Meditations In An Emergency by Frank O' Hara

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?

          Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

          Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?

          I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

          Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.

          However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.

          My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

          Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?)

          St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am I to become a legend, my dear? I’ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus—the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, “to keep the filth of life away,” yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.

          Destroy yourself, if you don’t know!

          It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

          “Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho’ She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. —Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. —I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.” —Mrs. Thrale.

       I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

Hello, and welcome to words that burn the podcast. Taking a closer look at poetry. This week's poem is meditations in an emergency by Fran O'Hara. And I think it wins the title of longest poem to appear on the podcast. But when I read it in preparation for this week, I couldn't resist including it. So if you'll bear with my indulgence and listen along, I think this one is really interesting.

Frank O'Hara could be described as a sleeper poet of the 1950s. That's not to say that he didn't achieve the same level of fame as the likes of John Ashbury or Allen Ginsburg. Indeed, He was more prolific in many cases than both. Most of his work being published posthumously after friends and colleagues went through countless drawers and boxes to find hundreds of scribbled poems that he had created in his time. ¹

But during his lifetime, he did not publish so much. His work reaching many more people after his tragic death on Fire Island in 1966. It's not hard to see why Frank O' Hara rose to prominence with his work. It's all at once accessible and yet completely alienating. The speaker here seems to be engaged in a very distressing stream of consciousness. It's all there in the title meditations in an emergency.

This was changed from the original title meditations on an emergency because Kenneth Koch suggested that it was more prescient, that it  gave a greater sense of urgency and I'd be inclined to agree. ²

Here,  O' Hara presents us with his trademark style of a rambling collection of imagery and allusion, all woven together in a bizarre tapestry that can only work for Frank O' Hara. This kind of bricolage or melding together of things comes from O'Hara's own obsession with painting. He was a member of the New York school of poets alongside the, the New York school of poets alongside the likes of John Ashbury and Barbara guest. ³

That group itself sprung from the meeting of groups of painters who all painted in a similar style. Eventually these artists would draw those who sought a more experimental form of expression; O' Hara was among them.  When we look at this energetic poetry, we can understand how brush strokes and expressive streaks of paint might have influenced him.

This poem, in fact, was written in the wake of O'Hara's separation from the painter Larry Rivers. O'Hara had been enamored and in love with Larry Rivers for  years. ⁴

Unfortunately in 1957, when  this poem was published, they separated for the final time, the stress of their on again, off again, relationship too much for either to bear. This left the poet devastated. 

We should as always separate the speaker in the poem from the artist themselves, but that would be a betrayal of Frank O’ Hara, I think because so much of his poetry was lyric and personal.

During his lifetime, he garnered most praise for his famous collection, lunch poems, a series of sometimes long, sometimes short poems written on his lunch break and traversing New York city.⁵

Critics, since his death, have named him the master of the urban pastoral because of his amazing ability to conjure all at once a completely objective and subject window, a completely objective and subjective window into New York in the fifties. ⁶

Yes. He describes the cities with an almost Joycean  accuracy, but at the same time, he infuses the character of that city with his own experiences within it.

This has been noted by critic Hazel Smith who writes fascinating essays on how Frank O'Hara created, what we called hyper landscapes or psycho geography⁷, the landscapes that have been shaped by those that live in them.  She writes:  

On the one hand, O’Hara’s are the most topographical of poems and represent a highly delineated locus. The grids, landmarks and routines of New York become the poem-as-map filtered through the consciousness of the poet. On the other hand, O’Hara’s poetry also involves a radical questioning of place through a decentered subjectivity. ⁸

That is almost certainly what is happening here.

Frank O Hara was always capable of rendering the grim reality of New York, but quite often chose to be romantic about it instead, basking in the security that the urban landscape gave him [citation]. He  often placed himself in opposition to rural or country life while doing so, but here this grand emotional event has unraveled him.

He is seeking safety in New York, but cannot find it to the point that he chooses to leave. By the end of the poem,

I have split the poem into five distinct sections, taking a look at each one. I've tried to separate them based on the giant leap in imagery that occurs. We could almost look at them as five separate poems, If we wanted. 

Starting with the first 

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?

          Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

          Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?

          I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

   Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.

 There is a wonderful desperation here, a plea to his lover to reconsider, to take him back.

He's being forced to reassess his own identity in the wake of this emotional travesty; am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde or religious as if I were French. There's something very tongue in cheek in using such a verbose term as profligate , which means wasteful and to equate it to a blonde. Religious as if I were French, is to me a reference to Joan of Arc and her zealous devotion to the Lord.

He makes a heartbreaking statement. Each time my heart is broken. It makes me feel more adventurous, but parenthesis makes that an untrue statement, the same names, keep recurring on that indeterminable list for me, I took this to be the men he returns to when his heart is broken, the people he spends one night with to feel anything but loss, he recognizes however, one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

The next two lines are where all the desperation focuses: Why should I share you? I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. There is an inherent contradiction in each of these. That contradiction is something O'Hara would tread the line between with masterful balance and they are littered everywhere in his poetry. They are one of his defining features, the ability to invoke so many things in stark opposition, and yet find a way to tie them together.

He says, even trees understand me. He is so simple that even inanimate objects like trees can understand him, but even that is taken from him, as he says, good, heavens I lie under them too. I'm just like a pile of leaves. There's something very pathetic in this imagery. There is a sense of worthlessness in these lines.

A man forced to take stock of his value in the wake of being rejected by another. He rallies in the next section: 

 However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.

Within this small stanza is one of O’ Hara’s most famous lines of poetry; I can't even enjoy a blade of grass, unless I know there's a subway handy or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is incredibly applicable to modern life for me. I read it and thought of the stresses in my own life and how everything is a slight rush now.  I was taken aback by how much I related to this, sitting still is an endeavor in modern life. And apparently it was the same in the fifties. O'Hara steels himself against the sentimentality of the first few lines: I have never clogged myself  with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past.

This is not a man who believes in halcyon days, he can move on. He waxes lyrical as he often does about the wonderful structure of New York. He claims that it is important to affirm the least sincere. This is as good a window as we'll ever get into Frank O'Hara's philosophy. He truly believed that for literature to progress, it had to move away from the romantic lofty language of high literature

He once explained that in a statement to new American poetry in 1959, he said: 

I don’t think of […] clarifying experiences for anyone or bettering (other than accidentally) anyone’s state or social relation, nor am I for any particular technical development in the American language simply because I find it necessary. What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don’t think my experiences are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else; they are just there in whatever form I can find them. ⁹

This goes some way to explaining this rambling poem. He is laying out his emotions as he finds them, this is the form they take. It is an incredibly honest style of poetry. The next stanza is one filled with a very melancholy, gentle self-loathing:

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

The first few lines of this stanza are strangely cold. Look at his own eyes. The contradictions I spoke of a little earlier, come back in a relentless list, living up to the statement that they change all the time;  indiscriminate, fleeting, specific disloyal, always looking away or again at something.

He uses the subjunctive to say if only he had another eye color as if that would make a difference to his personality, it is more rationalization from the poet. A hope that things could be different if only he could change one thing. We, as the reader, feel this is hollow. We know that nothing would change.

If Frank O'Hara had brown eyes or green eyes, he would be just as heartbroken

The pathetic imagery hinted at, by the pile of leaves, returns when he says  looking again at something after it has given me up, O'Hara feels that he is always the one to be left behind.

I would stay at home and do something,  is possibly a reference to the collection Lunch Poems and  his wanderings around New York. They were Frank O'Hara's own personal Odyssey. He would travel to various locations in the city and have lunch using this as a context to inform us. ¹⁰ We might guess that he was out and about to avoid being home and alone.

He once again dips into his bag of rationalization, as he says, it's my duty to be attentive. I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. He is intentionally vague here. We will never know what things need him. We can imagine that they are his own anxieties and lately, so great has that anxiety become  that he cannot sleep.

Frank O Hara was a proud gay man ¹¹and never made any attempt to hide his sexuality. In fact he uses his sexuality in the third stanza to talk about the toll that heartbreak is taking on him:

Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?)

St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am I to become a legend, my dear? I’ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus—the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, “to keep the filth of life away,” yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.

That tongue in cheek tone has returned. So jaded in love, so heartbroken is O'Hara here that he will leave homosexuality behind,  heterosexuality is hot on his heels. The parentheses return here, and there is yet another small tongue in cheek moment:

How discourage her? There is something intentionally provocative in making heterosexuality a feminine trait. One that would be traditionally associated with homosexuality. He goes on to invoke some unusual things.

Saint Serapion or The Martyrdom of Saint Serapion is a 1628 oil on canvas painting by the Spanish artist Francisco Zurbarán¹² In the image, we can see the white robes that O'Hara reflects. Clearly we can see the white robes that we can see the white robes that O'Hara references.

There are many reasons O'Hara would choose to invoke this Saint. And this image in the 1950s being gay was to invite persecution. There was no choice ¹³.There is a witty comparison drawn between martyrdom and the gay lifestyle at that time. He then asks a question of his lover once again: how am I to become legend? My dear I've tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another, every time Frank O'Hara tries to express himself, tries to draw himself nearer to his lover, his lover retreats. Away from him. Yet  O'Hara has no choice, but to throw himself forward to spring forth from it like a Lotus, the ecstasy of always bursting forth, to be exactly who he is.

He then references hyacinths. That choice of flower is not taken lightly. The hyacinth in Greek mythology is a symbol of devotion to love beyond death.¹⁴ A small message to his lover. That his affection has not entirely gone away. The way  in which it keeps the filth of life away is because in the Victorian period, it was strongly associated with joy and joviality. The thing that keeps the filth of life away is joy. The bam to a broken heart.

There is another reference to a part of himself that O’Hara would change; his  heart, where the filth is pumped and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. This is an aggressive rolling list. The filth he is referring to here, in my opinion, are his emotions, his longing, his wants and desires to be loved. They are causing him pain. He follows his heart everywhere. He has no choice. He must spring forth.

He answers his own question; How am I to become legend My dear. By being the man without a heart, a mysterious vacancy. And he condemns the reader who might question his metaphor, destroy yourself. 

From there, he steels himself once more from the very sentimental dialogue he just engaged in with:

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

 “Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho’ She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. —Poor silly Cecchinal or F:B: as we used to call her. —I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.” —Mrs. Thrale.

This entire section borders on farce; he pays a compliment to his former lover. It is easy to be beautiful, but difficult to appear so,  the problem is that his lover was able to do so with ease. And so O'Hara was trapped from the beginning. He says, now looking back at the entire relationship that it's like the chapter no one reads, no one will care, but him.

His lover has moved on and he has been left with the rushed tying up of loose ends. 

The Fanny Brown exploit is a parable. Fanny Brown is run away. My lover is run away, scampered off with a cornet of horse. I do love that little Minx and hope. She may be very happy though. She has vexed me by this exploit a little too.

It's exactly what has happened to O'Hara. He is vexed by how he has been left, but he loves that person so deeply he cannot help, but want the best for them. 

He quickly comes to his senses in the final stanza saying: 

 I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

He must leave his beloved New York. It is too filled with painful memories. He chooses to leave in the most melodramatic Hollywood fashion possible. He throws a shawl over his head and smeared sunglasses to escape and not be recognized in the New York streets. This kind of strange reference to Hollywood glamour is very common in his work and is littered throughout Lunch Poems. 

He knows he will not stay away forever. I'll be back. He will reemerge, but sadly, he expects to feel the same loss in the valley, Los Angeles that he has felt in New York. He will reemerge defeated. 

This is a final act of defiance against his lover who doesn't want his companionship. So now even with their absence, he will defy them. There's a small note of hope. It's only afternoon. There's a lot ahead. There is hope for O'Hara here. There may be better things to come, but there's not much to look forward to as there won't be any mail downstairs, no correspondence, no communication. He's alone. Turning I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

That final act of self deprecation of debasement is towards the apartment. He is leaving. 

I love this poem. I think. It is exemplary of all the things that made Frank O'Hara one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. It is chaotic and sprawling and yet at the same time, there is a relatability here that few people could conjure in such a host of disparate images.

Greek mythology, Victorian far a Kafkaesque obsession with his own body. And yet, somehow it still works.

O'Hara never leaves his reader without a thread to follow even trees. Understand. Good heavens I lie under them. The reference to trees then leads into his mention of the pastoral, which in turn transitions to the blades of grass, a possible reference to Walt Whitman. He finishes that particular stanza by talking about the clouds in the next, he mentions that his eyes are vague blue, like the sky.

He goes on to talk about how he can spare little sleep. And the next section begins with the phrase unshaven, a traditional symbol, a traditional symbol of a bad night's rest.

These small threads allowed readers to engage with, what would otherwise be, Incredibly alienating works. It is a very honest reflection on the desperation we sometimes feel in losing someone we adored. the rash melodramatic actions that we find ourselves swinging between like a pendulum. On the one hand, we wish to be stoic and strong on the other.

We would give anything to have that person back. It is an astounding poem and I urge you to read it yourself in your own time.

1. “Frank O'Hara.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/frank-ohara.

2. “Frank O'Hara.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/frank-ohara.

3. The Editors. “The New York School of Poets.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/147565/an-introduction-to-the-new-york-school-of-poets.

4. Gooch, Brad. City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara. New York: Harper Perennial, 2014.

5. O'Hara, Frank. Lunch Poems. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1978.

6. Stillman, Anne. Review of Frank O’Hara and Urban Pastoral, by Timothy Gray. The Cambridge Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2011): 375–84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43492370.

7. O'Rourke, Karen. Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016.

8. Smith, Hazel. Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O'Hara: Difference/Homosexuality/Topography. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000.

9. Allen, Donald Merriam, and Frank O' Hara. In The New American Poetry: 1945-1960. New York: Grove Press, 1960.

10. Caples, Garrett. “Naked 'Lunch': Behind the Scenes of Frank...” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Accessed July 18, 2022. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2014/06/naked-lunch-behind-the-scenes-of-frank-oharas-lunch-poems.

11. Gooch, Brad. City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara. New York: Harper Perennial, 2014.

12. Brenson, Michael. "Monastic Masterpieces from Zurbaran at Met". New York Times, 25 September 1987. Retrieved on 24 April 2009.

13. Sullivan, Gerard. “Discrimination and Self-Concept of Homosexuals Before the Gay Liberation Movement: A Biographical Analysis Examining Social Context and Identity.” Biography 13, no. 3 (1990): 203–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23539517.

14. Seaton, Beverly. “Towards a Historical Semiotics of Literary Flower Personification.” Poetics Today 10, no. 4 (1989): 679–701. https://doi.org/10.2307/1772806.