meditations on an emergency, the o hara book, was used heavily in the second season opener of Mad Men, as a touchstone, as a way of signifying ennui, and homosocial isolation.its the season of o hara, then, the big new collected poems, the nasty take down in the new york times, lyttle shaw's book, and now this.

at first, i thot that, the poem was a camp takedown of the confessional angst of late 50s blurting, and besides, there is no way that an adman could find a copy of it, and the lines they used were too dark and serious, plus the theme of mad men, is isolaltion, the gaps and immpossiblity of communincation, and the consquences of those failures. o hara, has hope, even in his elegies and his poems of meloncholy, he seeks company, he seeks to talk, to constantly and forever communicate, to make family...

but the more i think about it, the poem is very much central to the madmen project, the other theme of the show, was a group of people watching jackie kennedy tour the white house, and of course how the politics of decor, of jackies tour, of dresses, of perfect tan coats and swing skirts, of a white pocket sqaure as tight as a razor slice, of cuff links and pipes and etc...

also, i think, how those years, from the 50s to the 60s, from the post war to the liberation of something stranger...not the hippies, but the urbane, sexualised, elegant and libertine created a new kind of class of city dwellers...so in that way, meditations on an emergency is a perfect key, because o hara provides a key and an alternate route past the highway of woodstock nostalgia.

(coterie does not mention the work at all, in its index)

(the cover they used had a black and grey cover, with the title in a heavy, brutish font, the real first edition was spring green with a sprightly french inspired script)