Scan barcode
casparb's review against another edition
stonked it thru I feel like the drums in sing sing sing
poet of the exclamation! man all joy!
luv
poet of the exclamation! man all joy!
luv
loonyboi's review against another edition
3.0
I'm not big on poetry, and when I do read poetry, it's not really this style. I appreciated some of it, and especially liked his fondness for movie stars and walking in New York. But much of it was lost on me.
slothful_1592's review against another edition
3.0
when the poems hit it’s some of the best but too often they don’t & i get what o’hara is trying to do: this valorisation & celebration of the ephemeral, of dailiness, of the diaristic—of poems written on a lunch break, on the toilet, in a bar—poems in the form of dates, telephone calls, postcards etc. that means it is a risk of his poetics that leads to this unevenness—it’s all about surfaces, a refusal of depth which i really like in visual art for example, but it leaves sth. lacking in literary art, for words always refer to sth. beyond themselves, i don’t think literary arts can be abstract in the way visual or musical form can be—but still i do love it’s celebrations of the quotidian & there’s this focus on the waste & detritus of everyday life; of a life of consumption & domesticity that is very gay & effete that i love & esp. in how it relates to the women in o’hara’s life as in they’re not muses in the traditional sense as frozen objects for the male imagination , but actual women in their daily lives doing mundane things (esp. the artists joan mitchell, whose art i love & jane freilicher who i don’t know much about)—a part of me is very down with getting out of the grand metaphysical symbols & deepness of much poetry & in a way o’hara is a ‘happy poet’ unlike most poets who are depressing & sad (like me so i love that too) but it’s nice to get into this space every once in a while—however some weird race stuff going on, esp. in its identifications with blackness that are offensive & ugly sometimes.
julienbakerstan69's review against another edition
3.0
quarantine read #6: this man loved 2 be alive
james schuyler, in a letter to frank: “your passion always makes me feel like a cloud the wind detaches (at last) from a mountain so i can finally go sailing over those valleys with their crazy farms and towns. i always start bouncing up and down in my chair when i read a poem of yours like ‘radio’, where you seem to say, ‘i know you won’t think this is much of a subject for a poem but i just can’t help it: i feel like this,’ so that in the end you seem to be the only one who knows what the subject for a poem is.”
“oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much” — steps
“if i knew exactly why the chestnut tree
seems about to flame or die, its pyramids
aquiver, would i tell you? perhaps not.
we must keep interested in foreign stamps,
railway schedules, baseball scores, and
abnormal psychology, or all is lost.” — poem
“i don’t care about the moors
seen through you the great works of death, you are greater
you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone” — now that i am in madrid and can think
“i know perfectly well where you walk to
and that we’ll meet in even greater darkness
later and will be warm
so our cross
of paths will not be just muddy footprints
in the morning
not like celestial bodies’
yearly passes, nothing pushes us away
from each other” — present
“i am the least difficult of men. all i want is boundless love.” — meditations in an emergency
“i am alive with you
full of anxious pleasures and pleasurable anxiety
hardness and softness
listening while you talk and talking while you read
i read what you read
you do not read what i read
which is right, i am the one with the curiosity
you read for some mysterious reason
i read simply because i am a writer
the sun doesn’t necessarily set, sometimes it just disappears
when you’re not here someone walks in and says
“hey,
there’s no dancer in that bed” — st. paul and all that
“i do not mean that tenderness doesn’t
linger like a paris afternoon or a wart
something dumb and despicable that i love
because it is silent” — for the chinese new year & for bill berkson
“the moon is rising i am always thinking of the moon rising
i am always thinking of you
your morality your carved lips” — biotherm (for bill berkson)
“what his work has always had to say to me, i guess, is to be more keenly interested while i’m still alive. and perhaps this is the most important thing art can say.” — larry rivers: a memoir
james schuyler, in a letter to frank: “your passion always makes me feel like a cloud the wind detaches (at last) from a mountain so i can finally go sailing over those valleys with their crazy farms and towns. i always start bouncing up and down in my chair when i read a poem of yours like ‘radio’, where you seem to say, ‘i know you won’t think this is much of a subject for a poem but i just can’t help it: i feel like this,’ so that in the end you seem to be the only one who knows what the subject for a poem is.”
“oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much” — steps
“if i knew exactly why the chestnut tree
seems about to flame or die, its pyramids
aquiver, would i tell you? perhaps not.
we must keep interested in foreign stamps,
railway schedules, baseball scores, and
abnormal psychology, or all is lost.” — poem
“i don’t care about the moors
seen through you the great works of death, you are greater
you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone” — now that i am in madrid and can think
“i know perfectly well where you walk to
and that we’ll meet in even greater darkness
later and will be warm
so our cross
of paths will not be just muddy footprints
in the morning
not like celestial bodies’
yearly passes, nothing pushes us away
from each other” — present
“i am the least difficult of men. all i want is boundless love.” — meditations in an emergency
“i am alive with you
full of anxious pleasures and pleasurable anxiety
hardness and softness
listening while you talk and talking while you read
i read what you read
you do not read what i read
which is right, i am the one with the curiosity
you read for some mysterious reason
i read simply because i am a writer
the sun doesn’t necessarily set, sometimes it just disappears
when you’re not here someone walks in and says
“hey,
there’s no dancer in that bed” — st. paul and all that
“i do not mean that tenderness doesn’t
linger like a paris afternoon or a wart
something dumb and despicable that i love
because it is silent” — for the chinese new year & for bill berkson
“the moon is rising i am always thinking of the moon rising
i am always thinking of you
your morality your carved lips” — biotherm (for bill berkson)
“what his work has always had to say to me, i guess, is to be more keenly interested while i’m still alive. and perhaps this is the most important thing art can say.” — larry rivers: a memoir
anneliehyatt's review against another edition
3.0
Frank O'Hara is so tender. Reading poetry collections is always difficult for me, just as reading multiple books by the same author is, because usually my feelings about poems varies and I rarely like all of the poems in a collection (June Jordan's For Haruko and Richard Siken's Crush are the exception, if I want to be indulgent.)
Enough about me, though. My favorites of this collection are "Meditations in an Emergency," "Jane Awake," "To the Harbormaster," and "Sharing a Coke with You", but there are so many others that demonstrated O'Hara's tenderness for New York, his friends, and the world around him. I've loved Frank O'hara long before I read this collection, and he's personally one of my favorite poets to read -- many of these poems, though, simply didn't stand out. I guess that's expected with poetry collections though.
Enough about me, though. My favorites of this collection are "Meditations in an Emergency," "Jane Awake," "To the Harbormaster," and "Sharing a Coke with You", but there are so many others that demonstrated O'Hara's tenderness for New York, his friends, and the world around him. I've loved Frank O'hara long before I read this collection, and he's personally one of my favorite poets to read -- many of these poems, though, simply didn't stand out. I guess that's expected with poetry collections though.
mariavdl's review against another edition
1.0
Highly incoherent. Gave up 40 pages in (and I NEVER quit books in general.)
katrinky's review against another edition
3.0
Sometimes I know I love you better
than all the others I kiss it's funny
but it's true and I wouldn't roll
from one to the next so fast if you
hadn't knocked them all down like
ninepins when you roared by my bed
I keep trying to race ahead and catch
you at the newest station or whistle
stop but you are flighty about
schedules and always soar away just
as leaning from my taxicab my breath
reaches for the back of your neck
-"Travel"
Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous
-"Meditations in an Emergency"
Now I know where the Rilo Kiley record got its name!! These poems are vivid and quick. Not quite my taste, too masculine (as in interested in males and about a male life), but several moments I really loved. The poem "Anxiety," and, my favorite, "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island."
than all the others I kiss it's funny
but it's true and I wouldn't roll
from one to the next so fast if you
hadn't knocked them all down like
ninepins when you roared by my bed
I keep trying to race ahead and catch
you at the newest station or whistle
stop but you are flighty about
schedules and always soar away just
as leaning from my taxicab my breath
reaches for the back of your neck
-"Travel"
Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous
-"Meditations in an Emergency"
Now I know where the Rilo Kiley record got its name!! These poems are vivid and quick. Not quite my taste, too masculine (as in interested in males and about a male life), but several moments I really loved. The poem "Anxiety," and, my favorite, "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island."
merchantivory's review against another edition
i am the least difficult of men. all i want is boundless love.