I was roughly 18-19, and it was “Hôtel Transylvanie” by Frank O’Hara. It’s on page 350 if you have the big black Collected Poems (University of California Press, 1995) by you now. It's here, if you don’t. It’s not even my favorite Frank O’Hara poem anymore, but when I read it that long ago, it got to me.
Someone had pointed it out.
It suggested what I had always suspected, that there was a gaming element present in human relationships. A game was going on that I didn’t fully know about or understand, but I liked that I felt trusted with that information. Thanks, Frank.
The line you know that I am not here to fool around, that I must win or die made me feel like someone had just left it all on the field. Teenagery and dramatic and romantic and epic.
I didn’t (and still don’t) understand all of it. Even reading it now, it feels nice not knowing exactly what’s going on. He tells me I only have to be myself, as I am being, as I must be, as I always am and shall be forever no matter what fate deals you or the imagination discards like a tyrant / as the drums descend and summon the hatchet over the tinseled realities. I only sort of understand that. But I know what he means.
The last three lines.
It's mean! You are amusing / as a game is amusing when someone is forced to lose as in a game I must
I was jealous of the things he put in there, the things he knew about that I didn’t, like a Futurist torture. Hopefully, the art you like makes you look at least one thing up.
The way it looked on the page didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I felt like he just did what he wanted, with the slashes and punctuation. I read it and thought, that guy just did exactly what he wanted. Moreover, I felt like he had earned the right to do exactly what he wanted.
You will continue to refuse to die for yourself is pretty good too.
It made me happy that I recognized the qualities that made it a good poem. And I felt a sense of accomplishment in the recognition.
Shall we win at love or shall we lose
It was a good poem.
Wonderfully phrased. The first always gets us. Thanks for taking me back to this Frank O'Hara poem so beautifully!
Posted by: tree turtle | March 16, 2015 at 01:35 PM
It's clear to me, now, that the only people truly worth knowing are the true poets. The good news is that they're everywhere; the bad news is that they don't advertise.
Posted by: doc | March 20, 2015 at 01:11 PM