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As Planned by Frank O’Hara

By T.

3 February 2006

5.07k

As Planned
Frank O'Hara

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don’t you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

MARGINALIA

Write what you know, the mentors always say, at a reading, at a workshop, at another pointless drinking session. Things I know at this moment: that I will never be as good, that some people do not marry for love, that Julia Child and her husband pose for ridiculous photos so they can mail them as postcards to friends, that Athena sprung from the forehead of Zeus all grown up and very armed, that Iran used to be Persia and Iraq used to be Mesopotamia, that the body can also be a country, and that the afternoon heat can explode in a kiss.

ABOUT FRANK O'HARA

Frank (Francis Russell) O’Hara was born in Maryland on March 27, 1926. O’Hara’s early work was considered both provocative and provoking. In 1952, his first volume of poetry, A City Winter, and Other Poems, attracted favorable attention; his essays on painting and sculpture and his reviews for ArtNews were considered brilliant. O’Hara became one of the most distinguished members of the New York School of poets, which also included Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth… (more)