Lehman on O'Hara and Mad Men

The third season of Mad Men isn't set to return until sometime this summer and I'm going through some serious withdrawl here! But recently the fine folks at the Mad Men blog spoke to David Lehman (leading Frank O'Hara scholar, poet, and editor of The Best American Poetry) about the integral role Frank O'Hara and his poetry have played throughout season 2 of the TV series:

Don spends much of this season meditating on his own "emergency," namely the dissolution of his idyllic home life. As Lehman puts it: "Don is the quintessentially American male, a loner, something of a maverick, who might just take the afternoon off to see a French movie." When asked if Don's "soulful loner" behavior is is ultimately just a way of escape, Lehman counters, "I like Don's forays into bohemia. They seem genuine to me, but 'ways of escape' are OK, too...John Ashbery [an O'Hara contemporary] once observed that 'We need all the escapism we can get, and even that isn't going to be enough.'"

Check out the whole piece here. Poetry and pop culture. Swoon!