O'Hara's "Fantasy"

I have to say that, besides Ginsberg, O'Hara has been one of my favorite poets we have read thus far this semester. That's why I found it fitting that the poem I liked most from O'Hara was dedicated to the health of Allen Ginsberg- "Fantasy."

The thing I love about this poem is the nonsensical tone of it. The title implies a fantasy, which usually means the wish of something fantastical, but this is more idle, irrelevant musings. "The main thing is to tell a story." he says in a line near the middle of the poem. Is it? What story then is O'Hara telling us now?

I believe he is telling us several. He jumps from one line to the next, seemingly with no apparant transition or reasoning. But read it again. As much as it is stream of consciousness, it is almost possible to wade through the stream, to see just along the bend and discover where you are heading, while still being able to look behind you and admire how long you've come.

O'Hara ends his collection, "Lunch Poems", with this poem, which is fitting if you follow the analogy I just laid out for you. He is essentially describing the whole process with which he creates his art. Musings, leading to real world observations (Musical thoughts interrupted by a window slamming on his hand), leading to wonderful interjected lines of no merit, yet they stand alone as quotable gems that strengthen to poem as a whole ("What dreams, what incredible/ fantasies of snow farts will this all lead to?"), leading to a dismissal of the poem as a whole ("I/ don't know, I have stopped thinking like a sled dog."), leading to his point- the whole point of his art- the story, leading to an explanation (finally! one may think) of why he waits so long to get to the point ("Imagine/ throwing away the avalanche/ so early in the movie."). There would be no suspense, no point in reading further, if you knew right away that so-and-so died and this is a tribute to them. He might as well write eulogies for the paper.

No, this is about O'Hara's connection to the world, and if that is able to turn into a universal emotional reaction, so be it. But O'Hara concerns his art with his life, and the lives of those around him, and how those lives affect his. He is an observational poet, but it is these observations, and the way that he presents them, that are so wonderful. These are what make him an artist, "Just free, that's all..."