Walking Down Second Avenue

I was walking down

Second Avenue and saw

Frank O’Hara sitting

on a bench by the deli

scribbling in his notebook

as he usually does at lunchtime

when he wanders from

the museum the one with

the paint flung against

canvases (Pollock) (de Kooning)

on the bench he’s spilling

color and listening to jazz

(Miles Davis)  (or was it Brubeck?)

He looks up and see through

me not at me not me

and mutters something about

Lana Turner

and lunch.

Related:

My post this week at Tweetspeak Poetry: September Beats: Frank O’Hara

Photograph of Frank O’Hara from a 2006 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art Library.

September Beats: Frank O’Hara

Perhaps the best introduction to the poetry of Frank O’Hara (1926-1966) is what he himself had to say. In “Personism: A Manifesto,” O’Hara wrote, “I hate Vachel Lindsay, always have; I don’t even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone’s chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don’t turn around and shout “Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.’”

 

That could easily be an O’Hara poem.

O’Hara was one of the lights of what was called the New York School, a group of writers, artists and musicians that included John Ashberry and often Allen Ginsberg. Several of them knew each other from college (like O’Hara and Ashberry). O’Hara crossed all three of the cultural groups represented – he was a poet, he had originally studied music, and was worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

September Beats: Allen Ginsberg

They say all publicity is good. For poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), the publicity he received for the publication of Howl and Other Poems permanently defined his career.

It is 1955. Ginsberg has written a long poem he’s entitles “Howl” that is about capitalism and “the system.” In fact, the poem is a long “howl” about the system. It’s filled with vivid imagery, including sexual imagery, quite graphic sexual imagery.

Poet Louis Ferlinghetti, who owns the City Light Books bookstore in San Francisco, publishes the poem in a relatively small collection. William Carlos Williams writes the introduction. Ginsberg reads the poem publicly in late 1955. City Lights Books arranges the printing in London. The printed volumes arrive, and are promptly seized by customs officials.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

September Beats: Jack Kerouac

He is born in 1922 to French Canadian parents in Massachusetts. For the next seven years, he speaks only French. His Roman Catholic faith shapes him; it does so for the rest of his life.

Even as a child, he writes: a newspaper, a diary, radio plays, even a novel.

He plays football in high school, and plays well. He’s offered a football scholarship to Columbia University in New York City. New York inspires.

World War II begins. He becomes deeply concerned by the shift in morals happening around him. He leaves college, joins the merchant marine. He writes a novel called The Sea is My Brother that won’t be published for 70 years, long after his death.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.