Comments on: at last the secret is out

By: Ange

Ange — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:15:57 +0000

Okay, here tis, pp. 39-40 of “Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O’Hara.” LeSueur describes Kallman’s lewd anecdote about picking up some hustler and bringing him back to the apartment he shared with Auden, who was sleeping in another room and woke up during the goings-on. Kallman’s graphic performance embarrassed everyone at the table, and in the cab home LeSueur remarked to O’Hara, “If you ever catch me talking the way Chester did tonight, get a gun and shoot me.” A year and a half later, when LeSueur noticed O’Hara’s changed behavior, Frank told him that “I thought about it a lot, about the way Chester talked, and I decided I didn’t want to be like that.” LeSueur concludes: “And to the end of his life, so far as I know, Frank never made out with a stranger again.”
You have to read the whole episode to get the flavor of Kallman’s ickiness, though.
No pun intended.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:51:54 +0000

Yes, please do look it up!
I have the feeling that there are more biographical revelations to come– but that few, if any, will be this disturbing on first encounter. And yes, it is also creepy. “Encodes” is the right word, though. It looks as if nobody who didn’t know to look for “Michael” and “Yeats” saw the link between the two poems.

By: Ange

Ange — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:26:48 +0000

I love that poem, and I love Auden, but the knowledge that he codes “Prayer for My Son” into an erotic poem about a teenage boy is also creepy, no?
And “creepiness” is not something I associate with Auden; however, there is an anecdote Joe LeSueur recounts in his memoir, wherein Chester Kallman creeps O’Hara out so much that he stops having anonymous sex. I’ll have to look it up now.