I saw this on YouTube this morning, and it’s so delightful I had to share it.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLwivcpFe8]
I could spend all day watching poems. I can’t decide which lines in this poem are the best:
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary
or
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
or
I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
or
the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
or
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
Here’s a link to the text of this poem.
O’Hara was always one of my favorites. He sounds nothing like what I think he would, but that makes it all the more interesting.