Sign Inventory Week 5

Sign inventory, Meditations in an Emergency
By Frank O’Hara
1. There are twelve references to colors, all of which are preoccupied with describing natural conditions hair, eyes or natural textures grass, shoes, with the exception of fanny brown and greenhouse which are used as nouns.
2. Line three begins a series of longing. My heart breaks, why should I share you, get rid of someone else, trees understand me, I lie under them, Nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures, regret life, I am always looking away or again at something after it has given me up, one man I long to kiss. Throughout the poem the speaker seems obsessed with longing
3. The references to Francisco Zurbarán oil painting of St Serapion draped in white is oddly juxtaposed with the darkness of the portrait of Dostoevsky. Equally odd is the distance between the two schools of thought one of the Christian Martyr the other of the Utopian Socialist who eventually writes of spirituality.
4. Stanza 12 line 1 creates a paradox that seems cold “It’s easy to be beautiful’ it is difficult to appear so. If applied in reference to the aforementioned “her” the one to be discouraged, there is a distinctive preference made here about what the speaker finds attractive.
5. The line I admire you for the trap you’ve set, seems to further the speakers contempt for a pretty girl he is not attracted to.
6. The reference to Fanny Brown in the novel could either be a play on the actress whose picture was found on the body of the actor Booth when he died or a play on Keats beloved Fanny Braun, both possibilities continue the idea of obsession with longing. reading through the full text of Dr. Johnson I found the character of Fanny Brown, but I still suspect there is more here. It does not seem likely that O'Hare chose this characters name by accident. Just the same the book itself seems a particularly effeminate text for the speaker to be casually rading.
7. “You don’t want me to go where you go so I go where you don’t want me to go” is the last in many cat like references in the poem” the cat is more adventurous upon being let out, the cat wants boundless love, the cat is understood by trees, only cats could have grey green brown or yellow eyes. Although not necessarily a personification, something cat like creeps into the poem.
8. The last stanza “I’ll be back and it’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead’ coupled with the idea of going where the jilted and jilting lover does not want the speaker to go shows again the speakers longing to be loved by many and one.
9. There are five single lines in the poem are each charged with greater emotion, almost as if the could taken out of the poem to create a single verbal argument.
10. The last single line is perhaps the most emotionally stirring in the poem “Destroy yourself if you don’t know!” it is also the only exclamation in the poem. It could be taken in context of the other singular lines as an argument with one lover, or as a direct global response to the reader.

Contextual Framework
Frank O’Hare’s speaker abandons casual happenings with a sense of emergency concerning longing, love and animalistic abandon. References to art, poetry and other famous jilted lovers might also seem apparent. Someone has deeply wounded the speaker the final act of the speaker spitting in the lock to turn the door to leave seems to be one of pure reckless emotion, quite different from his breezy take on love in having a coke with you.