Frank O'Hara and Horatio

Watched a movie tonight: Beastly. It's the Beauty and the Beast story hit with a modern re-telling. I say "hit" meaning hit over the head with a blunt object- Professor Plum in the Study with the Lead Pipe, possibly- but I still liked it. In no small part due to the poem which I'd never heard of, because I somehow missed the poet in my poetry classes, or was never taught of him. Frank O’Hara.

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles 

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them 

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse 

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

And here is another:

My Heart 

I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!", all to the good! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open. 

Another one that I like is Morning, but it's long enough that I'm not going to paste it here... but here is a link to read it yourself.

Oh poetry, I still love you, despite your general inaccessibility and tendency towards the obtuse.

There is such a strange and difficult dichotomy between expecting God to intervene and at the same time laying what you want down at His feet and letting Him choose what to do with it.

to quote another poet... Horatio Spafford,

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul. 

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul! 

It is well ... with my soul!
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Now that one I get.