poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

I'm sorry. Maybe I just don't get it or maybe I really just need to know who Lana Turner is but the poem doesn't really make sense; doesn't seem to go anywhere; accomplish anything. Maybe not. Maybe I'm just predjudice because I just don't like it. But, it is poem of the month and I give you my congradulations.

Sorry, Jason. Lana Turner was a classic bombshell of studio dominated Hollywood. She was a frequent subject of Frank, who loved her kitch appeal. The poem is supposed to be an anti-poem, from his "I do this, I do that" period. No deep meaning or language, until usually the last line. Just a list of events. It instills a feeling of NYC cool and deep care about social fabric. You should check out Personism: An Essay by O'Hara for an explanation of the style.

I loved this poem when I first read it (24 years ago, as a 19-year-old in a freshman poetry class) and it's still one of my favorites. It seems so feather-weight and dashed-off, but it holds so much -- Pop culture, tabloid sensibility, the voice of reason vs. breathless glamour, the NY/LA dichotomy, the weather in the way when you're trying to get somewhere. And one of the greatest last lines ever.

Just a great poem. Seems like lightweight fluff but it's really simply terrific. Me, I usually go the Auden/Eliot route but this just speaks to me. I love the breathlessness of it, the New York attitude, the sudden shift as it switches to LA.

One way to read the poem is as a light, comically-toned pair-up to the heavy, tragic tone of 'The Day Lady Died.'

Both are in Frank's 'I do this I do that' mode, and both involve a day's journey interrrupted by discovering a sudden news headline.

Here, though, instead of Billie Holliday's troubled life and tragic death, we get a hilarious riff on the distinction between real trouble and imaginary self-pitying trouble... "Hailing hits you on the head HARD / so it was really snowing" i.e., things not nearly as bad as they might be; which is echoed in Lana Turner's comically trivial troubles (she 'collapsed' at a Hollywood party, and the gossip columnists picked up on it). Sort of, "be careful what you complain about"...

In a funny side note, Frank wrote this poem in one sitting, on the Staten Island Ferry, while on his way to do a poetry reading with the famous (and rather self-pitying) Robert Lowell, who was very annoyed that Frank had the temerity to read a poem he had written only 15 minutes or so before.

And you gotta love that last line!

I've heard a recording of Frank O'Hara reading this poem... he goes through everything really fast and sarcastically. Very entertaining.

This trivial nature of the subject of this poem is always, always hilarious to me - especially in the last line.

When I was a little girl, and was having a fit about something or other (as most little girls are prone to do, really), my mom used to say, "Lana Turner has collapsed!"

She'll occasionally say it when I (now nineteen, and a huge O'Hara fan) am fretting over something, and more than once - to cheer me up - she's said (in one breath): oh Lana Turner we love you get up!