Seth Arar

English 12 – Casdin

Lana Turner is an old Hollywood glamour star. She was well known for her

blonde hair, and her lover’s killing of her daughter. London, on the other hand, is one of

the biggest cities on the earth. Frank O’Hara’s Poem is about Lana Turner. William

Wordsworth’s Composed Upon Westminster Bridge talks of London. They both reference

themes of growing up and seeing life from a new perspective, and nature’s involvement

with man.

The Wordsworth relates to growing up in terms of developing insight. As

discussed in class, there are three stages to human life. During childhood, one is able to

see the “whole picture,” or as it is put in Tinturn Abbey, “see into the life of things,” but

at a more immature level. Teenage to middle age, one is clouded by the details and falls

into civilization’s trap of over complication. The final phase is essentially enlightenment:

being able to see beyond the details and regain the picture of the whole that nature gave

us to begin with. Composed captures a man’s transition between the last two phases. At

first, the beauty and quietness of the city in the sunlight and its “smokeless air” stun the

poet. He remarks upon many details and tries to fit the city into his own preconceived

notion of what a city should be. “Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples” are all

stereotypical traits of a city. Not any city in particular, but rather just a generic city. The

personification in lines 4 and 5 also address the need for the poet in this state to relate the

city in this natural state to man itself, thus trying to bring the two together. It is only after

he “composes” the first 14 lines that he realizes, and so moves to the next human stage,
that the city, when not “breathing,” is dead. No heartbeat means no life. He once again

(as from childhood) sees that without the regular, even natural, rhythm of the city’s

clamor and noise and smoke, this is no city. There is an inherent difference between

nature and civilization, and until men have progressed to the third stage, they cannot

attain any similarities.

In O’Hara’s Poem, the weather and the “you” are referring to the stages. Rain

progresses to snow, when it is cold enough, but then snow can also progress to hail,

through a different process. Hail is also thought of as closer to rain, being not crystalized

like snow. The “you” and the hail are the highest state, which the poet is not in yet. The

poet (he for brevity’s sake) cannot comprehend the hail in the same way as the “you” can.

Hail also “hits you on the head,” much in the same way that a dawning of comprehension

about the world might. Lana Turner lives in a world with no snow or rain, leaving us to

infer that there is hail, and therefore enlightenment. She is then the representation of the

final stage of man. The poet’s insistence that she get up and sadness over her having

collapsed further indicate his lesser stage. Lana collapsing is akin to enlightenment. She

has surpassed this world. In the last line, O’Hara switches from speaking to this “you” to

speaking directly to Lana Turner. He even sounds slightly annoyed with her, despite the

“we love you.” It is “we” not I after all, as he distances himself from the loving. The

switch in addressee works much like the “mighty heart is lying still” worked in

Composed. Here, he realizes that it is not natural for Lana to be collapsed, which is the

culmination of lines 14-16. He also is annoyed with her, as if he’s upset that she’s taking

all this attention. He’s also been to “tons of parties” and even “acted perfectly

disgraceful,” so why is he not getting the same attention? This is part of the reason why
the poet is still in the second stage of man. He does not have the experience and therefore

maturity to progress to a higher state. Much of this analysis can be derived from the word

“perfectly” and it’s relationship to “disgraceful” and “collapsed.” Perfect means literally

thoroughly made. Acting perfectly disgraceful is a paradox, much like Blake’s contraries,

that modifies the amount of attention the poet has tried to receive from the world.