Customer Reviews

In Memory Of My Feelings

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Beyond being a tribute to Frank O'Hara's ambidextrous grip on both poetry and painting, this admirable book attains another virtue: Each of his 30 poems becomes as individualized as the days of the month--as hath September April June and November--and you feel you are listening to Frank in his glory each day, each evening in his unkempt apartment, and your eyes can wander over all the hasty pictures hanging on the wall from his artist friends. And the white sheet between these poems offers you a rest, a shared bed for the night, if you're plastered. And you and Frank are not yet forty, so there's time time time, spake the Calendar.

This bound volume, printed in 2005, duplicates the content of the 1967 edition, which however comprised single-fold sheets in a slip case; each 4-page unit included a virtual blank bearing only volume page number, artist name/poem title; a spread with decorative art and poem title and text; and a concluding blank. So the bound volume preserves a lot of white space.

The Museum of Modern Art decided to use only American artists. The sepia and/or black illustrations range through abstract, pictorial, and comic strip. Each artist's intention is to react to the poem and do a suggestive at-ease piece that friend Frank would like.

The 3-page Afterword (1967) is by Bill Berkson, Frank's pal, so it is a warm embrace indeed.

The Poems are:

Ann Arbor Variations
Jane Awake
The eager note...
Poem to James Schuyler
Chez Jane
Blocks
(excerpt from) Second Avenue
Romanze, or The Music Students
Ode (June 18, 1954)
Meditations in an Emergency
On the Way to the San Remo
Music (October 1954)
To the Film Industry in Crisis
Sleeping on the Wing
In Memory of My Feelings
A Step Away from Them
Ode to Willem de Kooning
Ode to Michael Goldberg('s Birth and Other Births)
Image of the Buddha Preaching
The Day Lady Died
Rhapsody (June 30, 1959)
Song (July 31, 1959)
Hate is only one of many responses...
Naphtha
Khrushchev is coming on the right day...
Variations on Pasternak's "Mein liebchen was willst du noch mehr?"
Poem to Donald Allen
Poem V (F) W
Light clarity avocado salad
For the Chinese New Year & for Bill Berkson

P.S. "Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara: A Memoir" (2003) by Joe LeSueur provides rich detail on many of Frank's poems, including at least a half dozen in the MoMA volume. Plus, the naked truth about Frank's life and Joe's life. A joy to read!