The poem Meditations in an Emergency gives the title of Frank O’Hara’s most original volume of verse and my favorite of them all, though I do adore Lunch Poems as well.
Born in 1929, he moved to New York in the early 50’s and most of his poems are related to this city he adores. He is definitely one of the greatest and most striking poets of the twentieth century and a great contributor to the New American Poetry.
To accompany my reading, I chose a piece of Miles Davis, found on the soundtrack of Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud. Miles Davis was born only three years before O’Hara in Illinois, US and was one of the most influential (jazz) musicians of the last century. In O’Hara’s Personal Poem, he even mentions Miles Davis, you can read the excerpt here: “I’d like to have a silver hat please/ and get to Moriarty’s where I wait for/ LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and/ shaker the last five years my batting average/ is .016 that’s that, and/ LeRoi comes in/ and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12/ times last night outside BIRDLAND by a cop/ a lady/ asks us for a nickel for a terrible/ disease but we don’t give her one we/ don’t like terrible diseases.”
All there is left for me to say is that I would have loved to live in New York in those incredible times, to bump into Frank in Central Park and to go listen to Miles in clubs.
Enjoy the reading and may you dream with eyes wide open for the rest of the day!
Month: August 2014
Sylvia Plath – Mad Girl’s Love Song
Mad Girl’s Love Song must be one of my favorite poems written by Sylvia Plath, when she was 20 years old, in the 50s. Anguish and severe depression were what controlled Sylvia’s mind in those college years and it was two years after having written this poem that she attempted suicide for the first time. World can sometimes be a terrible place for people with great imagination, who often fantasy the ones around them, rather than see them. But, I won’t analyze it, this is a mere introduction to this great poem.
The image I chose to use in order to illustrate this poem belongs to American photographer Francesca Woodman, born in Denver, Colorado, who some might say is the Sylvia Plath of photography. She took her first self-portrait at the age 13, and by the age of 22, the moment of her untimely death by her own hands, she took about 800 beautiful works, most of which nudes, blurred and using long exposure. Woodman’s work is represented in the collections of major museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Tate/National Galleries of Scotland. You can find more of her works here: http://www.artnet.com/artists/francesca-woodman/
The background music is Mozart’s Lacrimosa (Requiem).
Charles Bukowski – Bluebird
Dear friends,
Welcome to my new blog, I hope you will enjoy every reading of mine I will be posting here. I started with Bukowski’s Bluebird, this one is dedicated to a dear old friend who just moved to New York and dragged his own bluebird along with him across the Atlantic. My voice is accompanied by Eleni Karaindrou’s excerpt of the piece On the road.
poems in the wind 