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Mad Men and Frank O'Hara

Watched the first episode. More on that as I digest it.

Don was reading Frank O'Hara. I have a small book of O'Hara poems (not the one in the show) which my poetry teacher encouraged me (made me) read because I do not write like him.

I like some of it--and I like it more than I did 15 years ago (how impossible that seems) now.

Poem

Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it, and a phone call to the beyond
which doesn't seem to be coming any nearer.
"Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days"
on the poetry of a new friend
my life held precariously in the seeing
hands of others, their and my impossibilities.
Is this love, now that the first love
has finally died, where there were no impossibilities?

-Frank O'Hara, 1956, Lunch Poems

(For Matt, who is NOT writing about coffee and may have thought I had not noticed)

100 days to the election.
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ChaoSpiral said…
Thank you for this. A lot.
11:09 AM
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