A Step Away From Them (Frank O'Hara, 1956)

The view up Broadway, Manhattan, Summer 1956


 
It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.

                                          On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.

                   Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, e bell' attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.

              There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollack. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.

                    A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.

Note:  I woke up and soon started thinking about this poem this morning.  It often crosses my mind, especially as the weather warms and I recall many hot summers in New York City from my teenage and early worker years, spending lots of time walking the streets Frank O’Hara describes so perfectly.  It was then that I formed most of the interests that continue to guide me today, which resemble some of O’Hara’s, so the poem continues to inspire, resonate and as I’ve gotten older, reveal more of itself while staying eternally young and sadly hopeful.  

Every detail here reminds me of a particular street corner – amazing – and I’m glad that this New York is still alive in my mind.  I’m not much of a literary scholar, so I was surprised when researching A Step Away From Them to find that it has affected so many other people as much as it has me.  One hundred years from now I don’t think anyone will understand a word of the poem, except for the killer last line, which says just about everything.

Frank O’Hara pictured with James Schuyler, 1956

Same view as above taken a couple of blocks below in Times Square, New Year’s Eve, 1956

Sunday Morning Two Introductions (Edwin Denby and Patrick Hamilton)

Rudy Burckhardt, Portrait of Edwin Denby

        They say that You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover (marvelous link here) and I suspect the same should be said about its Introduction (if it has one).  

         It’s the actual text that you wanted, presumably, that you sought out and purchased, and damn other people’s thoughts.  You’d like to meet and spend time with the author, not his or her cousin or dear friend.

         I wanted to mention, however, that I recently read two introductions to books, which are both simply superb.

 

     T he first is Ron Padgett’s introduction to The Complete Poems by Edwin Denby.   The second is Sean French’s essay that begins his biography, Patrick Hamilton, A Life.

Rudy Burckhardt, Pedestrians in Manhattan, 1938 

     Padgett’s and French’s pieces are both fairly long, but utterly engrossing, reflecting each writers’ deep involvement with and knowledge of their material and the passion that resulted in their shepherding these works to press.   Not coincidentally, I think, both Denby and Hamilton, "city authors" who were hardly unknown in their respective literary spheres, are writers who these guides feel have been injudiciously overlooked and whose closer and more knowledgeable examination (in part by learning key facts about their lives) will profoundly reward readers.

        Since I happen to own both books, I obviously agree, but I wanted you to know also.

Unknown photographer, Patrick Hamilton

        As for “cover judgement,” the Edwin Denby portrait by his close friend Rudy Burkhardt, which adorns the cover of The Complete Poems and appears at the top of this post, is a remarkable image showing a handsome and distinguished man atop a city which no longer exists except in the memories of a declining number of people.  Teeming, densely populated Manhattan actually looks dignified and hopeful, like a place where work can be accomplished, pockets will not be picked, nor backs stabbed. The formal author portrait on the cover of Patrick Hamilton, A Life (shown immediately above -- photographer, date and location all unknown) is almost heartbreaking in conveying a sense of early accomplishment, future promise, clear vision and, I think, the acute hearing that Claud Cockburn so memorably described in his introduction to The Slaves Of Solitude.  Hamilton lived a fairly short, almost ungovernable life.   It may seem circular reasoning, but one is left with the feeling that his unique works couldn’t have emerged from any different set of circumstances. Still, one is left with a sad, slightly queasy feeling knowing that his autobiography (never completed) was to be called “Memoirs of a Heavy Drinking Man.”

1. Edwin Denby, The Complete Poems, Edited and with an introduction by Ron Padgett and with essays by Frank O'Hara and Lincoln Kirstein.  New York, Random House, 1986.


2. Sean French, Patrick Hamilton, A Life.  London, Faber and Faber, 1993.

3.  I was pleased to learn this morning that Faber & Faber will republish Patrick Hamilton's pioneering "graphic novel" Impromptu in Moribundia on November 17th, adding it to their previous release of Twopence Coloured in the Faber Finds series. 

4.  Sunday Morning -- Velvet Underground (link)

Piccadilly Circus, 1930 (c.f., Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky)

  



View from the top of the Parliament buildings, London 1958  

Rudy Burckhardt, Times Square, Manhattan, 1938