Reviews

Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara

cazzalarouge's review

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challenging dark funny reflective slow-paced

4.0

lamphouse's review

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4.0

favorites:
-"To the Harbormaster"
-"River"
-"On Rachmaninoff's Birthday"
-"For Grace, After a Party"
-"Jane Awake"
-"Ode"
-"Radio"
-"Mayakovsky"

tyranosarahrex's review

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5.0

I don't think this is necessarily a five star worthy anthology but the poems that are worth five stars are so five star that it doesn't even matter.

aena's review

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3.0

I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing.

lauraisabeldp's review

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4.0

I, too, read this book after hearing about it from Don Draper.
Frank O’Hara wrote beautiful poetry in a way that seems effortless. At times mundane and other times very moving… And then sometimes too abstract for me to understand!

meerablack's review

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reflective slow-paced

3.0

klazu's review

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challenging emotional tense medium-paced

3.0

Meditations in an Emergency - yes
The eager note on my door... - absolutely 
- but the rest was not for me.

paul_viaf's review

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4.0

An excellent discovery indeed. Sad to hear this literary work seems to be lost amongst the art of his time.

priya_haha's review

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challenging emotional funny reflective slow-paced

2.5

About a quarter of these poems are some of my favourites I've ever read, and half of them I think I am genuinely too stupid for.  Some of the images and abstractions were hard to follow and without knowing the references he was making, I couldn't see the connections from idea to idea/stanza to stanza.   I can't decide whether the problem is me or if this was objectively too obscure/opaque/pretentious.  To reread at some point!

Favourites:
  • To the Harbormaster
  • To the Film Industry in Crisis
  • Poem to James Schuyler ("There I could never be a boy")
  • The Hunter
  • For Grace, After a Party
  • For James Dean
  • Sleeping on the Wing

cruzdenavajas's review

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emotional reflective medium-paced

4.75