Reviews for Meditations in an Emergency

The average rating for Meditations in an Emergency based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-10-18 00:00:00 Dr Michael Deodhar In the second season of Madmen, Don Draper, awash in the chaos of his own identity, recites these lines from "Mayakovsky," the last poem in this book: Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. Frank O'Hara's poetry does not have to wait--quietly or otherwise. It is always beautiful and interesting. And, sixty years later, it still seems modern too. Most 20th Century verse lovers, if asked what midcentury poet inherited the legacy of Whitman, would pick Allen Ginsberg, the iconic embodiment of the Beats. But my vote goes to the New York School's Frank O'Hara. Ginsberg loved Whitman, adopting both his long lists and his long verse lines and self-consciously donning the Whitmanesque mantle of American Prophet'half soapbox shouter and half Hindu holyman'who celebrates the human body, alternative sexuality, and the teeming variety of the American street. But in spite of his guru-style blessings and his hipster humor, Ginsberg's poems are still pervaded by an ancient'albeit syncopated'Hebrew melancholy, as if the prophet Jeremiah had copped a gig with a cool jazz band. Frank O'Hara, on the other hand, writes verse suffused with optimism. He celebrates the same things Ginsberg does, but unlike Ginsberg'and like Whitman--he immerses himself in every moment, in every detail, joyously relishing the opportunities for pure sensation and passionate friendship that New York has to offer. (I suspect that, handed a prophet's cloak, Frank would have simply collapsed, helpless with laughter.) O'Hara, raised in Massachusetts and educated as a Catholic (a church he describes in one of his poems as "at best, an over-solemn introduction to cosmic entertainment"), worked as a Navy sonar technician during WW II, went to Harvard on the G.I. Bill, and eventually sought his fortune in New York City. He got a job at MOMA'first selling postcards in the gift shop, later as a curator of painting'and threw himelf into the social whirl of the NYC art scene. A devoted friend and prolific lover, he introduced poets to painters (and vice versa), reveling in personal and artistic freedom. O'Hara may have died three years before the Stonewall riots (a poet's death: run over by a car on Fire Island, where no cars are allowed), but he lived in a small, liberated enclave well ahead of its time. And his love for his world and his love for New York City shines in every line he wrote. Although this 1957 collection is the one most of his contemporaries knew him by, it came before his chattier, more colloquial "Personism" period, before Donald Allen's revolutionary anthology The New American Poets (1960) proclaimed him as a leader of The New York School, and before his small City Lights book Lunch Poems (1964) was published, a book which contains many of his best known pieces. Nevertheless, this earlier volume shows O'Hara to good advantage. Its poems possess the characteristic O'Hara virtues--the conversational tone, the manic enthusiasm, the gentle humor, the name-dropping--but, since the inspiration here is more Rimbaud than Mayakovsky, these poems are grandly, often bafflingly surrealist. Unlike much surrealist poetry, however, these pieces show a painter's respect for form: each outrageous improvisation is placed artfully upon the canvas of the individual poem.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-01-26 00:00:00 Wally Tulk Mayakovsky 4 Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey. It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again. * Sleeping On The Wing ... Curiosity, the passionate hand of desire. Dead, or sleeping? Is there speed enough? And, swooping, you relinquish all that you have made your own, the kingdom of your self sailing, for you must awake and breathe your warmth in this beloved image whether it's dead or merely disappearing, as space is disappearing and your singularity. When I saw O'Hara's name next to Allen Ginsberg's, I have to admit, I wasn't exactly thrilled. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the former's poetry more than Mr. Ginsberg's and would probably try another one of his books. Within his ode to New York City, there were some gems I liked, a few lines I identified with. His love for the city, the idea of loving a place so much, however unconnected it is with me, is heartwarming somehow. Jan 27, 19 * Also on my blog.