Career spanning four decades, seventy-four essays, Overt hostility to other poets, though popular, eccentric, Taught briefly at Princeton, left in mysterious circumstances, at a conference in 2003, during reading by post-modern Since 2011, writing villanelle sequences, has 361, <\/p>\n \f<\/p>\n Some feel sorry for the man who looks like the late Dictator, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Like a painting’s space, infinite happenings and neverendings, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Notes on Mary Torrance (‘Mary is Mary’) Career spanning four decades, seventy-four essays, eleven collections. Formal poems; decline in moral values. Hated free verse in Poetry ’86, ‘The devil Whitman ruined it for everyone’ and in Paris Review ’92, ‘The New York Pre-School, why no one is counting’. Her book, Beat, Stick, ‘Howl’: Barefoot \/ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[338,339],"tags":[342],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\neleven collections. Formal poems; decline in moral values.
\nHated free verse in Poetry<\/em> ’86, ‘The devil Whitman
\nruined it for everyone’ and in Paris Review<\/em> ’92,
\n‘The New York Pre-School, why no one is counting’.
\nHer book, Beat, Stick, ‘Howl’: Barefoot \/ No Feet \/ Ginsberg’s
\nCon Trick<\/em>, was pulped\u2014for legal reasons\u2014after publication.
\nSenator’s daughter from Connecticut, first sonnet at five,
\nvoice like Katharine Hepburn. Vocal in criticism of feminism:
\n‘women ought to defer to men\u2014believe it but can’t do it’. <\/p>\n
\ncherished for what David Lehman describes as her
\n‘comedy value … unique, intolerable, objectionable,
\nalways doing something worth talking about, rarely
\nher poems’. Interview in ’85 asked about New Formalists
\nreplied ‘for the love of Nixon, what’s new about them?’.
\nAffiliations extreme right wing politics in US,
\nyelled FORNICATOR<\/em> at Clinton during ceremonial dinner,
\ndinner that according to official records no invitation to. <\/p>\n
\nsome say dismissed for striking student, others for building
\nfire in grounds burning priceless archives. Evidence gathered
\nin Avant-Garde journal suggest both true, X who didn’t
\nwish to be named quoted as saying ‘incidents tip of iceberg,
\nall very afraid of her’. Controversy follows her\u2014<\/p>\n
\npoet John Ashbery, shouted, ‘I don’t know what in God’s name
\nthat was but it was not<\/em> a poem’, escorted reluctantly away,
\nlater during wine reception ‘allegedly’ stuck out foot, tripped
\nthe elderly Mr Ashbery. Asked would he give Torrance
\nbenefit of doubt incident was accident, Ashbery
\nquoted as saying ‘sure, Mary is Mary and situations occur
\nabout and around and happenings to Mary and no one
\ncan persuade them otherwise\u2014and yes the ankle
\nis a hacienda mounted on the couch growing colder
\npurpler while the white dog shuns it. Thank you’. <\/p>\n
\ndescribed at best as ‘inconsistent in quality’ and at worst
\n‘certain to bring form into total disrepute if not result in
\ncomplete extinction’. Villanelles to be gathered
\nin substantial volume entitled, Nineteen times Nineteen<\/em>;
\npublisher could not be reached to confirm date of publication.<\/p>\nThe Dictator’s Double<\/h4>\n
\nthe way the crowds part and turn like folk dancers when he walks by.
\nSome follow him at a distance with trigger-happy eyes.
\nSome look at his hands, think them un-stately hands,
\nthey curl their lips as he peels a banana.
\nSome stare at his wife, think her a woman incapable
\nof satisfying a Dictator, see her unenthusiastic face,
\nbarely trying, under the weight and chink of his medals.
\nSome imagine the Dictator in his palace (which is gold),
\nthey picture his shelf of severed heads,
\nthey see the Dictator watching the workmen fix the shelf,
\nsee him tilt his critical dictatorial head to align the bubble.
\nSome resent that he takes a leisurely stroll, see the bodies
\nof his victims under each sandaled step.
\nSome look at his ring and think it rather modest
\nfor a ring paid for in blood. Blood ought to buy a more opulent
\nring they complain, that much at least is owed to the dead.
\nOthers look at his children, observe the way they segregate
\ntheir toys, privilege their favourites
\nand banish the weak and the old,
\nthese are not the children of a double.
\nThey begin to look for signs of guilt in the double’s smile,
\nof humanity in his frown, they suspect they see both in both.
\nThey begin to doubt this so-called double.
\nIn great numbers they storm the Dictator’s burial ground, heaving
\nstones, scraping dirt, hacking at the coffin lid with rocks.
\nThey grasp bones and teeth and ribbons; they drag the impostor’s
\nskeleton through the streets, march on the city square,
\nchanting as one, The Dictator is alive, long live the Dictator<\/em>.<\/p>\nFrank O’Hara leaves the Museum of Modern Art<\/h4>\n
\nor the seventh side of a cube. The museum says, don’t go,
\nstay in us. Outside is inside and the revolving doors are ecstatic
\nto have him for their moment, yet ever so sad to let him go
\nthey give and take and come and go like a pulse, and refuse to cry.
\nThe city greets him with eyes and ears and arms and a drink.
\nThe surface of glass reflects back on itself and back on itself
\nagain, women and men on the street are obliviously convexed.
\nThe slippery glass says, stay a little while longer, see
\nall these people we hold them for you and through us, behind
\nus is everyone, it reflects back on itself and back again
\nit reflects back on itself and in, and now it’s everyone except him.
\nThe street holds him now and the city holds the street. The city
\nsays, go anywhere you like because the clock says it’s fine. I’m
\nall yours and you mine. That’s what the city says as Frank O’Hara
\nsteps out through the doors of the Museum of Modern Art.<\/p>\n