Lunch Talk
There have been many writers, artists, and poets throughout history who have taken the form of their work much too seriously. They make sure every image or word flows in such a way as to specifically gain public approval or that every line has the exact number of syllables someone decided that style was suppose to have. Perhaps this is what makes Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems so refreshing. Rather than focusing on the form of what he is doing, these poems read like a stream of thought. There are interruptions when something is randomly realized, and subtle comments on an encounter that one would typically make mentally instead of out loud. It is often said that he would write these quick pieces during his lunch hour – or in the case of “Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)”, on a ferry ride over from Manhattan (Perloff). They have a flow that reminds you of conversations had with yourself throughout the day, providing a form of comfortable chat. In a world of serious people who try too hard, O’Hara casually presents simple thoughts and ideas in a way that leads the reader’s mind down a rabbit hole, just like anything else they encounter during the day has the potential to do.
Now this isn’t to say that O’Hara didn’t make any effort in his poems. Even though he was a man who openly didn’t care for following a blueprint, it took him five years of editing and going over to be okay with the final format of Lunch Poems. He even said, “Personism… 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’.” (Poets.org). It’s this mentality of just running when you have a feeling, to create something off the cuff, that makes him such a pleasant read that has lasted through the decades. This method also gives his work a rawness that sneaks into your mind and plays games with it. Take the piece “Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)” for example. The initial statement makes the mind go, “Oh! I wonder why?” but then O’Hara switches to discussing the weather. Snow, rain, and hail, stating rather rapidly that himself and “you” are having a difficult time determining which is falling from the sky, so you forget about Lana Turner until it is brought up again, this time in all caps. Perhaps to make it shout at you and interrupt your thoughts just like seeing the headline did to him initially. At this point he actually continues with a line of thought that is somewhat related to her and Hollywood – since she is a celebrity. Without ever outright saying his thoughts on this particular headline, he says so much; “I have been to lots of parties / and acted disgraceful / but I never actually collapsed / oh Lana Turner we love you get up.” The poem is a comment on how ridiculous the things are that humanity finds noteworthy. Everyone has made a fool of themselves at one point or another, so why does it happening to this person in particular make a worthy headliner? What makes it even more absurd is the fact that this particular star’s career ended on such an insane note, “…her career had been badly damaged by her affair with mobster Johnny Stompanato, who was killed in 1958 when Lana’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane, caught the two fighting and killed Stompanato with a kitchen knife.” that it seems absolutely ridiculous to make a big deal out of a collapse that could have been caused by anything (Perloff). There are mind-blowing scientific advances being made every day, but this insignificant moment is what gets talked about on the front page. O’Hara has thus addressed the annoying simplicity of many people’s entertainment, without ever outright saying any of that, and gotten the gears of your mind turning on a much larger issue – one that is still (if not more so) relevant today.
Another poem that reads strongly like a stream of thought is “Song (Is it dirty)”. There are many people who have fallen in love or fallen in hate with the city O’Hara called home, and this piece reads as if someone who loves the city is arguing for their case to someone who hates it. The argumentative voice that comes out of this piece is due to O’Hara practically defending something as ridiculous as the dirt within the city, however, there is very little interruption and a couple moments of repetition that makes it sound like thoughts. Perhaps he got angered at someone who disliked the city so he wrote down what he wanted to say to them. When yelling or arguing at someone from the confines of your own mind, a point that you may find to be a very strong one gets repeated to yourself as you attempt to figure out where it sounds best or most powerful, should you choose to voice your thoughts to the other party. This happens with the lines, “that’s what you think of in the city” and “you don’t refuse to breathe do you” (24). With the first line being a comment saying “of course you think about something’s potential filth when you’re in the city, there are many people and they all carry some sort of dirt” and the second one being a follow up statement “but you don’t worry about the air, you continue to breathe, right?” It seems that O’Hara was really trying to hammer this last point home since once he mentioned it in the middle, he used it again as his finishing line – because of course you keep breathing, you can’t stop! To personify New York City, he uses an attractive man with a bad character, “someone comes along with a very bad character / he seems attractive. is he really. yes. very / he’s attractive as his character is bad. is it. yes” (24). He is fully aware of how dirty and bad NYC is known to be, yet still, it has always been an attractive place to many people. Tourists always want to see The Big Apple, just like many Americans dream of seeing Paris or London – and neither of these cities are all beauty through and through either. However, “and you take a lot of dirt off someone. is the character less bad. no. it improves constantly / you don’t refuse to breathe do you” even if you were to remove the dirt off of NYC, it wouldn’t make its character any better, that’s just how the city is. So how is it improving? I argue that the city itself is not. Those who encounter the city as improving the longer they are there, are just getting used to it and accepting the city for what it will always be – dirty, bad, filthy, yet attractive for those very same reasons. Just like a bad boy is to a good girl.
O’Hara is also comparable to poetic works of the modern day, such as Lyn Hejinian’s The Unfollowing. Hejinian’s purpose of this collection of poems is to break the mold of the sonnet and preconceived notions about art. She creates something that seemingly makes no sense and is purposely made without a form of closure, encapsulated within the refrain of the sonnet. Of course, in trying to create something without restraining oneself in the idea of creating, a whole new form is created, making it so the poet is now paradoxically partaking in the act of deliberate creation. Several of the pieces in Lunch Poems have a similar sense of thought flow in them, though perhaps a little more directed and not with the intention of being unfollowable. “Alma”, “Naphtha”, “Personal Poem”, and “Fantasy”, to name a few, flow in this manner. The poem “Fantasy” is one such piece that requires reading more than once, if just for the sake of figuring out how to approach it. At first read, that feeling of slight confusion at what exactly is happening and where the poet is trying to lead you sets in heavily – like The Unfollowing, though this is as far as the similarities go. As you read “Fantasy” a couple more times (and put some research into the names mentioned) it becomes apparent that the poem isn’t as random as it seems. There are thoughts that connect from the beginning to the end, “Down / down went the grim / grey submarine under the “cold” ice” and “but just because I’m alone in the snow / doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a Nazi” (81-82). These lines put the reader in a snowy, cold environment, as a soldier in the war – which at first I thought to be somewhere in Russia, but he mentions Canada in the middle and again at the end. O’Hara served as a sonarman in Japan in World War II, so perhaps he was speculating what people in other areas of the war were experiencing. If he was, it seems he was simultaneously making a statement about the film scene in Canada in 1964. Every name mentioned is someone who would be working in film; Max Steiner was an American musical composer, Helmut Dantyne was an actor who was known for playing Nazis in thriller films, Errol Flynn was an Australian-born actor, and the final lines of the poem mention movies directly, “Yes, I’m crazy about / Helmut Dantyne but I’m glad that Canada will remain / free. Just free, that’s all, never argue with the movies.” Perhaps O’Hara is reacting to a film where each of these people were involved, and the lines that seem disconnected are thoughts that occurred while he was watching – such as the segment where he appears to be dealing with his friend Allen who has a hangover. This could also be a comment on the rise of the film industry in Canada, since, “After the Second World War, Canada, like many countries, experienced a balance of payments problem with the US. As a result, in 1947, the federal government restricted imports on a large number of goods.” and this included films (Handling). By the time 1964 rolled around, independent producers had begun to establish themselves and the rise of cinema had begun in Quebec.
Even though the flow of this last poem seems disjointed, it still appears as a stream of thoughts, and then it turns out there is a specific topic that O’Hara is addressing. Several of the pieces in Lunch Poems read as unfiltered thoughts from someone’s mind. However, many of them are addressing one issue or another that can be found if one reads them more than once, researches the author himself, as well other events that were happening at the time of the poem. His writing seems a little off-the-cuff at times, but it’s apparent that he was clever and put a lot of work into what he was doing to gain the attention of the public – which he succeeded in doing since we still discuss his work more than 50 years later. His casual, sometimes broken, tone, draws the audience in and urges them to learn more about the topics he was passionate about.
Works Cited
“Book: Lunch Poems.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.
Handling, Piers, Ted Magder, and Peter Morris. “The History of the Canadian Film Industry.”
The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2016.
Perloff, Marjorie. “Reading Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems After Fifty Years.” Poetry Foundation.
Poetry Foundation, 05 Jan. 2015. Web. 04 Dec. 2016.
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