I've read Andrew Epstein's article on O'Hara's "Translation Game" in Raritan. Apparently O'Hara lifted those phrases directly from a bilingual dictionary. Everything in the poem is an idiomatic expression. "J'échorche l'anguille par le queue" doen't mean "I peel the eel by its tail," but "I begin at the wrong end." Dedicated to Ashbery, the poem expresses a playful sense of "sibling rivalry."