Modeling Poem #2

This time I chose Frank O’Hara to imitate. I like his poetry as it is “soft”, easy to understand and not fully overloaded with classical images and allusions. I like his idea that poetry should be amusement and it should not be abstract or philosophical. These characteristics made me easier to imitate him. As it is supposed to be a lunch poem, I put that fact into the poem as well. I even indicated that that time O’Hara worked for the Museum of Modern Art in New York and “he” wrote this poem during one of his museum breaks. Basically, I tried to put together everything he must have been thought and seen in New York in 1958 (I just made up the year); the same way he did it in his poetry. So I avoided every abstract or philosophical allusion and tried to focus on the amusement part of poetry and the whirling of images and names. Knowing his general appreciation for neon lights and every kind of fancy billboard, I put the “luminous neon advertisements” beside the indication of that hot summer day and the shining sun, showing that both of them do the same: give us hot. I even told it was 85 degrees, this must have been seen by a huge street thermometer down Madison Avenue. Now came the construction workers together with their helmets, like leitmotivs of his poetry. To give the whole a bit more advanced surrealistic ambiance, I connected the workers’ hats with the expensive and fashionable hats found in the exclusive San Francisco boutiques. Thus the inner and the outer world can kind of blend in the mind of the poet. Not only does he describe what he sees but he also tries to find connections between these things and his life experience, past memories of people and places. The next moment he notices the sign of a subway station, so just comes down to travel by it, but then he changes his mind and goes up. This can represent a possible roaming in a big city which is like a labyrinth in many cases, and where we have so many offered opportunities and possibilities. Another huge street billboard may show the time (probably the one showing the temperature), he must have been noticed that, so I put it into the poem just like the exact day of it. Speaking about racial issues, integration, segregation, different races, ethnicities, I put a “Negro” cab driver into the poem, who is not a very surprising character of the New York cityscape. The poet must have seen his delightful face, so he remarked it. This poem was “written” in 1958, when racial issues were treated differently than now, that is why I mentioned LeRoi and the handshake, which must have been shocked many people. I wanted another important minority group to be present in the poem; that is why I mentioned the “Chicanos” who are also significant components of the cityscape. I imagined them as laughing and funny people, probably having a break—just like the poet. Paul Claudel is briefly mentioned, maybe O’Hara knew him (he died in 1955), and I just referred to him because O’Hara mentioned a lot of French poets in his poems. The pop culture is present by his cheeseburger and Coke (and of course by the neon advertisements). Even though he avoided philosophy in his poetry, I could not help mentioning it in the last line (as he did that anyway in “A Step Away from Them”), referring to the brevity of life, connecting it to the “brevity” of the cheeseburger and the Coke.