Poem of the Day: Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)

We have bookseller Clint Carroll to thank for today’s poem in celebration of National Poetry Month, Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!) by Frank O’Hara.  Throughout his life, O’Hara worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, writing poems on his lunch break and associating with such painters as Jackson Pollack, Larry Rivers and Jasper Johns in the 1950s and 1960s.  His collections include:  A City Winter, and Other Poems; Meditations in an Emergency; Lunch Poems; and In Memory of My Feelings.

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Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is now snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

~Frank O’Hara, 1964