Meditations In An Emergency

Tonight was the premiere of the second season of AMC's Mad Men (great show), and one short scene led me to a pretty cool poem.  One of the central characters is eating lunch in a bar and strikes up a conversation with the barfly to his right, who's intently reading Meditations In An Emergency by Frank O'Hara.  The show, set in the early 1960's, is great about little details of the era, so I decided to google the book.  Turns out it's a book of selected poetry, and the following is a short part of the poem by the same name:

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time;
they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and
disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away.
Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me
restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them
still. If only i had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I
would stay at home and do something. It's not that I'm
curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it's my duty to be
attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the
earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can
spare myself little sleep.

Thank you once again, internet, for putting the world at our fingertips.

Comments

[J.R.]

Amen!

[Roquedelcastillo]

Thanks for your post!
For some reason, season 2 has taken forever to get to Australia, so I feel like I'm the only one watching it on DVD. Anyway, I got more curious when Don posted a copy to somebody. It's great that the show is meticulous with details like this, and I agree that it's great that the net can provide us with a bit more background about the book/ poem.