Poem Of Modelness

October Walks

Cold and windy October Days
Chilly walks Chilly talks

Lauren, a blast from
My past.
Strolls languidly next to me
Holding onto the leash of her
Hound dog

Actually Leonardo (woof woof)
Does most of the walking.
Pulling and tugging on the leash.
Hurrying Lauren and I down the block.
Stopping it seems
To sniff the rapidly changing trees
Or corner bush that catches his fancy
Ahh, contentment in October.

Could this day get any
Better? Of course Lauren replies
She lights up a Camel Light takes a drag
And passes it to me.

The smoke gusts in the October winds.
We walk, we talk
Sharing the smoke
Sharing the beautiful October day.

I decided to write the modeling poem in the style of Frank O’Hara and his classic “Lunch Poems”. Lauren (a good friend of mine) was out walking her dog and I decided to join her. For me it seemed like a great time to get some inspiration and write the poem. I used the poem “A step away from them” by O’Hara as one of my sources. I really enjoyed the way he was able to make the reader feel just as if that person was walking next to O’Hara and experiencing all the different bits and pieces that make his poems so relatable. Unfortuanlly for me I did not see anyone else on our walk besides Lauren and Leonardo so those are the only other people/ pets that are mentioned in my poem. I didn’t want to copy completely off of O’Hara so I had already decided that while it might make writing the poem easier if I wrote the poem about going to Mr. Smiths café or some other kind of eatery, instead I just wanted to take a slice out of my day, time that I usually spend doing just another normal every day thing. Creating a poem out of a trivial task for me is the essence of O’Haras work. He would just write his compelling poems about small jaunts he would go on, say to lunch (aka lunch poems) or about the interesting people that he would pass or talk to throughout the course of the day.
Another aspect of O’Haras work that I enjoyed would be when he refers to name brand items. For example in his poem when he references back to Coca-Cola instead of saying soda or pop or whatever they called that stuff back then. I tried to do the same in my poem when I wrote about what brand of cigarettes versus just writing out cigarettes or ciggys or whatever. O’Hara often also refers back to the weather of the particular day he was experiencing. Again I tried to recreate that in my poem by writing about what month it was and how windy it actually was. I tried to show this when I wrote about the smoke being caught up in the wind, also near the start of my poem I mention that it was a cold and windy day. The only thing I wish that would have happened differently in my poem could maybe have been the introduction of some other person. However the sidewalk was empty, and all the neighbors were shut up inside their own warm houses. All in all I think I enjoyed working on this poem, I think my favorite thing was waiting for a good time/inspiration to write this poem about. I had no faith in my ability to mirror Berryman, (way to difficult to write about mr. bones and such) but I am happy with the way the poem turned out and look forward to writing more poems in the style like O’Hara does in his Lunch Poems.