Frank O'Hara's Method

‘I don’t even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve.’ – Frank O’Hara (1959)

One can’t be sure how far back we need to recede to enter the realm of the ‘traditional’, nor precisely how we would recognise it when we arrived there. Nevertheless, I see ‘tradition’ as broadly framed by the rules of the past; norms which its adherents feel compelled – or indeed willing – to follow. And yet, when W. C. Williams argued ‘I have never been one to write by rules, even by my own rules’[1], a great challenge to poetry’s skeletal essence, as a link to the past, was challenged. Does the postmodern poem care about the past? More importantly, was Frank O’Hara, as a torchbearer of the postmodern poetic, a loyal student of the past? Or was he a reckless practitioner of the ‘“I do this, I do that” aesthetic’[2]? This essay posits that O’Hara did not reject traditional measure, for ‘what differentiates the poet from other writers is the focus on mode’[3] and O’Hara was no exception in that he did not transcend traditional form. True, O’Hara argued that ‘you just go on your nerve’, however, as W.S. Merwin points out, O’Hara’s point of difference as a poet meant ‘...you don’t just go on that [nerve]. There had to be the talent. And it had to be his [O’Hara’s] own’[4]. Accordingly, O’Hara felt compelled to acquiesce; ‘measure and other technical apparatus, that 's just common sense’[5]. Thus, the appearance of rhythm, isochrony, assonance, alliteration and the cacophonous echo of O’Hara’s poetic influences should come as no surprise. And through Charles Olson’s assertion that ‘form is never more than an extension of content’[6], I argue that the ‘nerve’ which was O’Hara’s fire – his very being – necessarily generated a poetic measure that accommodated a masterful fusion of both traditional and postmodern traits.

Rhythm

At first, O’Hara’s Personal Poem from his collection Lunch Poems seems to be a piece that ostensibly rebels against its ‘own

Bibliography: Dick, David, ‘Frank O’Hara’s “Second Avenue” and the Modernist Tradition’. Colloquy Text Theory Critique, Monash University Press, 23, 2012. Garber, Frederick, ‘Review: Poet Among Painters’. Contemporary Literature, 20, no. 1, 1979. Greene, Roland and Stephen Cushman, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. 4th. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Herd, David, ‘Stepping Out with Frank O’Hara’, in Frank O’Hara Now: New Essays on the New York Poet (Edited by Robert Hamson and Will Montgomery). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010. O’Hara, Frank, Lunch Poems, ‘The Pocket Poets Series: Number 19’, California: City Lights Books, 1964. O’Hara, Frank, Personism Manifesto, September 3, 1959, https://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20421 - Accessed: 02/10/2012 O’Hara, Frank, The New American Poetry (Edited by Donald Allen) O’Hara, Frank, Unpublished letter to Bill Berkson, 12 August 1962 in Frank O 'Hara: Poet Among Painters by Marjorie Perloff, New York: G. Braziller, 1977. Olson, Charles, ‘Projective Verse’ in Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, James Scully, London: Collins, 1966. Perloff, Marjorie, Frank O 'Hara: Poet Among Painters, New York: G. Braziller, 1977. Sellen, Eric, ‘The Esthetics of Ambiguity: Reverdy’s se of Syntactic Simultaneity’, in About French Poetry from DADA to “Tel Quel”, Text and Theory, (Edited by Mary Ann Caws), Detroit; Mich: Wayne State University Press, 1974. Turco, Lewis, The New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1986. Williams, William Carlos, ‘A New Measure’ in Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, James Scully, London: Collins, 1966. ----------------------- [1] Williams, William Carlos, ‘A New Measure’ in Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, James Scully, London: Collins, 1966, 71 [4] W.S Merwin, “essay on style”, A Tribute to Frank O’Hara, published in Crossroads, Spring 2000, 8 [5] O’Hara, Frank, Personism Manifesto, September 3, 1959 https://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20421 - Accessed: 02/10/2012 [6] Olson, Charles, ‘Projective Verse’ in Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, James Scully, London: Collins, 1966, 272 [7] Ashbery, John, ‘Frank O’Hara’s Question’, Book Week [11] Ibid, 733, 1195 [12] O’Hara, Frank, Personism Manifesto [13] Greene, Roland and Stephen Cushman, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 1195 [14] Garber, Frederick, ‘Review: Poet Among Painters’ Adventure Which Happened to Me, Vladimir Mayakovsky, One Summer in the Country” (1920) [21]Thom Gunn, The Sanity of Frank O’Hara, A Tribute to Frank O’Hara, 11 [22] Dick, David, ‘Frank O’Hara’s “Second Avenue” and the Modernist Tradition’. Colloquy Text Theory Critique, Monash University Press, 23, 2012, 20 [23] O’Hara, Frank, Personism Manifesto [36] Herd, David, ‘Stepping Out with Frank O’Hara’, in Frank O’Hara Now: New Essays on the New York Poet (Edited by Robert Hamson and Will Montgomery). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010.