Why I Am Not a Painter
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.
— Frank O'Hara
Perhaps the sentiment here — the present absence, or subtraction — might also explain why it is that I'm not a poet, even a writer. Or a mathematician.
4 comments:
I have decided that I quite like O'Hara. I considered taking that MOOC but opted for The Art of Poetry, with Robert Pinsky, at edX instead. But I might try ModPo next time it's offered.
I was hoping, when I saw "Sardines and Oranges," that your post would be about this poem, an old favorite. There's a lot of good commentary about art and aesthetics in O'Hara's work. Have you read his excellent book on Jackson Pollock?
The MOOC sounds great. Off to look it up.
I'm registered for the edX course as well. :)
That ends up being a great poem, in a sardine-y sort of way!
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