In week 7 there was an introduction of the New York school poets which includes Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Barbara Guest and Kenneth Koch. There was a close reading of “20” by Barbara Guest and “The Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara. In the assignment there were four poems and from those I have chosen “Why I Am Not a Painter” by Frank O’Hara, which befit O’Hara’s “I-do-this-I-do-that” (ongoing present tense) mode.
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Here I have shared my assignment of week 7 with reviews.
Why I Am Not a Painter – Frank O’Hara
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
At first reading it suggests the comparison between poet and painter and also Frank O’Hara gives reason that why he is not a painter. He thinks that he must be the painter but he is not.
The narrator went to his friend Mike Goldberg and he has started one painting. This poem also contains “I do this-I do that” elements. It seems like a simple conversation between two friends. Then his friend asked him to have a drink and they enjoyed drinking. When narrator has looked towards the painting he asked do you have SARDINES in your painting, and Goldberg replied that yes it has something like that which suggests he doesn’t want to reveal anything about his painting, and then the narrator has left. Few days after when the narrator has arrived there, he asked about the painting and Mike said that “It was too much”
In next stanza, there is a process of poetry. The narrator was thinking about the word orange and he wrote a link on that and as he started writing, the page of full of words and he wrote twelve poems and that collection of poems is ORANGES.
The painter has thought about the word or we can say an object “Sardines” when he has started painting and when he completed it, at the bottom of the painting there was written in letters “Sardines” so we observe when he says,
“All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.”
On the other hand narrator has started writing poem by thinking of a colour “Orange” and then he has written twelve poems. So here we can see the similarity between writing poem and painting. May be the writer has presented contradiction and connection of an art. The title "Why I am Not a Painter" may suggests that he is a poet and to use any colour it doesn't mean to use it on canvas but it can be used in words also.
Form of poem:
The poem is written in free verse which has no metre or length. In first stanza there are three lines and the next two stanzas contain thirteen lines. This form of writing poem is a common form of twentieth century.
Here is the screenshot of reviews:
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