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39th out of 134 books
—
69 voters
Meditations in an Emergency
by
Frank O'Hara
Frank O’Hara was one of the great poets of the twentieth century and, along with such widely acclaimed writers as Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, and Gary Snyder, a crucial contributor to what Donald Allen termed the New American Poetry, "which, by its vitality alone, became the dominant force in the American poetic tradition.”
Frank O’Hara was born in Balt...more
Frank O’Hara was born in Balt...more
Paperback, 52 pages
Published
April 1st 1996
by Grove Press
(first published 1957)
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I don't read poetry too terribly often, and the primary reason I even KNEW of this particular book was from the show Mad Men. So sue me. I'd bet most people who've recently read it have the same exact reason.
Anyway
Each poem has a particular flare of pure 1960's energy. Having studied that era in relative detail, I still can't quite put my finger on what exactly tickles my fancy about it... There's a definite sense of ambivalence that occasionally lingers on the precipice of depression mixed with...more
Anyway
Each poem has a particular flare of pure 1960's energy. Having studied that era in relative detail, I still can't quite put my finger on what exactly tickles my fancy about it... There's a definite sense of ambivalence that occasionally lingers on the precipice of depression mixed with...more
Read this on my friend Don's recommendation. Can't claim to understand what the fuck's going on at certain points, but many stanzas are washes of such serene beauty -- e.g.:
Perhaps it is to avoid some great sadness,
as in a Restoration tragedy the hero cries "Sleep!"
O for a long sound sleep and so forget it!"
that one flies, soaring above the shoreless city,
veering upward from the pavement as a pigeon
does when a car honks or a door slams, the door
of dreams, life perpetuated in parti-colored loves
a...more
Perhaps it is to avoid some great sadness,
as in a Restoration tragedy the hero cries "Sleep!"
O for a long sound sleep and so forget it!"
that one flies, soaring above the shoreless city,
veering upward from the pavement as a pigeon
does when a car honks or a door slams, the door
of dreams, life perpetuated in parti-colored loves
a...more
I am one of the many people who picked up this collection of poetry because Don Draper was reading it at a bar in Mad Men, in an episode named after it. I have read through it a few times now and find myself drawn to certain passages and bored/untouched by others. O'Hara worked as a critic and a curator at MOMA during the height of the abstract-expressionist period, and there seems to be a bit of that way of thinking in his poetry: emotional, idiosyncratic, and littered with unanswered questions...more
Modern poetry is for advanced people. If you're not advanced, put this slim volume of "fractured", "delicate", "touched" poems down. These are not for you. You best stick with your "prose."
Try this as a test: "That's funny! there's blood on my chest/oh yes, I've been carrying bricks/what a funny place to rupture!/and now it is raining on the ailanthus/as I step out onto the window ledge/the tracks are smoky and/glistening with a passion for running/I leap into leaves, green like the sea."
See w...more
Try this as a test: "That's funny! there's blood on my chest/oh yes, I've been carrying bricks/what a funny place to rupture!/and now it is raining on the ailanthus/as I step out onto the window ledge/the tracks are smoky and/glistening with a passion for running/I leap into leaves, green like the sea."
See w...more
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Count me in amongst the many who picked this book up after it was featured in the second season of Mad Men. I read it, but I didn't really feel like I'd read it, so I left it sitting in my "currently reading" list. For three years.
To be honest, I like a little more structure in my poetry, but O'Hara's messiness is certainly appropriate. These are poems of striving, of moving forward, and for that, there's no time for stopping to adjust meter and rhyme scheme.
He's a little ambivalent about tone,...more
To be honest, I like a little more structure in my poetry, but O'Hara's messiness is certainly appropriate. These are poems of striving, of moving forward, and for that, there's no time for stopping to adjust meter and rhyme scheme.
He's a little ambivalent about tone,...more
"To the Harbormaster, my ship was on the way, it got caught up in some moorings...'Call me, call when you get in!'...at best an over-solemn introduction to cosmic entertainment...long may you illumine space with your marvellous appearances, delays...
We, in secret play
affectionate games and bruise
our knees like China's shoes
And thus they grew like giggling fir trees...Haven't you ever fallen down at Christmas?...placing my fingers tenderly upon your cold, tired eyes. There is a geography which ho...more
We, in secret play
affectionate games and bruise
our knees like China's shoes
And thus they grew like giggling fir trees...Haven't you ever fallen down at Christmas?...placing my fingers tenderly upon your cold, tired eyes. There is a geography which ho...more
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This was in my back pocket so often in my teens and early twenties that I can no longer think of it as a book, but rather as a series of doorways into both O'Hara and my own past. I read it repeatedly till I had it nearly memorized, and I loved one poem so much--the beautiful and sublime "There I Could Never Be a Boy" for James Schuyler--that I wrote it in magic marker in various places--my brief life as a graffiti vandal. I hope some people read it and started reading more of him.
This is not at all my poetry style, so at points I really couldn't penetrate it. However, there were these I guess "moments of clarity:" "To the Harbormaster," "Meditations in an Emergency," "Sleeping on the Wing," "Mayakovsky."
I did not get a lot of the references, they just did not mean anything to me.
What struck me:
"obvious as an ear"
"who taught me/ how to be bad and not bad rather than good"
"Haven't you ever fallen down at Christmas/ and didn't it move everyone who saw you?"
"nightfulness"
"Th...more
I did not get a lot of the references, they just did not mean anything to me.
What struck me:
"obvious as an ear"
"who taught me/ how to be bad and not bad rather than good"
"Haven't you ever fallen down at Christmas/ and didn't it move everyone who saw you?"
"nightfulness"
"Th...more
I saw this book on "MAD Men" several times and decided to pick up. On first glance I wasn't really sure what the connection was. But the poem titled "Meditation in an Emergency" does strike a cord with the mysterious lead of MAD Men. This book references lots of movie stars and silver screen. Quick read, but not really my cup of tea for poetry.
Don Draper picked this for our bookclub. I liked it. Resisting mightily the desire for an exclamation point. How about these holiday lines: "Haven't you ever fallen down at Christmas / and didn't it move everyone who saw you? / isn't that what the tree means? the pure simple pleasure / of making weep those whom you cannot move by your flights"
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I'm a huge poetry fan as well as a Mad Men fan but I very seldom know what the hell is going on in these poems. I appreciate the artistry in their construction but there is very little here in terms of attempting to communicate with and engage the reader. For a better sense of the urban culture of the 50s and 60s I prefer Ginsberg and others.
Frank O'Hara perteneció a la llamada "Escuela de Nueva York", grupo formado sobre todo por poetas y pintores de la década de los 50 y 60. En poesía, O'Hara valoraba sobre todo el "nerviosismo" lírico, por encima de la rima y del verso. La gran protagonista de su poesía es la ciudad de Nueva York, el deambular de sus gentes por ella y su propio día a día en esta ciudad.
O'Hara murió joven, en un absurdo accidente con un coche, cerca del mar, por lo que su obra es escasa y, sin embargo, influyente....more
O'Hara murió joven, en un absurdo accidente con un coche, cerca del mar, por lo que su obra es escasa y, sin embargo, influyente....more
Mar 21, 2009
Kevin Albrecht
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Fans of free verse poetry
Recommended to Kevin by:
Don Draper on Mad Men
Shelves:
poetry
With the completion of Meditations in an Emergency, I have read both collections of poetry that Frank O'Hara had published during his lifetime. Compared to Lunch Poems, Meditations in an Emergency reflects in some ways a more formal style.
My favorite poems in the collection were "To the Harbormaster", "Poem (The eager note on my door...)", "Meditations in an Emergency", and "Mayakovsky".
His work is alternately funny and sad. Some poems are highly introspective while others are focused on the liv...more
My favorite poems in the collection were "To the Harbormaster", "Poem (The eager note on my door...)", "Meditations in an Emergency", and "Mayakovsky".
His work is alternately funny and sad. Some poems are highly introspective while others are focused on the liv...more
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
"Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change?
"I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love."
How can you not, at the very least, give an extra moment's pause to enjoy the beauty and raw emotion of those lines?
"I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love."
How can you not, at the very least, give an extra moment's pause to enjoy the beauty and raw emotion of those lines?
A pleasant collection from American New York poet Frank O'Hara. I found this book to be very unique personal observational poems about his everyday life (including his job as a museum curator)- the language was a bit too ambiguous at times for me but overall I believe there's a lack of pretentiousness here that's typical of modern poetry.
Sometimes I am right there with O´hara, like some inside joke or secret between friends, othertimes and frequently I feel like he is trying to relay the fragments of dreams he had while in troubled sleep at an opera on a star.
This was very enjoyable and all, but it doesn't quite resonate in my head. He's often compared to many of my favourite poets and I was hoping that this anthology would be as groundbreaking to my life, but I don't think it has that sort of power. But saying that a book isn't as life changing as you'd hoped, isn't quite a reason to not like it, so don't take it personally O'Hara fans, he's just not Ginsberg or Cummings.
an enjoyable book of poetry, the reason for only three stars has more to do with my deficiency in reading poetry and being able to get the most out of the book, than with the actual content itself.
I think I only understood 50% of O'Hara's "Lunch Poems," and I managed to understand waaaay less in this collection. But I...can't...quite...stop reading Frank O'Hara. I'll smile at the end of one of his poems, and if somebody asked me what it was about, I'd probably just keep grinning stupidly and tell them, "I don't know."
Maybe it's because O'Hara really does write poems with an upbeat rhythm. He has tremendously good lines here and there, but a lot of it is either dated or inaccessible for me...more
Maybe it's because O'Hara really does write poems with an upbeat rhythm. He has tremendously good lines here and there, but a lot of it is either dated or inaccessible for me...more
Somehow this still seems fresh. Glad I went out of my way to do an ILL to get a copy of it. I don't read a lot of poetry but I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks Mad Men!
yeah...another "oooh, saw it on Mad Men."
However...the part read made it too good to pass up...
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
However...the part read made it too good to pass up...
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
Re: Starbooty
That's EXACTLY the way I learned of this book--Don Draper reading it on Mad Men' ! I'm not a poetry buff either, but this book was the bomb!
That's EXACTLY the way I learned of this book--Don Draper reading it on Mad Men' ! I'm not a poetry buff either, but this book was the bomb!
Mad Men season 2 introduced me to Frank O'Hara, and I was very happy to read through the mind of someone in the 1960s. To the Harbormaster is my favorite.
As seen on Mad Men! Some of these are wonderful, others may be wonderful, but for me, are too oblique or require grad-school explication.
Here's a line that speaks for itself: "I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love." That, by the way, is from the title poem.
Here's a line that speaks for itself: "I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love." That, by the way, is from the title poem.
I picked up this collection of poems after it was featured in an episode of the TV show Mad Men. I was hoping that it would capture the time (late 50's/ early 60's) in a similar fashion.
Unfortunatly, I found this collection to be far too inaccessable and cryptic.
There are powerful moments, particularly the title poem, but they are few and far between.
I think the poetry of this era is very powerful, but I much prefer the work of Bukowski.
Unfortunatly, I found this collection to be far too inaccessable and cryptic.
There are powerful moments, particularly the title poem, but they are few and far between.
I think the poetry of this era is very powerful, but I much prefer the work of Bukowski.
There are exactly 115 exclamation points in this collection (114 if you don't count an epigraph). Here are all of them:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I've been meaning to read this, and there is always anxiety about books with recommendations, but I was not disappointed.
<------------------------This book------------------------->
<-------------------------My head-------------------------->
<-------------------------My head-------------------------->
I read it slowly - a poem a day every morning on the metro - and still finished too soon. Marking it as "read" is just a formality, I know I'll be returning to it often. I enjoyed the Important ones: Mayakovsky, etc, but my favorites are the ones he wrote for his friends, when he's not taking himself too seriously. I would give these 5 stars to For Grace, After a Party on it's own.
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Frank O'Hara was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. O'Hara served in the South Pacific and Japan as a sonarman on the destroyer USS Nicholas during World War II.
With the funding made available to veterans he attended Harvard University, where he roomed with artist/writer Edward Gorey. Although he majored in music and did some composing, his attendance was irregular...more
More about Frank O'Hara...
With the funding made available to veterans he attended Harvard University, where he roomed with artist/writer Edward Gorey. Although he majored in music and did some composing, his attendance was irregular...more
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“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.”
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163 people liked it
“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.”
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102 people liked it
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I can't wait for the new season! I heard they shot the premiere in Hawa...more
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