ABSTRACT
America's consumer markets have never been busier; bank tellers are dispensing cash to spendthrift clients without even consulting their bal ances. Bohemian poets, as we can see from the conspicuous consumption described here, are no longer immune to the contagious seductions o f the commodity world. This is not Baudelaire's poet-flaneur who was lured to the marketplace to look but not to buy. I n the space o f a few blocks, O'Hara's motivated, discriminating poet-consumer has found an whole range of cultural goods to purchase from all over the world, f rom hamburgers to Ancient philosophy. Robert Von Hallberg points out that all o f art and history (most o f it is not American) is available here, not through Eliotic "tradition," but through the benefits o f mass production and cheapness.1
