Poem [Lana Turner Has Collapsed!] (Frank O'Hara)

This poem by Frank O'Hara is so quick, so glib it's almost gleeful. It's fun and it's light to read, but all the subtext is lugubrious.

It's such a Hollywood poem - it deals with a movie star and a tabloid story of her collapse. It's such an inconsequential story. N of the poem is walking when his world is suddenly stopped short by this story and he seems to have such a visceral reaction to it - he implores her to 'get up', 'we love you'. It makes me wonder about that kind of connection people feel toward far-away movie stars. And it made me wonder if that feeling of connection is sad or empathetic.

I like the sense of N you get from this poem. All of the 'ands' and run-on sentences in the poem makes the speaker seem really young. And then his seemingly random concern with Lana Turner makes N seem immature - his feelings, like his thoughts are scattered and all over the place.

I like that this poem can be both a portrait of a person and also contain talk of the glibness of Hollywood culture (and also a bit about the weather in NYC!). It's a short, quick poem that contains more and more the longer I look at it.

Favorite line: "I was trotting along and suddenly / it started raining and snowing"

I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20394#sthash.cBOOhrbN.dpuf