"Krushchev is coming on the right day!"
-- Frank O'Hara, Poem [“Khrushchev is coming on the right day!”]
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Because of the line spacing, I won't try to put more of this (funny, subtle) poem here -- instead, go read it here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57553/poem-khrushchev-is-coming-on-the-right-day
This was another reading from *The Difference is Spreading* anthology I've been working through. Although I've encountered this poem before, it was nice to meet again and to read the commentary provided by Marjorie Perloff.
Perloff's commentary begins:
"The opening line of this characteristically untitled poem is immediately arresting in its absurdity. Why is a windy September morning (in fact, September 17, 1959), on which the poem's speaker is preoccupied with his personal relationships in his very particular art circle, the right (or wrong) day for Nikita Khrushchev to arrive in New York?"
I'd add, too, that the opening line is not just "arresting in its absurdity," but also compelling in its mystery --- just off enough, just opaque enough to compel the reader to read on to the next line, and the next, to try and make some sense of it.
Of course, there's no real answer forthcoming.
Perloff does a nice job in her commentary of highlighting the distance/proximity between the high geopolitical drama of K's visit and the perfunctory activities of the high art/avant garde circle that O'Hara describes here.
If the feel is diaristic, Perloff notes just how carefully this poem is composed: for instance, key images (light, wind) recur but shift over the course of the work; meanwhile, names and references take us into the narrator's world which is, in its own way, global in scope.
Perloff ends with a great question: "Is O'Hara's [poem] then a political poem?"
It's a good question to munch on, as is the poem itself.
Trevor Burrows