Sixth Blog

After reading some of the more form based, heavy poetry of the confessionals, the poetry of Frank O’Hara has been like a breath of fresh air. The New York poets reference, and have been compared to, such abstract expressionist painters as Pollack, Chirico, and Frank. When one compares the spontaneous, in the moment style of painting to the style of poetry that the New York school used, the relation becomes quite apparent. In this painting of a she wolf by Pollack, the similarities in style become quite apparent:


The abstract expressionists, both in painting and poetry, are interested in conveying feeling without necessarily making very obvious facsimiles of the subject matter. One gets the feeling that the reader is given an impression of what is in the artist’s mind more than an image that everyone can easily identify. In the poetry of Frank O’Hara t reader is shown the impressions that the author has as he goes throughout his lunch break. O’Hara does not spell out exactly why he is feeling the way that he is, but rather spells his mind out on the page with abandon.

Many of the abstract expressionists’ paintings are not of any identifiable image at all, but are connected by each stroke’s relationship to the other as in this Pollack painting:


This technique is similar to the random connections made in the New York school’s poetry where the only connection is that of and, and, and. O’Hara’s poems especially flow along a course in which the only structure is the movement of O’Hara through the city. Connections are made as O’Hara sees familiar places or meets with people that he knows. This paratactic method makes the reader a part of the process and lends the pieces a lightheartedness that makes these works fun to read.

The abstract expressionists are also similar to the New York school poets in that they used a form of painting called action painting. They would often listen to music and fling paint onto the canvass in an effort to capture the action of their work in paint. O’Hara’s work was often jotted down quickly on his lunch break, lending his poems the same feeling of action and being in the moment. The reader can almost see O’Hara at work when reading his work.

The relationship between painter and poet is directly addressed by O’Hara in his poem “Why I Am Not A Painter.” O’Hara starts this poem out by mentioning that he would rather be a painter, but he is not. But throughout the course of the poem O’Hara points to the fact that he and painter Mike Goldberg are really involved in the same process of expression. They both start with an ideas, sardines for the painter and orange for the poet, and write or paint about them rather than attempting to represent them literally. In the end O’Hara has twelve poems called Oranges that don’t mention oranges at all, and here is a copy of Goldberg’s Sardines: