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©
:) - and thank you very much
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome. I'm happy to say, it's a pleasure to consider O'Hara; but nowadays, in our exotic region of the English-speaking world, we are beset by a very great horror of locution at such times, and I hope you can close your Norwegian ports to it. Now, when we say, "Thank you," we're dreadfully likely to be told, "Not a problem." The response completely diminishes the act as well as its appreciation; but less and less do we expect that spark of penetration of another's fog that manifests itself in considered response. I think this was on O'Hara's mind.
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