Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tara P's post: O'Hara
In contrast to what we have read thus far, Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems deal with the built environment. However, in some of O’Hara’s poems he mentions elements of the natural world alongside his descriptions of the urban setting. For example, in the poem “Cambridge” he describes cotton fruit and winter trees. In “On the Way to San Remo” he describes how “the act of love is also passing like a subway bison” and how “bars are for rabbits.” Why do you think he does this? Also, in some of his poems such as “Song” and “Three Airs” O’Hara seems to have a negative view of the city, whereas in other poems he seems to see the city in a more positive light. Why do you think he has these different views? Overall, what do you think his opinion of the built environment is?
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8 comments:
Tara I give you major props for having been able to declifer these poems. I looked up any words/names/etc. that I didn't know because I thought that it would help me understand the poems, but it didn't. I tried though! So I'll give my best shot here, but I'm not promising anything because I am lost in O'Hara's jumble of words.
I'm not sure I can comment on why he protrays the city in both a negative and positive light, but I think that Frank O'Hara uses the built environment around him to juxtapose what he is describing. In "On the Way to San Remo" O'Hara uses the description of the city as a comparing and contrasting tool to the people he describes within it. Th people within a setting are strongly influenced and vice versa, by the natural and man made surrondings.
The natural descriptions that O'Hara utilizes, such as
"the moon passes into clouds
so hurt by the street lights
of your glance oh my heart" (O'Hara 12), shows his belief that natural environments are positive for the human being, while the city life can tend to be a bit overwhelming and overboard.
Hi everyone--
Don't worry about feeling a little disoriented by O'Hara, though you should take the time to re-read these poems several times. If you want a little more background on O'Hara, here are some websites. The first two are brief biographies/outlines, the third one is a more in-depth analysis of his work.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5970
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ohara/life.htm
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/perloff/ohara.html
In O’Hara’s poems, as Tara mentioned, he often parallels the natural world with the urban setting. Often O’Hara alludes to people and places that we do not know as readers, such as Edwin Denby, Juliets Corner, and Manhattan Storage Warehouse. His poems are structured as if he recorded everything he saw when walking down the street. Because I have read O’Hara’s poems such as The Day Lady Died, I know that often he takes very mundane experiences and makes them the basis of his writing. For example, the poem “A Step Away from them” opens with “It’s my lunch hour”. The more natural parts of the poems seem to serve as a balance for the materialized aspects of the city which he describes.
“A Step Away From Them”, does not a
ddress the natural world as much as the chaotic urban life. For example he describes the “hum-colored cabs”, and the smoke permeating the air near Times Square. In “Three Airs”, O’Hara addresses three things which are in the air. He begins with “soot”, but then goes on to describe more appealing things such as birds and angels. Throughout his poems, O’Hara parallels as Tara described “elements of the natural world” with that of the urban world. I’m not sure he has a preference to either one, but is rather commenting on the fact that they are often intertwined.
As those before me have noted, nice post, Tara! I certainly couldn't have extracted all that from these poems! I think, much like Erin said, that O'Hara places a good deal of emphasis on the similar way in which he portrays both the manmade and natural environment. It seems he focuses on verb choice, particularly, imbuing both the natural world and the created one with the same sense of action and purpose, noting 'the moon growls' in one line and 'apartment houses climb' in the next. He seems in some cases to allow them to exist with equal value, offering green flowers or glass flowers as if choosing either would be an equitable exchange. To me it feels he places the importance of perception on the individuals experiencing the world around them to judge what is good and what is bad, mentioning in 'Three Airs' "the senses...which are banging about inside my tired red eyes" and in 'Poem' "my life held precariously in the seeing hands of others". Perhaps the city and the country are of equal value on a wide level, and differ more so in a personal respect.
I guess my interpretation of O'Hara's poems falls in line with Claire's in that his fondness for the city or the natural world is not black or white, not leaning one way or the other. It seems that most of his comments on the city aren't about actual ciy structures but about the people that populate that area. Specificall in "A Step Away from Them" O'Hara mentions many people that color his life like the "several Puerto Ricans on the avenue today, which makes it beautiful and warm" and Pierre Reverdy whose poems are "[his] heart". Then again, O'Hara criticizes the bus "full of fat people" so his portrayal of human life in the city is confusing. It seems though, as Tara points out in the question, that his description of the natural elements have a positive tone. In Three Airs, "To be part of the treetops and the bluness, invisible, the iridescent darkness beyond" surely implies a longing or desire to escape the "steel and aluminum glaringly ugly". However, upon reading the link Prof. Scales provided to us that reviewed O'Hara's work, it made him out to sound like a commentator than a poet, offering simple images rather than insight. Bearing that in mind I would have to assume, simply, that O'hara is like any other guy, hates the city cause of his job, likes nature. Unforetunatly I can't get anything more than that.
Agreeing with what Tara originally mentioned Frank O’Hara uses his poems to describe the problems between the human and natural environments. When I first read these poems I was really confused and had no idea what he was talking about. Yet when I looked over them again I found an interesting connection. The way that he intertwines the natural and human elements in a nonsense type of way suggests that he does not feel as if the two worlds should be represented together. That to understand their true essence its better for them to remain within their zones. For example “Yes you are foolish smoking, the bars are for the rabbits, who wish to outlive the men.” He also has a sense of yearning to abandon and escape the world. “Oh to be an angel, and go straight up into the sky and look around and then come down, not to be covered with steel and aluminum glaring ugly in the pure distances and clattering and buckling, wheezing.”
O'Hara's 'lunch' poems tie in the natural world with the built world because he has an appreciation and awareness of both. That is why in the poem "Cambridge" he uses the natural description of cotton fruit and winter trees. Also, like Tara P. mentioned in her great question, “the act of love is also passing like a subway bison” and “bars are for rabbits.” The bars are for rabbits is critical of the people that go there because the patrons of a bar will go there to get drunk, usually, but some go there to socialize. It all depends on O'Hara's interpretation, which as Tara L. pointed out, is hard to deceipher as he is both critical in some poems of the built environment and appreciative and finds a likeness to it as well.
As Anthony pointed out, I do not think O'Hara is so much critical of the actual built environment as the he is critical of the people that inhabit the built environment. In the poem "A Step Away from Them" he notices along his walk "laborers feeds their dirty torsos sandwiches and Coca-cola." In tying it to nature in the same poem, he says, ""the sign blows smoke over my head, and higher the waterfall pours lightly." He likes to incorporate images of nature into the city or built environment.
Finally, I really liked his poem Ave Maria. In Italian, this poem literally means "Hail Mary." Using this biblical reference, makes this almost like O'Hara's prayer, something to preach to others. In this poem, O'Hara wants parents to let their kids go to the 'movies.' Here they will experience life and be with people and get into trouble and learn from mistakes and build experiences. He doesn't want them to be watching television and realizing that what they see on the television is what they are missing out on. This poem was written in 1960, which was the colored tv movement in American culture and O'Hara could see that America's youth would be caught up in this fantasy world...a world of reality tv (The Hills, Survivor, Apprentice) we know today and how we would rather watch some other people live their lives and not live our own. O'Hara wanted us to live our own lives...its his 'holy scripture.'
First of all I have to say that these poems were definitely an enigma to me, so props to Tara who seems to have them figured out. Even though it's hard to extricate much meaning from these poems, it seems that O'Hara does focus on different types of environment, such as manmade and natural. It also seems like he views humanity and the conventional society very negatively. In "On The Way To San Remo" he portrays the bus as, "full of fat people who cough as at a movie
they eat each other's dandruff in the flickering glare". I also agree with Tara in the fact that O'Hara is definitely comparing and contrasting the connection that man has with animals and nature. The phyiscal environment is used by both man and beast, but it doesn't really seem like they are living in unison. It seems like both are unhappy in the materialistic world we have created and the tight, confined spaces of the city slowly erodes the spirits of both man and animal. But I'm really not that sure because these poems are incredibly confusing.
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