Also a Poet

I rarely read book-length nonfiction, or memoirs. This is both.

I love Frank O’Hara, and seeing his name on the cover was definitely why I picked this up in the bookstore. I’m very glad I did.

Added later:

Here's the songs/mixtape from the back of the book: music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLONG5XE6AplzRMKMO8v5iSb4V0WJJMtff

In the end, this definitely made me think about my own relationship with my child. Will they think back on me as distant or hard-to-connect with? I sure hope the answer is no.

There were lots of little asides or tidbits in this book that made me think, or feel like I’d leaned something. Two that come immediately to mind: the idea that Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville is a direct response to a similarly named Rolling Stones album (I had no idea!) — or the quote from the New York Times obit from which the title is taken.

While reading this, I looked up all the O'Hara poems referenced in it. I have The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, and I'm absolutely certain I've never read it cover-to-cover, though I have previously called O'Hara my favorite poet, and I still occasionally call his Autobiographia Literaria my favorite poem. I also own a copy of Lunch Poems, and I do think I've read all of it, though I grew annoyed at all the place and people references (which I've always found semi-annoying in both poetry and literature). To the Harbormaster was a new-to-me poem, at least, as far as I can remember, but Calhoun references it several times, and I do appreciate its beauty.

Also a Poet is written in a very plain and approachable style. I know (from experience!) that it's much harder to write simply than you might imagine. So I would call this book very well written. The prose is not poetic, for the most part, but the contents very much are. The end of the book left me in a very contemplative state.