Response to Question Number 3

O'Hare captures modern experience through his poems by Baudelerarie's defintion of modernity because O'Hare writes about a speciffic, time and place, (New York) as oppossed to a tangible concept or feeeling. Baudelerarie says modernirty is " the transient, the fleeting, and the contingent" which applies to O'Hare's poems because O'Hare captures a moment in time and culminates historical and culture to his work. When reading his poems, one has to look at it in context which is why, certainw words and phraes are cited, because to the reader, the reader of 2007, these are just words of the past that bare no meaning on today's world. O"Hare's work is "tranisent" because it illustrates a speciffic perspective only relative to his readers when it first came out. Modernism is a constant change due to the fact that technolgy, trends, people, and the world, are constantly changing. In "The Day Lady Died", O'Hare says, " I am getting into a cab at 9th and 1st Ave and the Negro driver tells me about a $120 apartment...". This is a perfect example of how O'Hare's work fits into Baudeleraie's defintion of modernity because of the short lived or "tranisent" subjects that he speaks of. The word "Negro" is out of date and only pertains to a certain time in American history as well as an apartment costing "$120 dollars" because New York realestate has gone increasingly up, and by today's standards, they both sounds ridiculous which shows how O'Hare's "modernity" was a temporary experience.

New York Haiku

Ironic fashion
Alcohol witty hipsters
The Lower Eastside