Mountain Climbing by Frank O'Hara
Hyena-like reserves.
"Mountain Climbing" by Frank O’Hara resonated in a way that felt new and exciting but also heavy and burdensome.
The opening act of psychic landscaping – the lush "fronds," the deliberate "no graveyard" – feels like building a necessary illusion, maybe. Shielding the conscious mind from entropy, from the finality I often push away myself.
Then "Echo," the degraded signal, complicating the picture with her mournful repetition. A reminder that perfect clarity or originality is elusive, even in seemingly vibrant moments.
The command, "Be not willing, salty, translated and D moll," resonates like an internal directive for resilience.
Fight the drift toward bitterness ("salty")
resist being reshaped into a sorrowful configuration ("translated," "D moll").
It’s about actively maintaining psychological posture against corrosive forces (like ones self)
Line 4 continues to exert a strange gravity. The sequence: sound ("Toot, toot"), then profound affection ("o dearest of many many loves"), immediately pivoting to. "And as many crusts on my spring eyelids." It stops me. The initial impact is visceral – a flinch of disgust. Crusts on eyelids.
It speaks of:
bodily secretion
sleep's residue
maybe minor infection
something impure clinging to the mechanism of sight, the window meant for spring's clarity.The juxtaposition is brutal, deliberate. "Spring eyelids" suggests renewal, freshness, the potential for clear vision, vulnerability. And upon that vulnerability, these small markers of bodily fallibility or the night's passage. It's intimate, yes. almost embarrassingly physical.
Is it the residue of weeping for those "many loves"?
Is it the simple, unlovely reality of waking?
Or a more metaphorical grit, blocking a truly fresh perspective?
I wrestle with it because O'Hara places it right there, nestled beside immense tenderness. It suggests an intimacy that doesn't ignore the imperfect, the slightly repellent details of the body. Perhaps the unsettling beauty lies in that unflinching observation – love not as an idealized blindness, but as something that encompasses the whole, messy, physical truth, crusts, etc.
It refuses to sanitize the beloved or the self. It feels like a core O'Hara move: grounding a soaring emotion in the unavoidable, sometimes unpleasant, facts of embodiment.
My own mind operates like that – holding deep affection alongside a sharp awareness of physical detail, the beautiful inextricably linked with the mundane or even the mildly grotesque. Then the line explodes outward again ("octaves of pollen," "Arachne"), but that small, potent image of the eyelids lingers.
And that brief invocation, "yes, Arachne," landing after the sensory rush of pollen… it carries significant weight. Arachne, the mortal weaver of breathtaking skill, punished for her talent and hubris by being transformed into a spider, forever spinning. Her presence introduces a complex knot of ideas right into the poem's vibrant, messy heart: the potential peril of extraordinary ability, the dangerous consequences of challenging established power (divine or otherwise), and maybe that claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in an endless, repetitive cycle dictated by one's own nature or past actions.
It makes me contemplate:
the fraught relationship between creation and suffering.
the potential cost inherent in exceptional skill or defiant artistry.
my own hubris.
The poem's expressed dissatisfaction – needing more than surface resemblance ("not enough") – feels like a core psychological drive for authenticity. Rejecting facile spirituality ("astral") or probing shared tastes ("cherries") seems part of that same mapping process – defining the self and its relational needs with precision.
That description of the snow's light...
"Illuminated everything from my heart to the North Pole and back." The sheer scale of that exposure is overwhelming. It's not gentle; it feels forensic, total. It connects the absolute core of inner feeling, the intimate pulse ("my heart"), directly to the vast, impersonal, geographic extreme ("North Pole"). And the light travels back – there’s no escaping its reach; it finds its way right back to the center of the self.
This isn't revelation; it's exposure raised to an unbearable magnitude
. The consequence feels precise: "so no one could even move."
It’s the paralysis of extreme vulnerability, the organism's freeze response when perceived threat is total and inescapable. Being seen that completely, from the deepest interior to the widest exterior and back again, induces a kind of psychic overload, a shutdown where action becomes impossible. I recognize that sensation – feeling pinned by an awareness so intense it locks down all movement, internal and external.
Then the jarring shift to global suffering ("people starved") forces a confrontation with scale. The intensity of private feeling measured against mass human tragedy creates that uncomfortable contradiction, stretching empathy while highlighting individual limitation.
Those lines about the pain and the self-awareness… they hold a particular weight inside. The idea that an emotional wound, the pain caused by that quarrel, "shall not soon wipe itself off the statue of Dante"... it resonates with how deep hurts can feel. They don't remain purely internal; psychologically, they feel imprinted onto the physical world, staining a specific place – that "little square," likely one deeply embedded in O'Hara's New York geography, now holding this private ache publicly, permanently.
Memory and landscape fusing.
Then there's that sharp turn inward, the unflinching inventory of the self: owning the "distasteful ambitions," the "hyena-like reserves." It’s a brutal piece of self-assessment, acknowledging the predatory, the opportunistic, the less-than-noble drives within. The power isn't in the traits themselves, but in the declared "independence" of "never closing my eyes" to them. It feels like a fierce commitment to honesty and the difficulty of self reflection, especially as a man.
a refusal of dissociation from one's own shadow.
It’s a difficult posture, perhaps isolating, but presented here almost as a point of pride, a core aspect of identity recognized even by others – "nor shall my relatives forget." That awareness, that this unflinching self-scrutiny is a known, remembered part of who I am perceived to be, adds another layer of validation to this internal stance.
The questions about war and art probe ethical boundaries. The passive framing of death ("drift onto the flags") feels chillingly distant. Wondering what art teaches in the face of violence feels like a fundamental challenge to aesthetics – demanding relevance, moral weight.
The sense of potential systemic failure ("down us like a shot") despite effort ("Never not in practice...") touches on anxieties about inherent limits, about effort not always correlating with outcome.
Yet, possibility persists ("It's not the end"). An "ascent" requiring costly input ("pound of flesh") via flawed means. Growth modeled as strenuous, sacrificial, imperfectly guided.
The urge to disrupt ("score sideways") paired with contemplating the abject ("ham with pus")… again, that psychological honesty. The mind's capacity to hold the conceptual and the repellent in close proximity. It doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable bandwidth of consciousness.
The cosmic scale returns – obligations to a "supreme Decorator," a universe with uncanny details ("stars, those teeth of zippers"), moving relentlessly toward a grand, perhaps sorrowful, conclusion ("oceanic permanent dip").
A sense of being within vast, complex, maybe impersonal systems.
And cutting through it all, that pure distillation of need:
"Lead me always upward, my true darling, and never mind the bus fare”
The vulnerability of seeking guidance, prioritizing connection over practicality ("never mind the bus fare").
The quiet offering, "I have a pocket for every hider," suggests a developed capacity for holding complexity, for empathy that acknowledges hiddenness.
Finally, the kiss as unstable transition ("car which has only half stopped"), potent but explicitly temporary. It captures the intensity and precariousness of moments that feel pivotal but lack permanence.
that question O'Hara lodges in the poem – "is that what art teaches us?" – referring to being potentially "satisfied" with war's seemingly random deaths... it resonates long after the line ends. It feels less like a rhetorical query and more like a raw point of doubt, maybe even accusation. It throws into sharp relief the often painful gap between aesthetic experience and the brutal facts of existence. What do we expect art to do when faced with horror? Offer solace? Incite outrage? Provide clarity? Or does it sometimes, perhaps dangerously, help us metabolize the unacceptable, making us "satisfied" where we should be provoked?
Within the poem's fragmented, emotionally volatile landscape, this question feels crucial. It’s as if the poem itself, having navigated intimacy, disgust, self-awareness, and suffering, turns its unflinching gaze onto the very tools of its own making, questioning their ultimate function and ethical weight.
It leaves me unsettled, thinking about the art I consume here, its purpose, its limitations. Does it illuminate, or merely decorate the walls while the world outside contends with its own forms of violence? The poem offers no easy answer, only the difficult, necessary weight of the question itself.
And then the poem concludes with that final, unsettling pronouncement: "The very air is collapsing under the strain of a mythology which is as yet a secret." It leaves me suspended in a state of profound tension. The image is immense – the fundamental medium around us, the air itself, failing under the weight of something powerful but unseen, unarticulated. A hidden narrative, a secret structure of meaning or belief, is exerting unbearable pressure on the present reality. It suggests we're living within forces we don't comprehend, that the explanations we have are insufficient for the pressures we feel. As an ending, it offers no resolution, only emphasizes the mystery, the instability, the feeling of being subject to vast, covert dynamics. It resonates perfectly with the poem's journey through fragmentation, hidden interiors, and unresolved conflicts – suggesting these might all be symptoms of this larger, secret mythology straining the fabric of things. letting the poem settle, it feels less like an artifact and more like an ongoing internal process, mirroring the complex, often contradictory, input streams of consciousness itself.
That earlier moment, reading "Lead me always upward, my true darling," still echoes – the tears felt like a physiological acknowledgment of that raw need for guidance amidst the poem's intricate, sometimes unnerving, landscape. Reflecting on it all, I think this might be my new favorite O'Hara poem. It seems to hold so much of what makes his work vital to the core of my being and the history of poetry itself. – the breathtaking skill and emotional nuance shifting line by line, that palpable sense of his New York filtering through in the details and the specific anxieties, the sheer force of his intelligence grappling with complexity, and all of it laced with that specific, dark humor, the kind that can place profound tenderness right next to considering ham with pus.
Is "Mountain Climbing" a love poem? Reading back through my thoughts, it's a complicated question. There are absolutely potent threads of love and intimacy woven throughout. The direct addresses – "o dearest of many many loves," "my true darling," even the accusatory "you trouble maker" – they signal deep, personal connection. The plea "Lead me always upward" speaks volumes about reliance and trust within a relationship. The kiss, however fleeting, is undeniably intimate.
But to call it only a love poem feels reductive. It contains universes beyond that – the anxieties about art, the confrontation with mass suffering, the unflinching self-analysis, the cosmic dread in the final lines. The love depicted isn't simple or idealized either; it coexists with physical unpleasantness ("crusts on my spring eyelids"), triggers internal conflict ("quarrel... with me and my alter ego"), and seems to operate within a framework of instability and overwhelming external/internal pressures.
So, for me? Love feels like a critical, perhaps anchoring, element within the poem's complex system. It's a source of intense feeling, need, conflict, and maybe even a fragile source of guidance ("Lead me..."). But the poem uses that intimate lens to explore much larger territories of existence, selfhood, and the chaotic nature of reality. It's a poem where love happens, fiercely and complicatedly, amidst everything else.
which is how I relate to love.
lead me always upward, my true darling, and never mind the bus fare.
Ysidro