Ornate and explosive grief: a comparative commentary on Frank O’Hara’s ‘In Memory of My Feelings’ and ‘To Hell with It,’ incorporating a substantial gloss on the serpent in the poetry of Paul Valéry, and a theoretical excursus on ornate poetics

Frank O’Hara’s “In Memory of My Feelings” and “To Hell with It” are read consecutively to make a comparative point about the lessons of the first poem being taken up in the challenges of the second. Essays on the influence of Paul Goodman’s theory of grief and anger and Byron’s ecstatic elegy provide a theoretical groundworkfor a close, comparative reading of the serpent in the poetry of Paul Valéry and O’Hara. An excursus on the ornate and ornamental offers a broader theoretical accountformy readings. A commentary on “To Hell with It” is divided into close readings and digressions on the work of Mayakovsky, Shelley, Rimbaud, and the Tutivillus.