Two different performances of Frank O’Hara’s poem, “Mayakovsky,” demonstrate how the meaning and experience of a poem can change depending on how it is performed and in what context. The first performance (found here), read by poet Ligia Kesisian, presents O’Hara’s complete poem over the sound of rain and the music of Duke Ellington.

Kesisian’s voice is melodic and sultry, and as a result, her performance highlights themes of love and desire. Her accent creates a tone of exoticism. The fact that a woman recites the poem, however, takes away from O’Hara’s original allusions to his homoerotic desire toward the Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. The rain track contributes to the melodramatic emotion in the poem, and the jazz tune (Ellington’s “After All”) puts the listener in the mood of the 1920s (even though the song was actually recorded in 1967 and the poem was written in 1954). For the most part, Kesisian remains faithful to the poem’s punctuation and even pauses in places where there is none, but where a pause still makes sense. I do think she pauses a little too long between lines two and three of the fourth section, thereby breaking the flow.

At the end of the first episode of Mad Men, Season 2, the main character, Don Draper, reads the fourth section of “Mayakovsky” (here) in a voice-over. By placing a part of the poem in this brand new context, the meaning completely changes. Draper reads it in a contemplative, almost resigned, voice that highlights his world-weariness.  He sighs after the world “modern” in order to emphasize his fear of getting older and losing his relevance, themes that were addressed in the episode. The lines, “catastrophe of my personality” and “…what does he think of/that? I mean, what do I?,” take on a new significance for Draper, who struggles with the secrets of a hidden past and a sense of alienation. Allusions to any sort of homoeroticism or poetic influence, which could be found in O’Hara’s original, complete poem, are obliterated.