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Poet's Choice By Robert Pinsky
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Christmas is the time of cold air
and loud parties and big expense,
but in our hearts flames flicker
answeringly, as on old-fashioned
trees. I would rather the house
burn down than our flames go out.
The one-syllable adjectives in the last stanza -- "cold" and "loud" and "big" -- generate an offhand, contagious exuberance. It is as if the poet has had enough of his earlier meditation on the general and the private, or generality and intimacy, a few stanzas earlier. Like the traditional green and red, those abstractions are a challenge for the spirit of improvisation and discovery, sporting here with the traditional adjective for the holiday: O'Hara's tone is merry.
(Frank O'Hara's poem "Christmas Card to Grace Hartigan" can be found in "The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara." Knopf. Copyright 1971 by Maureen Granville-Smith.)
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