Poem Talk

AL FILREIS: I'm Al Filreis, and this is Poem Talk at the Writers House, where I have the pleasure of convening three friends to collaborate on a close, but not too close reading of a poem or two. We'll talk, maybe even disagree a bit, and perhaps open up the verse to a few new possibilities. And, we hope, gain for some poems that interest us, some new readers and listeners. And I say listeners because Poem Talk poems are available in recordings made by the poets themselves as part of our Penn Sound Archive writing.upenn.edu/pennsound. Well, Poem Talk has gone on the road again, and we are here in Los Angeles, California, at the Pacific Palisades, home of Marjorie Perloff, who for the third time, I think it's the third time in Poem Talk history, has generously agreed to host us, along with audio maestro Chris Martin and videographer, editor, director Zach Carduner, who are recording this episode for both audio and video playback. I'm also joined by Robert von Hallberg, Professor of Literature, Claremont McKenna College, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and author of many books. Among them Lyric Powers, and The Maltese Falcon to Body of Lies: Spies, Noirs, and Trust, American Poetry and Culture, 1945-1980. Last time we did this, Bob, I said this was a very important book for me and it remains so. And Charles Olson, The Scholar's Art among other work. And by Charles Altieri, professor emeritus at Berkeley, also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And he, too, author of too many books to name, including Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity, The Art of Modern American Poetry, The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetics of the Affects, Canons and Consequences. And one new one, which I have a feeling is gonna be part of our Gathering Paradise at the end. So we'll hold off for that. And by our aforementioned kind host, the amazing super productive Marjorie Perloff, Austrian-born poetry scholar and critic whose books include, just to name a few of them, Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire, Unoriginal Genius, The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir, which has now been translated into five languages I wanna say, possibly, maybe six. Wittgenstein's Ladder, a book that is back in everybody's minds, The Futurist Moment. And relevant to today's Poem Talk, her 1977 book on Frank O'Hara titled Poet Among Painters. And who, just to add some fun facts, OK? We've never done this in an intro but we're about to, took her graduate degrees from? You don't tell us. Anyone guess? Graduate degrees from? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Catholic University. 

AL FILREIS: Catholic University. Bing! You get a point. Whose second teaching job was at? 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: The first was Maryland or the second. 

AL FILREIS: I think Maryland counts as the second 'cause you... Yeah, OK? Maryland is the answer so you get a half point for that. Who left Vienna in? When? What month and year? Oh, you can. The Anschluss. March of 1938. Whose very first book in 1970 was about? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Yates. 

AL FILREIS: Yates. You win. You win. And we've never done this before. Oh, there's one more. And whose most recent book publication is a new translation of? The private notebooks of Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1914-1916. How was that? We've never done a bio quiz. Marjorie, thank you. Hello. Thank you for hosting us again. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Love you, Al. Great to see you. 

AL FILREIS: We've had some fun conversations in this spot. Bob, good to see you, as always. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Nice to see you too, Al. 

AL FILREIS: And Charlie, you're a rookie on Poem Talk. I can't believe it. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Well, yes, we did a little small thing at the Huntington. 

AL FILREIS: We did, at the Huntington, right before COVID. I said let's... We pulled out our phone, and we did the same over Stevens. We both talked Stevens. I think we did Anecdote of the Jar. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Yeah, you did it. Yeah. Out at the Huntington, I think so. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: I'm not sure. Did we do the Snowman? 

AL FILREIS: No. We did Anecdote of the Jar. We did Plot against the Giants. Such fun. Anyway, welcome, Charlie. Well, today, the four of us have gathered here to talk about two poems by Frank O'Hara. The first is titled Poem or a Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed), very famous. And Song (Is it dirty), sometimes known as Song. They are both obviously printed in the Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara. The recording of poem we'll hear is from a reading O'Hara gave at the Lockwood Memorial Library at SUNY-Buffalo in September of 1964. And the audio of Song we'll hear is taken from the TV program USA Today Poetry. Sorry, USA: Poetry from the 11th episode of that series produced by Richard Moore for KQED (TV) and WNET in New York, and was extracted from the video originally filmed in New York at O'Hara's apartment in March of 1966. So here now is Frank O'Hara performing Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed), and Song (Is it dirty).

FRANK O’HARA: (RECORDING PLAYS). The next poem is called Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)! 

I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see a headline LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up (AUDIENCE LAUGH) 

The next poem is called Song. Is it dirty does it look dirty that's what you think of in the city does it just seem dirty that's what you think of in the city you don't refuse to breathe do you someone comes along with a very bad character he seems attractive. is he really. yes. very he's attractive as his character is bad. is it. yes that's what you think of in the city run your finger along your no-moss mind that's not a thought that's soot and you take a lot of dirt off someone is the character less bad. no. it improves constantly you don't refuse to breathe do you (RECORDING ENDS) 

AL FILREIS: Let's turn to the Lana Turner poem. Bob, start with you and everybody can follow. I'm interested in the use of the verb tenses. I, naively, every time I go back to O'Hara, I think, Oh, he uses the present tense. I do this, I do that, and it's amazing. But then when I reread this, I realize it's a very complicated use of tense. It's not so simple. Can you get us started? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Well, it's in the present at the beginning, 'has collapsed'. We're in the moment where that's a report on the past. But we're in that moment. Although he doesn't read it dramatically that first line at all. Then it goes into the past with 'I was trotting along...' and so forth. It breaks out at 'and suddenly I see a headline LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!' and they're into the present. I mean, what I like about the poem aside from its being amusing, is that it's encouraging. It's a little moral parable of come on, get up and let's get a move on. So with the past then shifting into the present and extracting the lesson of the past into the present at the end of the poem. 

AL FILREIS: So Marjorie, it seems... What Bob is suggesting is this seems to work with the 'I do this, I do that' with the setup of there's a little playfulness about the past. Does that make sense to you? 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Yeah. And I think it's very accurate too. I think one of the important things about O'Hara, we were talking about this at a discussion About of All Things, Robert Lowell and Frank O'Hara. 'Cause he wrote it on the Staten Island Ferry, at least he said so. 

AL FILREIS: On his way to a reading. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: On his way to a reading at Staten Island. And he wrote it and Robert Lowell got very angry and said, well, "I don't read poems that I've written on the ferry, no don't do that." So it was sort of suspect in a way. And obviously it was sort of also poking fun, I think, at Whitman's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Hart Crane's The Bridge, all those things about bridges and ferries. But the word collapsed is very interesting. Because you can collapse from all kinds of things. I mean, you can collapse from illness, you can collapse from other things. But the accuracy is that Lana Turner was no longer in '62 what she had been. Because she had had all that trouble with Johnny Stompanato, her husband and the daughter Cheryl, whatever her name was, Crane, had knifed him. You remember that? The daughter was... They had had a huge fight and the daughter got so upset that she knifed him 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Or took responsibility for Turner knifing him. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: You know, yeah, right. And so, Lana Turner was in the news a lot, but for all kinds of things that are not such good things. And so, Lana Turner has collapsed, I mean, it's such a famous name and yet, collapsed. So, I mean, the choices. It's not just any movie star, I wanna begin by saying, yeah. 

AL FILREIS: Charlie, take us anywhere you wanna go. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Well, what interests me most about the poem is just, what is the worldview in which this speaking occurs, and what's the attitude towards Lana Turner? And I think that he sets it up as a contest, right? Who can collapse and who can't collapse? Who can push the limit further? And because she can push the limit further, he wants her... They love her, 'get up'. And I think it's partially my own account of gayness in that New York environment. It becomes a kind of freedom from enlightenment moralism senses of rightness. And it allows a kind of cultivation of intensities and presence so that the poem is, in a way, a kind of celebration of non-morality. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Of acting disgracefully to a point, is your point. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Well, as a contest. How much can you risk or how much can you reject moral standards for love, for other kinds of relationships? And when I was preparing, it's as if Nietzsche gets invented in a kind of minor social tone. But the rejection of mainstream moral thinking seems to me virtually absolute in this poem. Right? 

AL FILREIS: I have been watching the expressions of our two friends, and I cannot wait to hear. First Bob, then Marjorie. What are you thinking? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: I think I'm following up on what Charlie said about the suspension of moral judgment. But go back to Marjorie on the word collapse and focus on that. 'Cause I think it's obviously a complicated word. But when he says 'LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!' And then it says, though somebody said, what she got to worry about? What's Lana Turner got to... What justification for collapsing does she have? That line's excise 'there is no snow in Hollywood' and now we get the artful recovery of the relevance of what seemed irrelevant before. That was it hail or was it rain? And that's recovered here like the environment is perfect in California. What has she got... What reason does she have to collapse? 

AL FILREIS: But she has some reasons. We were just discussing them. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Yes, that's right. And 'I've gone to parties and behaved perfectly disgracefully'. But I never did that. I never collapsed' And then the solution, I mean, it's very funny. I think I don't need to say it, everybody sees... The humor there... 

AL FILREIS: Even the audience in Buffalo at the Lockwood Memorial Library laughed. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: They need to laugh. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: But the solution is the affirmation of love. 

AL FILREIS: Say that again. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: The solution to Lana being collapsed is 'We love you. Come on, get up'. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: The 'we', that's a crucial part of it. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Yes. Yes. Whatever your problems are, they should be resolved by feeling loved. And 'we love you. Come on, get up.' 

AL FILREIS: Marjorie, what are you thinking? 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Well, I think it's just a very ordinary situation. I think one of the reason people love Frank O'Hara all around the world is we've all had this experience. I don't see so much morality in it namely, "I'm feeling rotten. I've got a hangover. Last night I behaved perfectly disgraceful. Been to lots of parties. So I'm feeling pretty awful. And it's raining and hailing, and I'm late. And New York is horrible. And there's noise. And you see this headline, LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!, which is such a ridiculous headline. Is there no other better news that you see on the newsstands as you walk by. But who the hell cares? Oh, well, Lana Turner has collapsed. There's no rain in Hollywood. I mean, she didn't even have a reason to collapse like me. Who knows why he collapsed? You know, whatever. But I've never actually collapsed. Oh Lana Turner, we love you, get up. And I don't think it's so much about love. I think it's the joke, the kind of campy joke about, thank you for having collapsed, because you gave me permission. I feel better about last night. That's how I read it. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: You focus on the word trotting. 'I'm trotting'. And you, you're just lying there. (CROSSTALK). 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: I've been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful. And it's hailing and raining. But you say it's not hail. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Why do you say it that having done all those things doesn't mean he did it last night? I mean, there's nothing in the poem to suggest that. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: He says so. 'I've been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful'. You'd presumed is the night before. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: No. Why do you presume that? I don't presume that at all. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Alright. But let's say you don't. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: That contextualizes the love. 'Cause you can love Lana Turner as a kind of aid or support. Or you can love Lana Turner because she breaks the rules. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Or you cannot love her, I would say he doesn't... I don't think he's saying he loves her. I was thinking, "Oh, thanks for saying that, Charlie. I love you. I've always felt that way," you know? I mean, it's that kind of love you. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: I think that trivializes the poem. 

AL FILREIS: Before we turn to the other poem, I wanna throw something out. It's probably a little goofy, but that's my job. He famously wrote it on the Staten Island Ferry. He is on his way to Wagner College. I even know who the host of the reading was. It was Willard Moss, who was Marie Minkins partner and a bisexual filmmaker and very much in the scene, and he was on his way quickly to this reading. There's been several accounts of it. I love the phrase 'get up'. Because it suggests a certain productivity. Lana Turner has been... She's not getting up. O'Hara's got to write another poem for the reading tonight. You almost get a sense that he's run out of... And he does it right there. That is the best getting up I've ever heard. Getting up is like, I'm gonna write the poem right now on and screw Lowell who thinks I had to have spent six months in drafts that are all now at the Harvard Library, the Lowell thing. Really a different mode entirely. I'm gonna write it and I'm getting up. It's not survival. It's standing up. It is productivity. It is, 'I can do this. This is what I do. Come on, Lana, you can do it too.' How does that sound? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: I agree too. And in the context of poetry, you think of Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle, you know? How dark that was and how awful. I mean, the years before it granted, 15 years before. Yeah, 15 years. But this is very affirmative. And that's the beauty of Frank O'Hara. Is that he has that bright spirit that comes through. But it's not any bright spirit, right? I didn't know about the Lowell context, but it's perfect, that kind of concrete alternative of that I can identify with you because you are now feeling worse than I felt, but because of excess. And therefore, I wanna affirm you, we want to affirm you... 

AL FILREIS: Well, excess has resistance. It's a major theme for him. Speaking of acting disgraceful, I love that non adverb there, acting disgraceful. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: We should talk about that. Yeah. 

AL FILREIS: Do you wanna talk about that before we go to the next poem? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Yeah, I think I do. Because it's hard... I listened to you and you hesitated a little speaking it. 

AL FILREIS: Marjorie almost couldn't say it. You could almost (CROSSTALK). You had to add the adverb. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: So what does that tell us about the artifice of his style? That is he's, who is it? Does he not know that he needs an adverb there? No. But why? Then he's pretending to be somebody who is occupying a zone of the English language that doesn't discriminate between adjectives and adverbs. 

AL FILREIS: And who's also moving very fast and is not gonna revise supposedly. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: OK, yes. Good point. 

AL FILREIS: But speaking of acting perfectly disgraceful, we have another poem where, there's a seedy side of a city. I guess my opening question is for Charlie. 'It' in the first line, 'is it dirty'. At that point, we don't know what 'it' is. We're gonna learn what it is, I think. But at that point 'it', is it dirty? I mean, I, because the poem is called Song, my first reaction when I first read this poem was, 'Ooh, it's a dirty song'. It's dirty. That may be in later, but clearly something else is dirty. Nominations are open for what is dirty. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: A shirt. 

AL FILREIS: A shirt? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Yeah. He's getting dressed. Thinking about... 

AL FILREIS: Marjorie doesn't agree. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: I just think it's the question, is it dirty? Is the subway dirty? Is the city dirty? Cities are dirty. It's not supposed to be one thing. What is dirty? Is it dirty? But of course, also, is it dirty? You know, is the song dirty or whatever. 

AL FILREIS: Charlie, by doing my Poem Talk thing and saying 'it' is open-ended, is it open-ended? It is, isn't it? A little bit? 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Well, I mean, it's open-ended in the sense that it doesn't have a reference. But the open-endedness produces part of the tightness of the poem. Because by the end, both 'it' and 'dirty' have changed. I mean, 'it' becomes this possibility of this encounter, and 'dirty' becomes a blessing. At least as I see it. And... 

AL FILREIS: Dirty becomes a blessing? 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Yeah. It produces the promise of a sexual encounter that... 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Where is there the promise of a sexual encounter? 

AL FILREIS: Well, someone comes along. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: He has a crush on somebody and he's told he's very bad but he has a crush on anyway? That doesn't mean they're having an encounter. 

AL FILREIS: Well that's something of an encounter. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: A fantasy encounter at least. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: A fantasy encounter. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Should you go to bed with this guy? 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Yeah. But it's not clear that that's even available. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: No, but it's desirable. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: It's desirable. Oh yeah. But that's different from having an encounter. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: OK. But anyway, the referent moves and the dirty moves, those are my points. 

AL FILREIS: Can we riff on what dirty means in a lot of different senses? I mean, there are two, obviously, that we're already talking about. But let's spell it out for folks who wanna hear us spell it out. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Well, I think it's a shirt in the beginning. Because I think he's getting ready and he asks, is it...What you do. You check out the shirt, can you wear this shirt again? 'Is it dirty? Does it look dirty?' And then he says, 'that's what you think of in the city' appearances. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: I think you're specifying it much. I mean 'Is it dirty? Does it look dirty? That's what you think of in the city.' 'That is what you think of in the city' why would it be a shirt? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: It could be a jacket. That doesn't mean... 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: No. Why is it an 'it' at all? It's dirty. Is it dirty? Is the house dirty? Is the garden dirty? Is it dirty? 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: But now I see something that I hadn't before. I should have maybe. 'You don't refuse to breathe do you' means even if it's dirty. I didn't see that. 

AL FILREIS: But we have a lot of complex things about the city going on. First of all, breathing the dirty air, right? Breathing as an analogy to being dirty, right? This is a dirty, grimy time. So, you guys are all too sophisticated for me. I just want a riff on what dirty could mean. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Well, in sense the dirty meaning... 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: It's a city adjective. It's the New York adjective. The thing that was always said about New York, especially in those years. "Oh, it's so dirty, we're moving to Westchester." New York is too dirty. I don't wanna go to New York. So it begins with a normal question. A silly question. Is it dirty? But it quickly becomes obviously something else, which is, it is the thought dirty? 

AL FILREIS: Is the thought dirty? Acting disgraceful. Yes, dirty thoughts. I think that's a phrase I heard when I was a kid. You can't have... Don't have dirty thoughts. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Or joke. Is it a dirty joke? 

AL FILREIS: It's a dirty joke. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: So that would be, 'run your finger along your no-moss mind that's not a thought, that's soot'. 

AL FILREIS: No-moss mind. What a phrase for this poem. What the heck is that doing there? Yeah. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: What does that mean? 

AL FILREIS: I don't know. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Not countryside (CROSSTALK) can do. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Your mind doesn't stand still. No-moss grows. 

AL FILREIS: No-moss growing, alright. When I think of that phrase... When I think of that phrase that I must have been a kid when I heard somebody say it for the first time, I say it all the time. No-moss growing on that rolling stone, meaning Frank is so kinetic and so active. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: There's no moss growing on him. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: But the 'run your finger' also suggests masturbation. 

AL FILREIS: And dirtiness. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: The 'no-moss; line, you can do a lot with it, but it's sexual. I think that's a sexual line. That's not a thought that's soot'. That's so funny. 

AL FILREIS: Can you clean someone up? And are they still... You know, you clean up nice. (CROSSTALK) You clean up nice but you are still a dirty character. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Yes. But then he qualifies that by saying, 'is the character less bad? No. It improves constantly'. 

AL FILREIS: Yeah. What does that mean? That's funny. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: I think means that cleansing this person in any one stroke, not possible. He's still gonna be that person. However, the character improves in time. Because that is what... I take it the question is, whether you go to bed with this guy and fulfill your desire. You feel the desire... 

AL FILREIS: Despite character flaw. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Yeah. And is he going to improve by it? No, not gonna be able to remove that. But in time, it improves. Yeah? 

AL FILREIS: Let's talk about New York. It's a very important topic. And especially in the second poem, but probably in both. Who wants to start? Bob? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Well, I think here, I think this is a kind of Baudelairian poem, the one we're talking about. About the dirtiness of the city, the sootyness of the city, and the lowness of one's desire. There's a poem, Le Jeu, the game, Baudelaire. And he's describing these very ancient prostitutes and gamblers and pimps and so forth and admiring that they have been persistent in their desire. And I think what he is doing here is questioning... I may be wrong 'cause it makes him seem prim. But I think he's questioning the nature of his desire for this character and that that is the desire of slumming sort of, that it's inside him. 

AL FILREIS: That's fascinating. Marjorie, do you wanna pick up New York and then Charlie? 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Well, I think the tone is very different from that. I just don't see the... I mean, I love Baudelaire, but I don't think that's the tone. I think it's very light. And I think it's something that, I would say, that is iterative, it happens all the time. You know, we're talking, I'm talking to Vincent. And I say, "Oh." And he'll say, "Oh, you don't wanna get involved with him. He's got a very bad character. And the very fact that he has a bad character makes him more appealing." "Oh really?" He comes along, 'as his character bad. is it. Yes. that's what you think of in the city run your finger along your no-moss mind that's not a thought that's soot ' which is such an amazing line as if you're having a thought about something dirty, so the thought is soot. It literally is. Becomes soot. 'And you take a lot of dirt off someone as the character less bad. no. it improves constantly you don't refuse to breathe do you'. It's sort of the willingness to say, I'm not prudish, I'm not gonna be impressed by this. He appeals to me, whoever it is... 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: I agree with Marjorie's reading, but not the tone of her reading. I think this is too general. But if you imagine that Song is connected to pastoral in a way, this is the kind of perfect urban anti-pastoral. And the celebration of the reversals all the way through become a condition of not just living in the city. That's what Lowell would think. But embracing the city. Because it's not the country. It's not moss. 

AL FILREIS: It's no-moss. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: But it's also dear dirty Dublin, you know? I think of that. I mean, it's that kind of dirty, you know? dear dirty Dublin, you know. 

AL FILREIS: Yeah. Could there be better way of describing O'Hara's approach than what you just described? I think I'm with Marjorie on tone, but I still want, and maybe it's just the poetry critic or poetry teacher in me that wants to make things like big. But the breathing to me becomes, I don't wanna say serious 'cause it is, 'you don't refuse to breathe do you' haha, that's smart. But there's something about breathing, it's relation to poetry itself, inspiration. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Well, how about living? You don't refuse to live, do you? 

AL FILREIS: No, but it is breathing. It is breathing specifically because of course it's... 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Internalizing. Taking it into your body. 

AL FILREIS: Yeah. It's aspiration and inspiration. But I wanna take the poem seriously as a poem about poetry and the only way I can do that... 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Why do you wanna take it seriously? 

AL FILREIS: Because that's my job. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Why can't it be about the city? And about desire? Why does it have to be about poetry? 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Why is that your job? I mean, the whole purpose is to see how you can maintain that... And you could maintain if you overwrite it. The typical poet would overwrite this poem this way. I met so and so and seemed very... I was warned about him. And then there'd be a lot of detail about who he was, what had he done, who else had he had an affair with, and all that. And you don't have any of that. You don't know. That's the whole purpose. You don't really know who it is. 

AL FILREIS: I think this is for me, an existential question about me. That is to say, when I find a meta poetic moment, and I do believe the breathing, it can be that, or is that, or I want it to be that, one of those three, I wanna take it seriously. I know it's, 'you don't refuse to breathe do you' haha, that's really clever. But you don't refuse to breathe any more than you refuse to be in the city, any more than you refuse to act out your desires when you can. And I think that poetry is associated with those desires and with needing to be in this particular place, this dirty city. I think it's a pretty serious topic for him. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Do you know maybe he's ever gonna act out his desire? You don't know that. 

AL FILREIS: I think he's happier with the Song. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: How do you know? 

AL FILREIS: No, I don't know. I'm saying he's happier having written the Song. I think it's the same thing with Lana Turner. I think he's really delighted that he put together a poem that quickly that is every bit as sophisticated and complicated in this rhetoric that we have discussed. How marvelous that he was able to do that, all of that. I mean, this is as, I don't know if we said the word worked, but this is as worked as For the Union Dead, which took the guy eight months to write. It's remarkable. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: But I think that the middle stanza is the meta poetic. Forcefully meta poetic than the breathing. 

AL FILREIS: Can you say why? How? 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Because it turns what is a description into a kind of validation of a mode of desire. So it just changes the affective conditions of what the oppositions are like dirt and under, because it puts a human context on it. And the placement of that seems to me just absolutely brilliant. 

AL FILREIS: I would like to go twice around. Once around to invite each of us to say something about both poems, if you can, either comparatively similar or somewhat different. And then the second time around for final thoughts. Any kind of thought you have that you haven't said yet. Bob, are you ready to do either of those? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Yeah, I think so. I love the Lana Turner poem. Have always loved it. And I love the lightness of it. And I love Cavafy. And I think of O'Hara and Cavafy as being a good kind of pairing for making clear both of them. I don't love this is a dirty poem. I don't. Because it's so moralizing. And I don't understand the position from which you'd begin, and maybe this is just my limitation. I don't understand how you'd say I'm really attracted to X, but he has a bad character. Should I or shouldn't I? I think that such a person, how can such a person have the lightness of spirit and the sophistication to write the Lana Turner poem, is the way I'm putting it. 

AL FILREIS: Interesting Comparison. Alright, Marjorie, a thought about both poems together or about O'Hara in general? 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Yeah. Where I disagree here, and I do like this poem so much, is I don't think it is about the real thing. I think it's what we tell ourselves. Like, you tell me you might wanna meet so-and-so, and then I say, oh, what's he like? And you say, well, he has a bad character. I mean, it's about that basic... I think all these poems are about basic moods, mental processes whereby we justify ourselves or we try to explain why we did something. That doesn't mean it's a good thing to do, and it doesn't mean that's how you meet people and so on. But when you are confronted with this kind of situation where maybe it's somebody you really shouldn't meet, you justify it by saying you don't refuse to breathe, do you? I mean, it's a way of justifying oneself. And so is the Lana Turner poem in a different way, a way of justifying yourself. And they're meant to be, I think they're generalized enough so that there isn't too much specificity, so that anybody could have this feeling. And I just think that's very appealing and very hard to do. And it's very funny as I said that, 'that's not a thought that's soot'. Of course it is a thought, he's thinking it. But it's a dirty thought. So it's soot. 

AL FILREIS: That's charming. That moment in the poem is charming. But what do you think about the word 'character'? That is to say... 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Which? He, himself? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: He's assessing a sexual partner, a prospective sexual partner, in terms of character. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: I don't think it's that literal. I mean, he's saying you wanna meet so and so? Well, he's really got a bad character. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: No one's ever said that to me, I don't think. It's an old fashioned word. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Are you kidding? I've had that said to me often. Well, they're kind of, he's really not a good person and makes you more attractive really in many ways. 

AL FILREIS: Charlie, your turn to talk about the poems in comparison. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Well, I mean, I think that as people were saying that the lightness is crucial, but the lightness has a finality to it. You can't imagine another word to an O'Hara poem. And that's really part of the striking effect. And, of course, he doesn't do it with images. He does it with sheer intelligence almost, that sense of finality, which is really remarkable. And Lana Turner is a great example of that. The other poem is not. But I increasingly like it because it makes all the figures operate, right? I mean, the dirt, the ordinariness in the beginning, the sense of that middle stanza and how the person is introduced and how one context of dirt just shifts entirely to a different kind of context of dirt and evaluation. And again, there's nothing else to be said. You breathe, don't you? I mean, Olson could say that in a way, right? But Olson would wanna mystify the breathing process. Whereas O'Hara's point is it's totally natural. And I think that's part of the power of the poem. 

AL FILREIS: Marjorie, you're the host, so you get to break ranks and say one more thing. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Yeah, one more other thing. I think it's much more literary. So is Lana Turner than we're acknowledging. And that's one of the reasons O'Hara is so different from many of his imitators, many of the New York imitators. Now literary, for instance, this is the theme of let's say Lotte Lenja Surabaya-Johnny, look how bad he is. He's a bad guy. And the more he's bad, the more “und ich liebe dich so”. And so there are many. It's a common theme, and he certainly knew the Threepenny Opera. 'Cause he has a poem on it. And it's the basic Threepenny Opera theme. Especially because he's a bad guy, has a bad reputation, that's why I'm drawn to him. Otherwise it might be very dull. So, in both poems, I think in Lana Turner too, we could look and find, we haven't, but there are lots of literary references to earlier poems. I mean, he's very literary, Frank O'Hara, much more than he admits. And so there are a lot of literary cross-references. And that might make you feel a little bit differently about the word character. I mean, if you want a larger theme, it's about being attracted to something you know isn't good for you. It could be anything. 

AL FILREIS: And I keep wanting to ask, does poetry have anything to do with that? Poetry itself? 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: What do you mean? 

AL FILREIS: Well, this stance of, "gosh, I like to do things that are probably not good for me, or I like to get involved with people who are probably not good for me." Does poetry... Does his writing... 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Once you state that, you lose the poetry. (CROSSTALK) 

AL FILREIS: Marjorie is referring to an important tradition that enables the stories, the scene, and then that enables the tone and so forth. It's partly... 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: How about Clarissa, Lovelace? I know He's not good for me. 

AL FILREIS: Exactly. So this is a time honored tradition and it may be quasi pose for O'Hara at certain points, but what does that have to do with the production of the poems? I think, everything. I think this is, that's the get up point I was making. I think what comes out of this thought about Lana Turner, what comes out of this thought, out of this experience is that he got a really good poem in that tradition. And he did it perfectly using the speaker who's not quite O'Hara. 'Cause O'Hara was a little more careful than this. Let's go around one more time. This is a final thought on our discussion. It could be anything, a final thought. This is not our recommendations, that's next. Quick thought. Something you came today to wanna say, but you didn't have a chance to. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Well, from the discussion, I'm thinking differently about O'Hara from having the discussion. Because I think all the artfulness and the intricacy that's come out in the conversation, I haven't been thinking of O'Hara that way. And what Charlie was talking about the closure of the poems, that's kind of controversial for me. Because I think he's got a lot of his art invested in clever remarks. And I'm not sure that I've got as much desire and admiration to give to clever remarks. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Who talked about clever remarks? Who talked about clever remarks? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: I thought you did. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: I don't think I did. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: I thought you said that 'is it dirty' closes with a clever remark. No? 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Well, if I did, I didn't mean clever in the register of clever. 

BOB VON HALLBERG: OK, well, I'll say it. I'll stand by that. I thought I was just agreeing with you but I actually think that's what it is. 

AL FILREIS: Thank you, Bob. Marjorie, final thought? 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: When I first wrote my O'Hara book in the '70s, more people said, "well, he's not really a major poet." And the funny thing is if you just look up sales, that wouldn't necessarily mean anything, but he's one of the most popular poets in the world, in Poland, you name the country. And I'm trying to think why that's really so. And I think what you could just call clever remarks is an incredible way of creating tone. Now, he doesn't always achieve it. There are plenty of poems in the collected poems that drag or that don't quite work or whatever. But I think in both these, and in many of his poems, what he's able to do that almost no other poet I can think of can do that way is a balanced tone so that the tonal register's so well done, the address. And the sense and the way you feel you are overhearing and coming in, in the middle of it. And that it's so funny that he can laugh at himself. 'I think I was made in the image of a sissy truck-driver', that's in Naphtha, one of my favorite poems. 'I think I was made in the image of a sissy truck-driver'. And I don't think they're clever lines at all. I hate clever lines in poetry. I think there, there's so many poets that have these clever... Well, where are the clever lines? 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Sissy truck driver. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: Well, but he fits into the poem. You see, in the context. It's only a matter of context. There's nothing wasted here. I mean, I'm not saying this is one of his best poems. I don't even think Lana Turner is one of his best poems. But when he says, 'a grace to be born and live as variously as possible', Second Avenue, it has grace. I would say the quality that O'Hara most has to me, is a grace like a ballet dancer, almost, on toe, when he's on. He's not always on by any means. The collected poems says 'thick and a lot could be eliminated'. But the grace is very special and very sad. I wanna get back to something Charlie said before. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: I don't think, a lot of people, Jim Breslin wrote on this and other people have written on this and on much more, that in fact, he's not such a cheerful poet. It's very sad. 'Cause these moments don't last, they never last. And there's always death around the corner. And there are many poems that do deal with that directly and that obsession with death. And then in fact, he did die so young. And so there's a lot of sadness and a lot of feeling you never get what you want, really quite, and you joke about it anyway. 

AL FILREIS: Charlie, final thought. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: I had a very interesting to-me experience. Because I've always seen O'Hara as a kind of ally in sort of personal responsiveness to the world. But partially because of what I'm thinking about. I think now that there really is a challenge to philosophical thought in this work. And it's essentially, this is a kind of naturalism, what's entailed in that naturalism? How do we come to terms with the sadness? How do we come to terms with the limitations of desire? And it's really trying to work towards a totally secular culture. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: I think that's a good point, yeah. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: And a sense that even the whole intellectual processes are not close enough to the domains of desire and immediacy to help sort of work out the kinds of values we need. So, now I think that there's really a kind of instructive quality in this poetry that I hadn't seen before. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: That's interesting. 

AL FILREIS: Yeah. My final thought is pedestrian compared to what you guys have said, but it's just something I have to say about this Lana Turner poem. Years ago, a student came to me and said, "I wanna get going on my writing, not pre-writing state of mind thing. I don't know how to... I'm not a creative writing teacher, I don't know how to do that. But how do I get in the first lines? How do I get a sense of revving up? How do I get going to my topic?" And I asked the student to read this poem, and it was apparently helpful. And later I went back and I tried to figure out what was my intuition about that. And it's the I-N-G words which are at the beginning, which disappear, doesn't use any I-N-G words after he gets going. Doesn't need to. It's almost as if, I don't know... It's a motor scooter. And he's like voom, voom, voom, voom. So trotting, raining, snowing, hailing. Hailing, snowing, raining. That's all in the first few lines. And then he doesn't need that thing, that powerful way of setting a tense. And it is just brilliant the way that works. It's almost to the point of too much, you know? If you were the creative writing teacher with a red pen, you'd probably say, too many of these I-N-G words. But then he just goes off and does his thing. We like to end Poem Talk with a minute or two of gathering paradise. Which is a chance for all of us, if you're quick, to spread wide our narrow dickinsonian hands to gather something really poetically good to hail or something going on in the poetry world or the film world or the opera world. And so, who wants to gather some paradise? Bob, do you have any recommendations? 

BOB VON HALLBERG: I've been rereading Kleinzahler. And his most recent book is Snow Approaching on the Hudson. And sometimes it's hard with Kleinzahler, I think, well, what's this poem about? Is it about an experience? Well, a lot of them are just gatherings of strange terms and strange voices. And these very non O'Hara, though they're both city poets. They both feel that what they should be doing is recording and rendering memorable, unusual urban, experiences. So I would recommend his Snow Approaching on the Hudson. A different kind of poetry. 

AL FILREIS: When was it published? '21. So it's new. Thank you. Good suggestion. 

AL FILREIS: Marjorie Perloff, recommend something. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: I'm gonna recommend Charlie. Literature, Education and Society: Bridging the Gap. I haven't read it. I mean, I've just gotten it. But Charlie, really, of all people I know, really has a great understanding for education without being corny about it and doing the usual sociological moves. I've just been reading John Guillory, which in a way am disappointed in. So I'm hoping that... I'm looking forward to reading this, Bridging the Gap. And I'm very glad he's taken this on. Because we can all say things, but it's so hard to take this topic on today when English studies are in so much trouble. The other book I'm gonna recommend, which we were talking about before, is Afro Pessimism and Incognegro by Frank Wilderson. These are not my usual sorts of books. I don't specialize.... 

AL FILREIS: Afro Pessimism is like 2020. It's a recent one. 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: 2020, and the other one is 2016, Incognegro, and maybe the better of the two even, or the livelier of the two. Now, these are mixes of autobiography, theory, doctrine. The narrative part is much the best part. The theory is sometimes overdone in some ways. But the narrative part is simply brilliant, because again, I guess this is just a quality I look for. And the older I get, the more I look for it. I'm somebody who can laugh at themselves. Who doesn't take themselves so seriously and who doesn't preach. 

AL FILREIS: Thank you, Marjorie. Charlie, go ahead and make your recommendation. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Two recommendations really. One is the poet Robin Schiff, and she's got three books. The first one is Worth, and the third one, which is really spectacular has worth in the title, I don't remember the rest of it. But what interests me about her is that she does a kind of free associational poems that keep coming back to various motifs. So she has a kind of freedom, but a kind of structure at the same time. But it's not a fixed structure. I mean, it's one of the ways of dealing with multiplicity and flux that I find quite exciting and she's very inventive. And the other book is just my stuff. But Heidegger wrote in 1951 a kind of commentary on Hegel's philosophy of experience. And what's great about it is Heidegger and Hegel are like the last people to imagine in the same conjunction. Just Heidegger hated history, Hegel sort of shaped, or tried to find a shaped history. But what Heidegger does is try to understand why Hegel's notion of experience is distinctive. And it's because you're aware of the conditions by which you're experiencing. And I think that that is really relevant to what art does as well as what a possible philosophy could do. But that is... I think O'Hara is quite aware of kind of this. Is you don't just have an experience, but you have a sense of the significance of what you're experiencing at the same time. And part of the activity of the poet is to relate that secondary mental level in a way. And so, I think it was very exciting in lots of directions. 

AL FILREIS: That is the first time that Heidegger has been recommended in gathering paradise. 

CHARLIE ALTIERI: Well, I never thought (CROSSTALK). You're not recommending him. 

AL FILREIS: We haven't heard Heidegger in gathering paradise, we now have. My gathering paradise is a recommendation of a section of Barbara Guest's, The Confetti Trees, which is possibly prose poems. And the one section I'm interested in and I wanna recommend is called The Minus Ones. And it was written as Barbara Guest was reflecting upon her girlhood in Los Angeles, surrounded by the emigres of World War II, people in art and film, the brothers Mann, Mahler Schoenberg, the camera people. And she absorbed all of this sense of the refugees and their reasons for coming to Los Angeles as a child. And she wrote a piece, The Minus Ones, which is about a young girl trying to start to write. And she writes stories that no one will want to publish because they have absorbed the plot and the avant-gardism of the people, including the film people that she was surrounded by. And it's just a lovely reminiscence-based really. Without knowing this, you wouldn't know that the Emigre experience of World War II with a girl growing up in Los Angeles was part of it. When you read it together, you realize her experiment in a surrealist story writing has that as its basis. Just for me, a remarkable thing. Well, that's all the no rain in California. And I say that because I've been here all week and there hasn't been any rain. And I realize that you guys got... 

MARJORIE PERLOFF: And there's no snow. 

AL FILREIS: There's no snow in California and no hail, but... 

BOB VON HALLBERG: Well, we've got snow on the mountains. Mount Baldy has snow. Yeah. 

AL FILREIS: This week, no rain in California. That's all the no rain in California we have time for on Poem Talk today. Poem Talk at the Writers House. It's a collaboration of the Kelly Writers House and Penn Sound and Jacket2 at the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks so much to my guests, so much. This has been so great. Bob Von Hallberg, Charlie Altieri, and Marjorie Perloff. And thanks once again to Marjorie for hosting us today. And to Poem Talks director and videographer, Zach Carduner, who's right there, (SNAPS FINGERS) I'm snapping away from my mic. And Chris Martin for handling the audio. And to Poem Talks editor, the same amazing Zach Carduner, who's got quite a job ahead of him. Next time on Poem Talk, we'll be back at the Writers House in Philadelphia, talking with Erica Kaufman, Simone White, and Joan Retallack about a poem by Tina Darragh called Wire Boxes. It's a great poem. This is Al Filreis and I hope you'll join us for that or another episode of Poem Talk.