[New-Poetry] Latta looks at Logan looking at O'Hara

[Rsgwynn1 at cs.com]

In a message dated 6/30/2008 9:27:00 PM Central Daylight Time, 
chris.lott at gmail.com writes: 
> 
> But, without getting into a debate about Logan himself, I'd be lying
> if I didn't note that I agree with a whole lot of the things Logan
> said in that review about O'Hara and the NY School, despite the way he
> might have said them. Of the various crimes Logan may commit, his
> willingness to break the apparently unwritten critic's code of "if you
> don't have anything nice to say" is an easy one for me to forgive.
> 
O'Hara wrote a lot, a whole lot, a whole whole lot, and he never had a chance 
to "select" what he'd have chosen to represent his work, with the exception 
of Lunch Poems, a delightfully slim volume and a wonderful one.  Logan's main 
point, it seems to me, is whether he's best served by any collection that 
throws together almost everything that could be gleaned from his literary remains.  
I think that Logan adequately represents O'Hara's strengths (spontaneity, 
charm, the virtues of friendship, wackiness in search of truth, pure joy in 
living, etc.) while also showing that his randomness, when read at length, can be 
pretty tiresome if you weren't there to enjoy it.  Personally, I treasure 
O'Hara for the poems that showed how much fun poetry could be.   
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