What a tease: "Meditations in an Emergency," tonight's episode of Mad Men, made no reference to Frank O'Hara's poetry. Instead, O'Hara's title served as a nothing more than a metaphor for the anxieties of the Cuban Missile Crisis. (The emergency of O'Hara's 1954 poem seems to be love, or life itself.)
I wonder whether the prominent use of O'Hara's "Mayakovsky" in the season's first episode ("For Those Who Think Young") was designed to elicit a lit crit sort of interest in the series. If so, it worked, at least on me. I watched every episode, followed every stilted conversation, often wanting to tell these people to turn some lights on. (I know, the show is "dark.")
Here's a brief passage from Frank O'Hara's prose-poem "Meditations in an Emergency," presenting the poet as sunny anti-pastoralist:
One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.Related posts
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comments: 2
I thought last night's episode was chock full of great, punchy lines, even more so than usual: e.g., Peggy: "Tell the truth. Don't worry about the outcome. People respect that." Don: "I know you want everything the minute you want it. Sometimes it's better to wait until you're ready." Pete: "If I'm going to die, I want to die in Manhattan." Etc. Now, these lines aren't exactly poetic, but I do think they have an aphoristic quality to them so that when strung together one after another like they were last night, the result was something akin to poetry.
I liked Pete's line, but it seemed to me like a good line, assigned to a character. (If there's a reason that it fits Pete, I'm not clear on it.)
I'm the odd man out on the subject of Mad Men, and I know it — I just don't see what many people — whose taste I respect : ) —see in the show.
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