Typical day to write poetry: “LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED”, by Frank O´Hara

Although the meaning of the poem is in fact open, it covers –I think-a total experience that includes a series of facts, a diversity of pronouns, several persons, different places and the figure of the actress Lana Turner. She, one of most important topics of the text, appears since the first line, then in the tenth and at the final. We can locate the context at least in two evident places: the city (we can suppose NY by the figure of the poet or the I speaker) and California, where maybe “Lana Turner has collapsed”, but there are more undetermined somewheres, like the street where the speaker “was trotting”, the place where the unrecognizable person “You said it was hailing”, the traffic, the parties, the exact place where the collapse succeed and more. If we associate one level of experience to a specific pronoun, we can read at least four different subjective points of view: She, I, You and It. The levels coexist and create a kind of juxtaposition.

There is an interesting contrast between that openness and the form of the poem: the verses are more or less regulars and some of them follow the rhythmic pattern, close to a ballad.

“Lana Turner has collapsed…

and you said it was hailing…

to meet you but the traffic…”

These are combined with others that follow different patterns:

“I was trotting alone and suddenly…

it started raining and snowing…”

The diversity of pronouns is mixed with a strong alliteration and rhymes. The most evident alliteration is the “__ing” of the past continuous form. So, this alliteration corresponds with the first section, from the beginning to the headline. The actions occurred in specific times. Another alliteration appears in the eighth and the ninth lines, repeating the sounds of /t/ and /k/. This corresponds with a kind of break, because the perspective changes to sky and abruptly to the headline. Then we pas to another section, but there is an interesting comparison between the traffic and the sky, in the hurryness of the city: cars are like stars, maybe, and it was not clear if there are a lot or a few.

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

That is an example of alt-narrative poem. Although the polyptoton creates a kind of confusion some poems of O´Hara ends with a strong affirmation of the I. For example, “The Day Lady Died”: “while she whispered a song along the keyboard / to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing” and “Why I Am Not a Painter”: “it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery /

I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.” So, the Lana Turner poem ends like this: “but I never actually collapsed / oh Lana Turner we love you get up”. Is for this variation that I could affirm that the poem express a total experience, because the circle line closes. The final line is surprising too, because one can expect the repetition of “collapsed”. The penultimate line could be the final affirming: “but I never actually collapsed”, but the meaning is reopened by: “oh Lana Turner we love you [the opposite of collapsed] get up”.

I do this I do that… transforms a typical day (going for the street, look at the newspaper, the bad weather, etc.) in an exceptional time for to write, for to make poetry, for to make something extraordinary for the memory. So the capital letters of the headline stops the normality, stops the routine time and we feel the importance of the artists, in this case, She, Lana Turner. Another poems focus in other artists. In this we can see the drama of an actress, not in a movie but in the real life.