Frank O'Hara and New York: Seeing the City from a Poet's Eyes

 

“It’s my lunch hour, so I go for a walk among the hum-colored cabs”

-from “A Step Away From Them”

 

      It seems like I know Frank O’Hara, but he died the year I was born.

      Yet I get the sense that I can see the New York of a certain time through his works; I can shake hands with the people he introduces me to; I can smell the coffee he drinks, taste the food he eats.
      And I’ve never met him, only read his work. And the New York I know is a vastly different one from the New York O’Hara knows, as he wrote there until his death from a freak accident in 1966.   
      O’Hara is very personal in his work. In Lunch Poems, his 1964 collection that contains poems dating back to 1953, O’Hara seems to take readers on a stroll through Manhattan, and we get to know the people he name drops. In “Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul,” (1959) the first stanza reads:

It is 12:10 in New York and I am wondering

if I will finish this in time to meet Norman for lunch

ah lunch! I think I am going crazy

what with my terrible hangover and the weekend

coming up.

Here, we get a snapshot of what Lunch Poems is all about. (Apparently, lunch was O’Hara’s favorite meal of the day. The title stems from his mid-afternoon breaks from his job as curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. He’d take walks and bring his notebook with him, jotting notes and ideas for poems as he walked, stopped to eat, and returned back to work). I assumed the “Norman” referenced above was Norman Mailer, as Mailer was a New York contemporary of O’Hara’s and was a co-founder of the Village Voice newspaper. In “Adieu,” a very apprehensive speaker – throughout this work, you clearly get the vibe that every speaker his O’Hara himself – is preparing for a trip to Paris while trying to wrap up loose ends in New York first. While he wishes he was staying in town “working on my poems at Joan’s studio,” he knows he must first check in with “an excitement-prone Kenneth Koch,” as well as noting that “Allen (obviously Ginsberg) is back talking about god a lot,” “Peter (I assume Orlovsky, a poet and long-time Ginsberg companion) is back and not talking very much.” He also writes of  a “Joe,” but I couldn’t figure out who Joe was. Also mentioned in this poem are Charles de Gaulle, Albert Camus, Shirley Goldfarb, Jane Hazan, Jane Freilicher, Irving Sandler, Rene Char, Pierre Reverdy, and Samuel Beckett. Honestly, I’ve never heard of most of those people, but O’Hara makes it seem like they are part of my circle, too, not just his.

      While O’Hara is associated with the New York School movement, I discovered a curious link with the Beat movement that preceded it, a movement that also had its start in New York. In much Beat literature, the writers all write about each other, albeit under fictional names. For example, in John Clellon Holmes’ Go! (1952), which is considered to be the first beat novel, Jack Kerouac is referred to as Gene Pasternak; David Stofsky is Allen Ginsberg, Holmes himself is referred to as Paul Hobbes. This same practice appears in many Beat books, most notably Kerouac’s On the Road.  In Lunch Poems, however, O’Hara doesn’t bother to change the names.
      Other pop culture mileposts of the time appear regularly. Lana Turner, a sultry and glamorous movie star of the 1940s and 50s whose career was basically done by 1960, appears in a couple of different poems. In “Steps” (1961) O’Hara writes, “where’s Lana Turner she’s out eating and Garbo’s backstage at the Met.” Turner is featured more prominently in “Poem” (1962). The opening line, “Lana Turner has collapsed!” sets the tone for this frantically paced poem, in which the speaker screams “LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!” again 10 lines later, about half-way through the poem. As the poem seems to slow down, the speaker finally concludes, “I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up.”
       From a style standpoint, O’Hara is clearly a free verse poet. While many of the poems are presented in fairy traditional verses, some of them appear jagged – a line might be indented in an exaggerated way, maybe right before the end of the next line. The appearance seemed a little disjointed, which made me wonder if there was a little edginess underneath some of the seemingly free flowing words. As far as capitalization goes, it seems like his standard practice is to capitalize the first word only; pretty much everything else is lower case. As a far less seasoned poet than O’Hara, I can see a lot of similarities between his work and mine. First, I think there is a very strong sense of place in his poetry, and that is something that I strive for. Also, I like his language choices; I think his word choice is fairly simple, but he’s able to create a lot with them, another thing I aspire to. One thing I take away from O’Hara is the pacing. I think each of his poems has a tempo to it, like AM radio songs of the time. Some are fast and some are slow, but they’re all pretty catchy. That’s something I need to work on.

      I’m not sure why, but my whole life I have had this odd feeling that I was born roughly 20 years too late. I’ve always felt that I’d have fit in more coming of age in the 1960s instead of being born then. Lunch Poems played into that. It was incredibly fun to read, and I connected with a lot of his New York references. I could see myself in some of those places, taking the subway or the bus to get there, trying to squeeze in a quick meal before scurrying off to the next thing, afraid of missing something.

 

A Long December

As I sit here polishing off this bottle of wine, I am reminded that today is December 13 - a Friday the 13th, too, if you need to go there - and of course, December's constant reminder is that shitty Counting Crows song (were there any other kinds of Counting Crows songs?  Be honest) "A Long December." I don't remember many of the words of this song, nor how it goes, but I do remember "December" being in the title.

I think the speaker in that song sits down with someone at some point "to talk about the year." I think there was some line about the smell of hospitals in winter, which is kind of weird since hospitals pretty much smell the same way all year. Perhaps they knew something that I didn't. Now that I think about it, the 90s had a lot of songs about December. Didn't Collective Soul have a huge hit simply called "December?" If I recall correctly, that tune was as incomprehensible as the Counting Crows song.

But as 2013 draws to a close, let me look back...

(Dream sequence begins, and Dave scratches his head deep in thought...2013 was pretty eventful...it began with me coming back from England with my new wife...a master's degree...three published poems...acceptance into several MFA programs...performance at a literary conference...another year with good friends...got really good at Words with Friends...the kids are all good...actually, I got great at Words with Friends...Rays made the playoffs...no hurricanes...no Counting Crows records...damn, my company was even profitable...solid, man, a solid year.)

...and look ahead...

After Dick Clark's untimely demise (untimely? Yeah, he was like 250 when he died so maybe I should find a better word), I don't really celebrate New Year's Eve as intently. It's not the same. I asked Marta to marry me at 12:01 on 1/1/12, but only after I got Ryan Seacrest's approval to do it on NYE. But there is a spirit of rebirth that comes with the calendar flipping over and a new year beginning. I'm looking forward to it - despite the milestone birthday that lies ahead - and I'll open the year studying poetry, writing it, and learning it.

How was your year? I hope your 2013 was as good as mine. And I hope our 2014 is even better.

Other wordly

It's been a week now, which seems like a long time, but it's really only seven days, and what's seven days in the grand scheme of life anyway?

If you've visited this space for the short while of its existence, thank you. But then you know that I just got a Master's degree from Nova Southeastern University. What you might not know are all the details that go into that, but we'll get to that sooner or later. Anyway, a group of my friends from that program - Carol, Brandon, Veronica, and me - trekked to St. Augustine, FL. for the Other Words literary conference in which we presented a panel on showing versus telling in fiction writing.

The uninitiated might not care that much. But if you're in an MFA program, an MA program, or even a cool writer's group, then you've probably heard the criticism that you are doing too much telling and not enough showing in your story. Our panel was called "Tell Me About It," and it dared to suggest that maybe, just maybe, telling was ok.. Holy, shit! This is blasphemy!

(For the record, I am both in a cool writer's group - the Alley - and an MFA program at Converse College. More on both later, since the MFA thing is a life unto itself).

This concept - that telling might be ok in a fiction piece- is such heresy that Brandon suggested that there might be picketers outside the Markland House, the historic building on the historic campus of Flagler College where the conference was held. We got some mileage out of this amongst ourselves as well as in front of the 23 - yes, friends, 23 - that showed up. This was an SRO crowd by the way, as we scored a very cozy, very historic little room to do our thing).

After lunch in the dining hall, where the four of us, plus my amazing wife Marta met and ate lunch (if you've dined at Flagler, you've run into Agnes at the cash-only check out counter. But, shit, $6.99 for all you can eat, ain't bad, and there was a good vegetarian option. Again, I digress).

So at 2:45, we're on. Well, no, we weren't, because the group before us ran long. So maybe 2:55 or 3 we took over with our subversive rhetoric. I was thrilled that we had three lovely young women waiting for us. I wasn't so thrilled when I used a piece of art to pick my nose and realized these three lovely young women were there for us. So it goes.

Pix to follow.

As a poet- and I can't stress enough how I've held off using that term to describe me - the concept of showing and telling in fiction doesn't apply. I concluded, through extensive Internet research totaling nearly an hour, that there were three instances where telling was absolutely necessary in poetry:

1. Clarity: Sometimes, we have to let the readers see the world we want them to see exactly as we see it. To me, this is where the reader and the writer really connect. Also, in terms of temporal changes and time shifts, narration keeps things clear for the reader.

2. Brevity: Honestly, it takes longer and a lot more words to show than it does to tell. And poetry is all about trimming unnecessary words;

3. Emotional detachment: Showing is more emotion evoking; telling is more concrete. Additionally, sometimes, you just want an objective response from the reader so you can save the emotional responses for when you really want them.

Also, in terms of telling in poetry, ballads and dramatic monologues are important, but you could probably make a good argument that there is a good amount of showing in these forms as well.

Whatever. We presented a panel at a real literary conference. One of the attendees friended me on Goodreads. A couple of them found us wandering around St. Augustine and told us they thought we were great. It was pretty cool to be a rock star for a weekend.

And now back to reality.

Until next time. Show don't tell. But don't be afraid to tell. Just do it well.

Whatever.

Third Egg's a charm, but so were the first two!

My poem, "Minnesota Stars," was the featured egg this week on Eggpoetry.com! It's the third time Shayne Terry and the others there have selected one of my poems for this honor, and I'm totally flattered. A lot of thank you's to them, again.

(Here's a link to check it out: http://blog.eggpoetry.com/minnesota-stars_david_colodney/)

If you're not familiar with the Egg concept, it's a unique one. If you subscribe to Egg, you'll get one poem a week, by email, and you get to kind of sit with it for a while, get to know it. At the end of the week, it's gets posted on the site itself under "eggs past."

They always say - who are they? Not sure, but you know who they are - that the "third time's a charm," but the first two were as well. I'll never forget getting the email from Shayne nine months ago, in February of this year, letting me know that "Spanish River Skies" was selected as an Egg. I was at a get together at a friend's house, and everyone there got to share in my excitement. I mean, as writers, rejection is part of the deal. So having something accepted for publication is pretty cool. In fact, as bad as rejection is, you sort of just accept it as part of the gig and get used to it. But getting something accepted is such a great feeling. I can't imagine getting tired of reading the acceptance email.

(Here's a link to "No Fall to Speak Of, the June 4, 2013 Egg: http://blog.eggpoetry.com/no-fall-to-speak-of_david_colodney/, and, of course, "Spanish River Skies," the first of my poems to appear in public, the February 5, 2013 Egg: http://blog.eggpoetry.com/spanish-river-skies_david_colodney/)

How Bleached's Search for the Lost Go-Go's Album Resulted in My Favorite Record of the Year (so far)

Ride Your Heart

Dead Oceans Records, 2013
Dave’s Grade (for what it’s worth): A
I can’t stop listening to this damn album.

Los Angeles’ Bleached appears to aspire to sound like every girl group (or every girl-fronted) group you’ve ever heard, from the Shirelles to the Bangles to the Breeders. And that’s a good thing because over the course of its 37 minutes, Ride Your Heart – Bleached’s first full-length record, released in April on the Dead Oceans imprint – shakes up all of its SoCal influences in a giant aural blender and what comes out is, essentially, the great lost Go-Go’s album. Again, a good thing, because I’m hard pressed to find a better (or more fun and entertaining) rock record out this year, one that is immediately accessible yet deceptively complex.
 
Fronted by former Mika Miko members Jennifer and Jessica Clavin, Bleached takes us on a tour of all their influences, at first listen glossed up for a night out under a crystal-clear Southern California sky. “Looking For a Fight,” the opener, is what the Ramones would sound like if they were fronted by Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson of the B-52’s. The killer first single, “Next Stop,” follows. But as the record moves along, the Clavin sisters dig deeper. “Dead in Your Head,” with its soaring, multilayered psychedelic chorus, as well as the longing title track, wouldn’t seem out of place on the Beach Boys’ legendary Pet Sounds. “Waiting by the Telephone” recalls pre-Parallel Lines Blondie; Phil Spector could have produced “Dreaming Without You” for one of his girl groups in the 1960s. Ditto the closer, “When I Was Yours.”

Much like L.A. alt godmothers the Go-Go’s 1981 debut, Beauty and the Beat, hidden under the layer of cheer lie songs of loss and wondering. “Dead in Your Head,” clearly the centerpiece of the record, laments the inadvertent hurting of a boy the singer “loves the most,” but asks the chorus’ pointed question, “When you close your eyes at night, do you dream about all the things dead in your head?” In “Looking for a Fight,” singer Jennifer Clavin warns listeners right off the bat that she’s “not right.”  In “When I Was Yours,” she notes that she “has a bad brain that can’t be saved.” As the song (and album) fade into a burst of feedback, Jennifer mourns over the noise “I’ve almost tried to lift away.”

Brilliant in its pacing and nearly flawless in its production, Ride Your Heart is an astonishing debut. Able to blend its influences into something that never sounds derivative, Bleached – with any sort of luck – will be the soundtrack of many endless summers ahead. 

The Decision, Version 2013

I wonder if I had a 30-minute special on ESPN to announce my decision on an MFA program, if anyone would tune in. There would be me, announcing to the world, that "I'm going to take my talents to..."

Would anyone watch? Probably my wife, maybe one or two of my three sons, certainly my one-time thesis advisor, perhaps my sister-in-law, maybe my buddy Rich. Not sure it would register on Nielson ratings.

But to me, I feel like my decision is as important as LeBron's was a few years ago when he picked Miami over his hometown Cleveland and all the other suitors in the NBA. At least to me. Because the first decision was whether I would even pursue this in the first place. Like, was it worth it? The Master of Fine Arts degree is basically an academic one, a credential designed for tenure-seeking college professors. If I had an undergraduate degree in English or creative writing, I probably wouldn't be pursuing it. Becoming a professor would be a great thing, but I'm not sure that's the track I'm on. In my case - an undergraduate degree in political science, a successful career in the insurance field, but a relentless literary fire that began burning a few years ago and rages on as I free fall into middle age - an MFA maybe a necessity because I'm largely self-taught. I've completed a poetry collection, and am on the verge of finishing a second, but I really don't know what I'm doing. Like, I think I'm pretty good, but I couldn't really tell you the difference between a Shakespearean sonnet and an Italian sonnet. I think I probably need to know stuff like this.

Some background:

I salvaged my academic reputation with a stint in the Master of Arts in Writing program at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL., where I got my MA this past May. I could ramble on about the people I met, and the great experience, but I'll save that for a more reflective time. Right now, I gotta gear up for the future. But my time at Nova resulted in a couple of poetry publications and a 4.0 GPA that basically will make everyone forgot about my miserable undergraduate performance.

So now I have to decide between three, and the clock is ticking in more ways than one. It's October, and the next term starts in January. And my own clock is ticking, too, because I'll turn 50 in February. Ha, a grad student at 50. Go figure. Better late than never or too little, too late? Time will tell, I guess, and it will tell really slowly.

The first thing anyone applying to an MFA program needs to know is that MFA programs come in two varieties: the traditional and the low-residency. The traditional is exactly what you'd think it is, so no further explanation is really needed from me. The low-residency format is kind of designed for people like me: older, with families and jobs. Other than format, there isn't anything clear cut that says one is better than the other. Obviously, there is less opportunity for funding in the low-res format because you just aren't there long enough to be a TA or a graduate assistant. In the low-res format, you go for a residency, usually between 9 and 10 days, twice a year. In between residencies, you are broken into groups of 4 or 5, and you work with a mentor via email, snail mail, telephone, etc.

I picked two low-residencies and a traditional to apply to. I got accepted into both low residencies, and I'm waiting to hear from the traditional - at my local state university, Florida Atlantic - but I fully expect to be admitted, considering the killer writing sample (a portion of my NSU thesis), a 4.0 GPA, and some publication credits. I'll get in, for sure. I'll bet Howard Schnellenberger's moustache on it.

FAU's biggest selling point is that it is close to my house. I could easily travel from home, or work, and get to class. This is followed closely by the fact that FAU is a state university, and tuition is reasonable. There would be no travel costs, no overnight stays. While I am certain the faculty is very good, in all honesty, FAU has no real literary reputation.

If you asked anyone with an advanced degree to describe their experience in grad school, at some point in the description the word "grind" would come in. Grad school is one hell of a grind, and going to FAU would have me knee deep in the grind for the next two and a half years, going from work to class on the only two nights of the week I'm not on daddy duty. I just did this; I'm not sure I want to do it again.

The first MFA program that took me was the University of Tampa. The folks at UTampa pursued me more than I pursued them, and I really like that. While the official university line is that there isn't funding for their MFA program, I was able to get some money to go there. While the tuition is kind of high - it's more than $7k per term - this is a nice little offset. The fact that the UT campus is 218 miles from my house is good, too, and that their fifth and final residency tuition is only $1500.

Don't even get me started on the emotional aspects of attending UTampa. It's a beautiful campus, a small slab of historic European architecture in the middle of downtown Tampa. But Tampa is my adopted hometown, a quirky city I lived in once and hope to return to one day. Also, Jeff Parker, the first director, wrote the very well received Ovenman (2007) and A Long Wild Smile. I really connected with Parker, and he seemed to want me in the program. But he's not the director anymore. The new director, Steve Kistulentz is in charge now, and I've spoken to him on the phone a few times. A cool guy. And a poet in charge! That can only help.

The other program I've been accepted to is Converse College. This intriguing little program is located in Spartanburg, SC. Converse is a traditional woman's college, and is very small. The grad school is co-ed. Honestly, they are making it hard for me to say no. The director, Rick Mulkey, is accessible and friendly (he, too, is a poet). The faculty includes poets like Denise Duhamel and Suzanne Cleary. The winter residency is spent in the mountains of Tryon, SC, in a place where F. Scott Fitzgerald lived. They keep their enrollment low - there are only 33 students in the program - and faculty and students live together in the same place. The experience sounds incredible.

The residency is nine days, one less than UTampa, but you have to add travel time. And I'd be spending additional time traveling. The January residency actually starts December 30, and I'd incur the additional expense of bringing my wife up for new year's because I wouldn't want to ring in 2014 without her (it was at 12:01 am, on 1/1/12, that I asked her to marry me in the first place). Tuition is a little lower at Converse, but the distance adds costs. Still, US News and World Report raves about this place in its rankings, and South Carolina is a beautiful state.

I've actually got a chart with the three options and all sorts of categories. Hell, the UTampa baseball team won the Division II Championship this year. Gotta count for something, doesn't it?

I gave UTampa a deposit a while ago, and Converse needs one by the 21st of this month. UTampa's is refundable; Converse's isn't. I need to decide soon. I know this is a good problem to have. But it's a big decision.

And I'm taking my talents to...

Let you know when I do.

Keep you posted.