Critical Essay – Compare and
contrast four examples of Frank O’Hara’s poetry, reflecting on his work in
terms of form, content and context.
‘It may
be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their
detail; or, conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of
incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial’[i] – Frank O’Hara, on
the aesthetics of poetry.
The most defining
aspect of Frank O’Hara’s work is its immediacy – everything included in his
poems was a feature of the everyday, part of the pedestrian culture of the
places he lived in, from conversations and music, to cityscapes and the people
that walked them. In his work, he was averse to writing in abstract, something
which he discussed in tangential terms in his essay, ‘Personism: A Manifesto’; using the analogy of a knife wielding
assailant, he identified the importance of instinct and material realism in
order to make the poem real. In his life, he was more than a poet – he was a
curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a critic of art and film –
and he found interesting ways to supplement his poetry with knowledge from
these interests. It was his vivid spontaneity, however, that gave his pieces
such identifiable tone and voice, using an autobiographical style to imbue
everyday life into his work. These four
things; capturing pedestrian culture, avoiding abstraction, the inclusion of
art and film, and his characteristic spontaneity, frequently allowed him to
create a poem ‘between two people’. However, most remarkable was his
preoccupation with the self, how he wanted his poems to be, ‘… between an “I” and a “you”…’ [ii],
as he understood that, ‘… the only mind
he can wholly penetrate is his own…’ [iii]
Critics of O’Hara’s
poem ‘Music’ argued that it was menial, self-indulgent and, worst of all,
jovial; as they tended to suggest about most of his poetry[iv].
However, O’Hara uses several techniques to create a living moment in his poem,
many of which appear to be random or sporadic. By shifting through many
different images and places (resting near ‘The Equestrian’, appearing ‘naked as
a table cloth’, amongst others) O’Hara stylistically mimics techniques used in
art and film to evoke a vivid, almost surreal quality in the poem. He creates a
moving thought process, an inner monologue of thoughts and pictures that’s
directionless. This has the effect of imitating a wondering mind, effectively
turning his voice and tone aloof. Throughout the piece, there’s a desire to
translate his perceptions across to you, with nothing in between. The ‘you’ in
this piece is a shifting one; what starts of as a specific ‘you’ (‘If I seem to
you to have lavender lips…’) becomes a very general one (Clasp me in your
handkerchief like a tear, trumpet of early afternoon!’). This changes who is
being addressed, from a single person to a collective, similar to the changing
crowds of a New York street, or the Mayflower Shoppe itself. It specifies that
the subject matter is anything relevant to these places, and anyone who experiences
them. Due to the spontaneity
of the images and settings, the poem becomes very present, further reinforced
by O’Hara’s unwavering use of the present tense throughout the piece despite
its shifting location. However, he keeps his settings grounded, and
characteristically uses specific place names (‘the Mayflower Shoppe’, ‘the
Christmas trees on Park Avenue’) to bring this surreal trail of imagery down to
earth. He keeps his piece local (to New York), placing himself in specific
settings to focus his experiences. The effect of the surreal wondering quality
of the piece, accompanied by its familiarised setting, is to de-familiarise it.
Much like in the opening statement, O’Hara realises the ‘intangible quality’ of
a New York afternoon, with the intent of using his perspective to expose it.
In ‘Ave Maria’, there’s
a much more obvious sense of theme than O’Hara’s poetry typically exhibits – he
deals with coming of age, specifically first-time sexual experiences. His
light-hearted, humorous method of addressing a serious topic breaks the ice,
deformalizing a serious theme so that he can move it away from social
commentary, choosing to instead to identify an ‘I’ and a ‘you’: Himself, and
the ‘Mothers of America’ to whom the poem is addressed. This is exacerbated by
the juxtaposition of the tone and subject matter of the piece with the title,
‘Ave Maria’ – a reference to Catholic prayer of the Virgin Mary. His lexical
choice gives the relationship between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ character - rather
than using powerful, emotive descriptions which would feel contrived, he uses
casual phrases and words (‘it’ll be sheer gravy’, ‘little tykes’) to turn the
piece into a conversation, and humanise his work. The form of the poem lends
itself to this intention – by spacing the lines out, moving some across the
page, separating small phrases (‘hating you’, ‘and the family breaks up’) the
poem feels spoken, each line being separated into an utterance, further
reinforcing the feeling that this is a discussion. It also adds to the comic
timing of the piece, giving it pacing and delivery, so that it ultimately can
be enjoyed as light-hearted, as opposed to serious.
In an autobiographical
style, he identifies with the children of these mothers by capturing images of
specific places (‘Heaven and Earth bldg’, ‘Williamsburg Bridge’) to focus a
narrative, again in the present tense, and turn it into an experience from the
everyday. This allows him to find something ‘tangiable’ and express it to
someone other than himself. Throughout the piece, we can find evidence of his
aversion to the abstract. There are many examples of specific objects or
actions (‘a quarter’, ‘bags of popcorn’, ‘hanging around the yard’) that the
reader can clearly imagine. This creates realism in the poem, by depicting
palpable situations that apply to a general proportion of the children of the
mothers. The piece ends with a sense of loss; the children ‘grow old and
blind’, but still watch the movies they should have seen when they were young.
Here, O’Hara implies that they would miss the true wonder of living, becoming
blinded to the ‘darker joys’ of sexuality because their mothers refused to
allow them to experience them – the act of which O’Hara describes as
‘unforgivable’.
‘A Step Away from Them’
appears at first glance to wander, similarly to ‘Music’, with O’Hara
documenting a casual experience with New York in his lunch hour. However,
unlike in ‘Music’, he chooses to identify with a sense of time – with the
centre of the piece revolving around a specific moment (‘it is 12:40 of a
Thursday.’). By using this line as a fulcrum, he creates pace and continuity,
balancing the poem so that it extends like an actual lunch break. The reason
this poem differs from other examples of his work is that it is an elegy;
something we only become aware of in the fourth stanza (‘First Bunny died, then
John Latouche, then Jackson Pollock’). O’Hara’s intention throughout this piece
is to imbue us with a sense of mortality, whilst defying the standard tropes of
an elegy – He doesn’t talk much about the people involved, he doesn’t begin
with memories of their life, etc. This is both disarming and thought-provoking,
causing us to consider the lives that we can enjoy, whilst they cannot. In this poem, we can
see O’Hara’s distaste for the abstract. His ruminations regarding his dead
friends are brief, and surrounded by objective and material thoughts and
experiences (‘BULLFIGHT’, ‘There are several Puerto Ricans…’). The purpose of this
is to maintain the focus of the poem on the mortality of New York around him,
such as the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, ‘which they’ll soon tear down’. There
are references to fatality (‘They protect them from falling bricks, I guess’)
and the entire narrative is drawn out into one continuous line, with little
breakage, again to emphasise the progression of time and of life. This
synergises with O’Hara’s penchant for creating spontaneity, which he does in
this piece in the form of collections of images (‘cats playing in sawdust’,
‘labourers feed their dirty glistening torsos’) to create his lunch hour break.
The subtlety of O’Hara’s consideration for his friends, and the mortality that
he enjoys and they cannot, does however slip once in the form of a question
(‘But is the earth as full as life was full, of them?’) Most of his Lunch Poems
are devoid of such other-worldly considerations, but on this particular lunch
break, he finds himself drawn to their memories. The ‘you’ in this piece is his
friends, but he doesn’t talk directly to them because he can’t; he speaks of
them. This drastic shift from his usual principle of a poem between two people includes
people, while he considers his own mortality – as embodied in his title, ‘A
Step Away from Them’.
In his piece ‘Why I Am
Not a Painter’, O’Hara draws a parallel between two art forms: painting and
poetry. However, it is also a commentary on his own artistic writing style; Personism.
This is exemplary in the way that he addresses his love of art (‘I would rather
be a painter’), showing that art itself holds a universal beauty. His many
active interests in artists and different forms of art are suggested by his
allusion to Mike Goldberg within the poem, which has the effect of bringing the
two forms closer together. He solidifies this relationship between the two by
sharing them in the same experience; both writer and painter find themselves
devolving from their original subject matter, until it can no longer be seen in
their respective pieces. O’Hara is commentating on the nature of art,
specifically of representation, the result of which is that we as readers
empathise with O’Hara as he fails to discuss ‘orange’, as he comments
ironically, ‘There should be so much more, not of orange, of words…’ this irony
verging on sarcasm is supported a few words later, when he writes, ‘It is even
in prose, I am a real poet’. Personism also
manifests itself in O’Hara’s use of an ‘I’, himself, and a ‘you’, which in this
case is extremely general – the person who asks him why he is a poet as opposed
to a painter. By retaining a very general ‘you’, O’Hara effects a casual style
to a wide audience, without pandering to a demographic. Anyone who’s ever
wondered why this Art Museum Curator is also a poet is privy to the poem. He
chooses to address the question by retaining the casual tone (‘I drop in’, ‘But
me?’), similar to the one he employs in ‘Ave Maria’. By doing this, O’Hara
creates a discursive, conversational piece that feels like it is spoken. The
piece also feels spontaneous for the same reason – the ink feels wet on the
page, the ideas he writes on feel fresh and ready to be pondered. It doesn’t
feel contrived, which has the effect of making the reader feel the poem is
honest. This piece also employs specific and palpable things, like the other
three poems discussed above, to maintain a tangible focus to the
poem-narrative: these include the two pieces of work, Sardines and Oranges, and
Mike Golding as a real friend he associated with.
In this style, O’Hara
frequently captured the aesthetic he was talking about in this essay’s opening
quote: He realised the emotions of the day to day proceedings and used them,
both to create order and connection between them and to fragment them into
shards of meaning in their own right. Often, his pieces led to specific places
or locations, with the aim of capturing the flavour of it, its pedestrian
culture, experienced in a scrap of time – His Lunch Poems were written in those exact circumstances; in stolen
lunch hours, or moments when he was making his way in no particular rush. He
wrote in a colloquial, sometimes autobiographical voice, he rarely stuck to a
rhythm or rhyme scheme, and he often tried to include his other creative
interests in art and media; all of this gave his poetry a personal connection
with the subject matter, and a musing tone that became Frank’s staple.
[i]
Marjorie Perloff, ‘Frank O’Hara and the Aesthetics of Attention’, boundary 2, 4.3, (Spring, 1976) pp.
779-806 (782)
[ii]
Marjorie Perloff, p. 799
[iii]
Marjorie Perloff, p. 799
[iv]
Marjorie Perloff, p. 781-2
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