plane for sheer worry.

If its night the red lightswill affright you of my blood letting,and your verse will flood

with memories of all thosechoral compositions on prison themeswe both have so enjoyed.

Indeed, my health will failin apprehension for your nerves, then

rally to greet you strongly.

The words I write for your voicewill always, I hope, resound as your ownlilting and agate love of ears.

2 Jack Rogers

Not lissome and notgruntingly wholesome, your

humors a Rasputin of emphasis, Jack, a charade in front of

Mother Superior, the sub-

stantial unwillingness to


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charm that frightens ourgiggles into eager screeches!

Your grin across a roommakes me draw a sabre to

charge my nearest anddearest friend for the fun

of it! And your voice inmy typewriter attempts to

tease the wit out of serioussituations, so we wont be

wrong goosing psychiatristsfor the sake of our guts.

3 Violet Lang

Image of all felinitiesand Grand Lady of theturnpikes, in decadent verseyoud be a giantess but I,in good health, exclaim youmine! and speak familiarly.

Dancer always, to me, andtea rooms despaired-of voyou,you are my Bunny and otherpeoples Violet, a saint ofcircumstance and the dangerousBirthday Party. I quote you back to yourself in all womenand love you as ifSymposium had not been writ in jest.


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21

Kiss me. Well never again fightin a cafeteria of friends. I wantyour voice in my ear so the sun

will be hotter, and as Bermudasmake us dizzy well clamber overmountains as red and yellow asclowns, shouting to John and Jack:Hurry up! Poo, poo! Tra la!

Poem

I cant wait for spring!this year dare I say it?Im ready, Ill grab andhold, roll over and overin the sweet bulbs, smellof dirt and musk andnectar and air, and thenIll leap erect as anyadolescent reading sweetPetronius into thatravishing! raving! that blue blue sky! O soave fanciulla!

[Ann Arbor, March 1951]


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Poem

This vessel Ive chosenis a zebra in the open

so quick to the fingerand curiously limber

whenever my dreams eyesconceal all courses

a flashing uncertaintyfloods my caprices

only by hazardouspain can I choose

tears I am still crying

wake my tired rowing


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23

Voyage Paris

Whats the senseof going to Parisif youre not going to bethe Eiffel Tower?

If Cleopatrahas had a breastremoved, watch out! but feel for yourself.

I dont lovethe widespread rise onprecipitate winds,my struts a thumb-

your-nose, my ribs? hah!

my feet in a meadow of starshear spherical music.None of your elevators!

I will climb the Seine.And the Nile. The worldsa baseball in your mitt,in my fingers a balloon.

O tour Eiffel, o clouds,o Egypt, youre not tired!

[Ann Arbor, March 1951]


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A Party Full of Friends

Violet leaped to the pianostool and knees drawn upunder her chin commenced tospin faster and faster sing-ing Im a little Dutch boyDutch boy Dutch boy untilthe rain very nearly fellthrough the roof! while, fromthe other end of the room, Jane, her eyeballs like thecrystal of a seer spatteringmy already faunish cheekswith motes of purest coloredgood humor, advanced slowly.

Poo! said Hal they arefar too elegant to be letoff the pedestal even for anight but Jack quickly andrather avariciously amendedits her birthday, thenfell deliberatively silentas Larry paced the floor. OhLarry! Ouch he cried (thelatter) the business isntvery good between Boston andNew York! when Im not painting Im writing and when Imnot writing Im suffering


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for my kids Im good at allthree indeed you are, I

added hastily with real ad-miration before anyone elsecould get into the poem, butArnie, damn him! had alreadymuttered yes you are notunderstanding the fun ofidle protest. John yawked

onto the ottoman, having eyesfor nought but the dizzyViolet, and George thoughtFreddy was old enough todrink. Gloria had not beeninvited, although she had brought a guest. Whatconfusion! and to thinkI sat down and caused itall! No! Lyon wanted someone to give a birthdayparty and Bubsy was bornwithin the fortnight theonly one everybody loves. I

dont care. Someones goingto stay until the cowscome home. Or my name isnt

Frank OHara

[Ann Arbor, April 1951]

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