Long may you illumine space

On the occasion of my birthday today, which I proudly share with Abe Lincoln, Charles Darwin, and Judy Blume, some of my nearest and dearest gave me a copy of Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency, which I have wanted to read ever since it appeared as a motif in the second season of Mad Men. I had no idea what to expect, as I have rarely read poetry since my English lit days in the early 90s (unless you count Rosie O'Donnell's blog). Basically all I knew about O'Hara was that Don Draper sent a copy of his poems to someone at the end of s2e1. I have been delighted to find that a number of the poems in this volume, published in 1957, are about the arts (O'Hara was a curator), and my favorite is "To the Film Industry in Crisis," which I can't believe I lived 37 years without reading.