Danielle Smart English 201 Professor McKee

Ave Maria

Frank O'Hara's poem entitled "Ave Maria" is an exhortation to American mothers to allow their children to go and watch movies unescorted, as a way of broadening the latter's experiences. Specifically, the poem is implying that children should be allowed to go to the movies, as a way to enable them to explore their sexuality and experience sex in youth. The choice of the title "Ave Maria" presents an intriguing use because as most people may know, it refers to the Catholic Christian prayer "Hail Mary" that asks the intercession of the Virgin Mother, during a faithful's lifetime and the last hour before one’s death. In the poem's text, the first line apparently indicates who is being addressed, the "Mothers of America." However, since "Ave Maria" (Hail Mary) is a prayer of intercession, the poem could be construed as asking mothers to intercede before the fathers or at least reason with the fathers, in favor of allowing children to watch movies. The title is also suggestive of sexual encounters based on how "Heaven" is a recognized euphemism for the rapture or high feeling that one experiences while engaging in sexual acts. "Oh mothers you will have the little tykes/so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies/they won't know the difference.... The two lines indicate that O’Hara is clearly giving outright sexual advice to the mothers. "Hey may even be grateful to you/for their first sexual experience.../which only cost you a quarter/with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg." Herein, the reference to "a pleasant stranger" as their children's sexual partner—picking them up in the movies--might sound too liberal and even considered as bad advice in terms of physical health risks. However, it should be noted that during O'Hara's time when the poem was made, it was the 1960s. The decade would soon see the "Love Revolution" when 'making love not war' was a commonsensical idea. More importantly, the potentially fatal sexual disease we know as AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) that still has no effective cure, did not yet exist back then. Thus for a poet or any intellectual to give such liberal advice in the rearing of children, could not yet be considered preposterous or bad because it did not entail placing the children's health at great risk. Of course, suggesting such behavior entails some risks, such as pregnancy or catching other sexually transmitted diseases, but that is a liberal suggestion the poet makes and that greater freedom being at the core of the liberal philosophy, it comes with greater concomitant risks relative to a conservative’s advice. O’Hara even gives a warning that he should not be blamed if failing to heed his advice, "the family breaks up/and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set/seeing/movies you wouldn't let them see when they were young." These final lines of the text seem to be a warning that if children were not allowed to experience exciting sex in their youth, it could later result in them experiencing broken marriages because having been deprived of “darker joys” in youth, they could still be doing sex tripping even during their middle or late adulthood. Throughout the poem, the author keeps exhorting the mothers or parents to allow their children to go to the movies. A close reading of the lines will consistently show that O’Hara sees the activity as a way for children to experience the "darker joys" of sex, which is supposed to benefit the children as they mature.