I’m all but caught up, at least on the
scribbling of googly-cadenced sentences.
Quick, of whom did Frank O’Hara say this:
“Long may you illumine space with your
marvelous appearances, delays and
enunciations, and may the money of the
world glitteringly cover you as you” &c., &c.
I’ll give you a hint, because there’s a chance
that if you just think about it without one (a
hint, that is), it’ll come to you in a jump scare
(for someone, anyway):...Richard Barthelmess...
Jeannette MacDonald...Sue Carroll...Ginger
Rogers...Fred Astaire...Eric von Stroheim (I want
to go on and on as my hero does)...The Tarzans
(“each and every one of you”)...Mae West...
Rudolph Valentino...Norman Shearer...Miriam
Hopkins...Joel McCrea...Clark Gable...Gene
Tierney (gawd, I just don’t want to leave any
one out, what a list for the tomes of hist)...
Allan Jones...Kitty Carlisle...Harpo Marx...
Colonel Wilde...Merle Oberon (which is not
Merlin Olsen, as I’ve misread some five times
in the last fifteen minutes, all giddy with this
incessant list of names—sure, cry “Lazy!”...
cry “Easy Poem, way too easy, Del!” [that’s...
Del Ray Cross, btw...]...Marilyn Monroe...Joseph
Cotten...Orson Welles...Dolores del Rio...
Gloria Swanson...Jean Harlow...Alice Faye...
Myrna Loy....William Powell...Elizabeth Taylor
of “George and Martha—sad, sad, sad” and,
in the very same play turned film, the Elizabeth
Taylor, neither being Elizabeth Taylor, Martha,
nor Bette Davis, proclaiming “What! a! dump!”
(does one sic punctuation marks, asks the poet
to his readership...all 2 of you...I will never be
able to even attempt an appropriate expression
of gratitude), speaking of which, hot jump through
a parenthetical’s inside to its outside here (Is there
a grammatical term for this besides incorrect but
loads of fun sometimes?), you can thank me now
or later for this list, which is unlikely to even be
more easily read than picking them out of the
very long stanza of Frank “To the Film Industry
in Crisis” O’Hara’s just under a page-length stanza,
if that is what we are calling them these days.
True or False: Is my only regret after finishing this
piece the fact that I did not finish the extra long quote
I began that describes who appears in that list of names
in a sort of toast? If true and if not not false, a quick
glance for “under the kleig lights” should be of significance
in order to glean such discernment. Further hint: look toward
the end, which you’ll only get if you got there in this one.
