I've packed all of my poetry books except for the one that was beside my bed, the collected poems of Frank O'Hara. I've been meaning to read them all, because I really like his poems. And they're filled with small daily details and descriptions of life in cities, which are things I'm thinking about lately. He was also one of the founders of the Poets' Theatre in Cambridge, not far from my new apartment. So in my (probably) last dispatch from Illinois, here are two poems by Mr. O'Hara, "1951" and "To the Poem."
1951
Alone at nightfrom Allen, Donald, ed. The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
in the wet city
the country's wit
is not memorable.
The wind has blown
all the trees down
but these anxieties
remain erect, being
the heart's deliberate
chambers of hurt
and fear whether
from a green apartment
seeming diamonds or
from an airliner
seeming fields. It's
not simple or tidy
though in rows of
rows and numbered;
the literal drifts
colorfully and
the hair is combed
with bridges, all
compromises leap
to stardom and lights.
If alone I am
able to love it,
the serious voices,
the panic of jobs,
it is sweet to me.
Far from burgeoning
verdure, the hard way
in this street.
To the Poem
Let us do something grand
just this once Something
small and important and
unAmerican Some fine thing
will resemble a human hand
and really be merely a thing
Not needing a military band
nor an elegant forthcoming
to tease spotlights or a hand
from the public’s thinking
But be In a defiant land
of its own a real right thing
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