Dubious Calm

departure hangs over present eludes cascades mossy forest private picnic people dogs tired legs second wind cars pour in dust children lets go friendship reaches out alternative place sleep coffee fragrant smoke alarms scream again break dreams hot studio induces dubious calm money comes chores refrain solo work traverse Mozart sonatas now Chopin nocturnes finger memory surprises reason lyric recovered so we go on in to be me he is my amanuensis rediscovered selves responding nature furthering art sensations refresh soul all food

Personism: A Manifesto

by Frank O'Hara Everything is in the poems, but at the risk of sounding like the poor wealthy man's Allen Ginsberg I will write to you because I just heard that one of my fellow poets thinks that a poem of mine that can't be got at one reading is because I was confused too. Now, come on. I don't believe in god, so I don't have to make elaborately sounded structures. I hate Vachel Lindsay, always have; I don't even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, "Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep." That's for the writing poems part. As for their reception, suppose you're in love and someone's mistreating (mal aimé) you, you don't say, "Hey, you can't hurt me this way, I care!" you just let all the different bodies fall where they may, and they always do may after a few months. But that's not why you fell in love in the first place, just to hang onto life, so you have to take your chances and try to avoid being logical. Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you. I'm not saying that I don't have practically the most lofty ideas of anyone writing today, but what difference does that make? They're just ideas. The only good thing about it is that when I get lofty enough I've stopped thinking and that's when refreshment arrives. But how can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? For death? Why hurry them along? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you're experiencing is "yearning." Abstraction in poetry, which Allen recently commented on in It Is, is intriguing. I think it appears mostly in minute particulars where decision is necessary. Abstraction (in poetry, not in painting) involves personal removal by the poet. For instance, the decision involved in the choice between "the nostalgia of the infinite" and "the nostalgia for the infinite" defines an attitude towards degree of abstraction. The nostalgia of the infinite representing the greater degree of abstraction, removal, and negative capability (as in Keats and Mallarmé). Personism, a movement which I recently founded and which nobody knows about, interests me a great deal, being so totally opposed to this kind of abstract removal that it is verging on a true abstraction for the first time, really, in the history of poetry. Personism is to Wallace Stevens what la poésie pure was to Béranger. Personism has nothing to do with philosophy, it's all art. It does not have to do with personality or intimacy, far from it! But to give you a vague idea, one of its minimal aspects is to address itself to one person (other than the poet himself), thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love's life-giving vulgarity, and sustaining the poet's feelings towards the poem while preventing love from distracting him into feeling about the person. That's part of Personism. It was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born. It's a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents. It puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person, Lucky Pierre style, and the poem is correspondingly gratified. The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it. While I have certain regrets, I am still glad I got there before Alain Robbe-Grillet did. Poetry being quicker and surer than prose, it is only just that poetry finish literature off. For a time people thought that Artaud was going to accomplish this, but actually, for all their magnificence, his polemical writings are not more outside literature than Bear Mountain is outside New York State. His relation is no more astounding than Dubuffet's to painting. What can we expect of Personism? (This is getting good, isn't it?) Everything, but we won't get it. It is too new, too vital a movement to promise anything. But it, like Africa, is on the way. The recent propagandists for technique on the one hand, and for content on the other, had better watch out.

Moaning

small words big change he lost an eye she died war broke out moaning way walk Brush Creek Playhouse new siding old plywood tarpaper painted thanks Shannon Nancys truck ticket concessions Little Nell audience of three home nap read Theater Castorf Berlin Foreman

Between Dreams

water memory suspends body one single time unfolds lives tragic history unknows reverse pain loss destruction betrays liberal ideal loving brotherhood art not wart flourish protected produced believed in treasure these nights touch one other between dreams salvages real

Falling Leaf

miss Christopher concert web falling leaf what words do like fish in butter guys film "East of Eden" takes me back sublet Barbara Baxley 34th Street why Kazan's melodramatic expressionism my model rejected defied better never so home unforgotten lost in shadows smells silent stars sibilant parenting wet against heat road call sleep chair dream new knee pillow where am I cast substantially changed rehearsals anyway influenced by current reading

Simple Diet

ten pounds lost two weeks simple diet eat much less no coffee alcohol goodies feeling good still too bulgy 95 in my studio music Dunlap keyboard "Bigfoot" journal already typed nap hold hands using my files find surprises James Salter "Light Years" beautiful novel Wes Anderson "Life Aquatic" charm touched

Grammie's Iced Tea

1 gallon water boil and add 3 tbsp tea 3 lemons juice and rind 2 cups sugar 6 sprigs mint stir and cool strain into quart jars

One Way

discover vlogs thanks Times take time healing breeze new freezer berries garden bounty honest sweat fanned forgot nothing on smokeless dull movie numbers invite remorse the past ah ruby soaked lawn furniture pressure changes easily forgive myself forget move another state child partner memories are who we are one way of looking

Dark Confusion

Goldbergs in 44 minutes Anne-Marie McDermott strong loud fast effective barely Bach Busoni kitsch camp taste who knows Reed audience stands cheers wrong turn after gantlet car dealers dark confusion dream City Hall key Richard fell off ladder I took message didnt scrape day lost suddenly spacing what to do relax read paper Lurie plodding plot missed concert finally remember Cino promise

More Real

old building here where nothing old scrape our theatre crudely patched all but falling no money fix Shull paintings smart over skillful trash grammar open express more subject content automate leap oral inflame no pain contained worry read Alison Lurie write Caffe Cino comment Bob Heide keeps me in touch Dick Buck emails Florida network buzz not here more real than anything