Friday, June 03, 2005

At Kamin's Dance Bookshop

with over 500 pages to play with, Sortes Frank O'Hara is a possibility, & right off, I get p.403, not really to tell my fortune, as what coincidence might befall this text [it's titled as above and addressed to Vincent Warren:

'Shade of Fanny Essler! I dreamt that you passed over me last night in sleep
'was it you who was asleep or was it me? sweet shade
'shade shade shill spade agony freak
'geek you were not nor were you made of ribbons but of warm moving flesh & tulle'

this is decidedly an erotic dream, tho the intertwined limbs are Fanny Essler's, and there's an absence of fleshly contact between Frank & Fanny. It's Frank's tights not his legs entwined with her legs, & as for his crotch it's covered with a big sash - + a comedic touch-

'and a jewel in my left ear for luck
(to help me balance)'

good to know that, way back when he wrote this, Frank can tell she wasn't a geek.
No luck with googling Kamin's Dance Bookshop... but here's a quickie on Fanny Elssler http://8.1911encyclopedia.org/E/EL/ELSSLER_FANNY.htm . Any guesses as to which history of ballet Frank had been reading?
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