Let's do O'Hara's deal

Very often nowadays (I think),
we greet each other as hurdles
once again to endure in a path
to higher existence, in virtu-
al refuge known as plans. Nat-
urally, I couldn't conceive of
such a fundamental deformation,
if I were not vulnerable to it.

I observed that not even youth 
and income can defeat the feeb-
leness inherent in common calcu-
lations; and possibly our contem-
porary horror, "social media,"
are augury, in ditziest vacuity,
of this slipstream into anomie.

Knowing better is not being bet-
ter; it's often being worse. But
knowing something utterly is not
a feeble anchorage, for passing
it on neutrally, in closeness to
one's past and present. The scan-
dal of our genius is on-axis to
the honest gaze.

What is so unarguably to be 
known, if not that there is
poetry to taste in standing
still? Don't take mine, one
would say. Take my hearing,
for your extravagantest ex-
ercise.

       ..

       the only truth is face to face, the poem whose
          words become your mouth
       and dying in black and white we fight for what we
          love, not are 
       ..
























Frank O'Hara
Ode: Salute to the French
  Negro Poets
  [fragment]
1958
Donald Allen, editor
The Collected Poems of 
  Frank O'Hara
op. cit.

Edward Mendelson
Review of Selected Poems
  of Frank O'Hara
  Mark Ford, editor
  Knopf, 2008
The New York Review
  of Books
September 25, 2008©

John Latta
Isola di Rifiuti
October 23, 2012©

Saturday commute xcix: Even from the blithest progress

Even from the blithest progress, the most innocent triumphs, attendant upon the handsomest conduct, there emerges always some laundry to be done.

Whence it hath been

discovered, one can

hang it out to dry.

Suppose it were Friday xc: Now let us praise inequality

   Someone's begun
   the day better,
   it often seems.

  What could be less fastidious
  than opulence so giddious,
  as Rolls are Roycing boldly off the     truck;
  and if one thought, insidious,
  our rhyme would climb more hideous,
  It's premature to cluck.

I don't know about you, but the insanity defense of the limerick has stood one in great stead, from time to time, to immunise jest. That shield is like Rolls' splendid wingèd ornament, the Spirit of Ecstasy. It wears the kiss of frolic. Yes?

               It's just possibly conceivable,
               the gods designed retrievable,
               our fret,
               of comfort unbelievable
               in view of how receivable's
               the debt.

  Enough, then, with nos-     trums on the consola-       tions of luxury, one way     or the other. There will     always be a merrier con-     veyance. For them, the       gods have given us the       Insouciant Amphibian,       
  Tadpole to the gentry,
  high compression             element'ry
  in his limbs;
  a busy Port of Entry,
  evident'ry of his whims.

  We think awf'lly well of     Toady, 
  and we love his bonhommie,   but one can't be just a     roadie 
  of commodious esprit.


  
   That said, it's not un-
   worth mulling upon, I
   grant you. The problem,
   if we must have one, is 
   that inequality is enor-
   mously too interchange-
   able to be dislodged 
   overnight.

Kenneth Grahame
The Wind in the Willows
op. cit.

Eh, bien. Quatorze.

    Or just more

    of Texas?

    Having just shot up a town

    for a sackful of zinc wash-

    ers, Peckinpah's heroes ar-

    rive at the Rio Grande, an

    occasional jurisdictional

    divide. Youth sees Mexico, 

    and calls it lindo. A con-

    noisseur of brigandage is

    not so sure.

   In the satiric satyr,
   Michel Simon, a long
   career in the quay of
   brigandage stretched
   from Jean Vigo through
   Renoir to Marcel Carné.
   The cultivation of the
   distinction, between 
   play and misery, is not
   a struggle of good with 
   evil; and it is a lark
   to participate in reel-
   ing in this understand-
   ing, little by little.

   One never does know what
   will turn up, restaurant
   footfare notwithstanding.

  

Sam Peckinpah
  and Walon Green,
  screenplay
The Wild Bunch
Warner Brothers, 1969©

Au revoir, les treize

    They made a

    whole knife

    for butter?

Martin Conte

Jean-Pierre Léaud
Jean Cocteau
François Truffaut

Past red

for a critic

at the exhib-

ition, and
for visitors

  

  And don't presume you knew the man       you wronged

  so very well. He surely had virtues       you were unaware of;

  nor perhaps are those deep wounds the     ones

  that you imagine (out of ignorance of     his life)

  to be the dreadful blows that came       from you

  Don't count on your feeble memory.

  Temper your remorse, which is always

  so one-sidedly against you, it's           casuistry.

              An obstacle was there and it distorted

              my actions and the way I lived my life.

              An obstacle was there and it stopped me

              on many occasions when I was going to speak.

  But perhaps it's not worth
    squandering
  so much care and trouble on
    puzzling me out.
  Afterwards - in some more
    perfect society -
  someone else who's fashioned
    like me
  will surely appear and be free
    to do as he pleases.

C.P. Cavafy
  i Remorse

  1925, unfinished
  ii - iii Hidden
  1908, unpublished
Daniel Mendelsohn
  editor and translator
C.P. Cavafy
  The Unfinished Poems
    The First English Translation
op. cit.

Authentication failure and I

Have I kept secret my relation-

ship with social media? I don't

mean D&B or Dilatory Domiciles,

much less alumni publications.

I mean, as you'd suppose, the

darling upstart industries with

GPS impertinence, which captured

friends I knew once, whom I nev-

er hear from anymore, because I

refuse authentication. Every day,

it's the same distraught message

from the leading app du jour, ex-

claiming that my authentication

has failed, in the belief (I'm 

only guessing) that I should be

sufficiently alarmed to leap in-

to corrective engulfment, to be

ratified as real, as if one's

surgeons, themselves, could not

be trusted to find a heartbeat

without this evidentiary trail.

Not to be pompous about it, it

suits me to dissatisfy entreat-

ies for absorption in this new

standard of trust. I remember

methods that work well enough

for that; and for recognition,

too. I do wish my telephones

would accept this reassurance,

but they persist in urging me,

disturbing me, distracting me

and worse, to immerse myself 

in a daisy chain illusion of

sustaining my relationships.

Not extremely likely, anyway,

that I'd be a fit for any-

one's corsage of intimates.

Who would forget Forster -

It would require a botanist

to do justice to these flow-

ers, but fortunately there

is no occasion to do justice

to flowers.

Oh, yes, indeed. I'm aware of

how much leverage I'm refus-

ing, how much linkage I am

squandering, for the projec-

tion of one's face into the

grand tier - or was it, upon

the stage, my cap's supposed

to be set? O, mirror, mirror,

marry me, at least my merry

effigy, today, lest all of

my society despair of improp-

riety in play. One does feel

somewhat Waldenish at times,

while others seem genuinely 

to thrill to this mindlessly

acquisitive, exhibitionist 

structuring of friendships. 

It lacks the requisite dignity

even for abstention to imply a 

characteristic of life, or any 

remark one could intend. 

                  Then the camel will shuffle 

                  up and down, dragging after 

                  him a wooden plough, and the 

                  Bedouin, guiding it, will sing 

                  tunes to the camel that he can 

                  only sing to the camel, because 

                  in his mind the tune and the 

                  camel are the same thing.

E.M. Forster

Pharos and Pharillon

1923©

Creative Arts Book

  Company, Berkeley, 1980©