Филологические науки/ 2. Риторика и стилистика.

Волкова Е. В.

Санкт-Петербургский Гуманитарный университет профсоюзов, Россия

On “Why I Am Not a Painter” by Frank O’Hara

Frank O’Hara was one of the leading figures in the New York School of poetry. The question why he was not a painter was rather important for Frank O’Hara. The thing is that he had a lot of connections with painters of the time working as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Larry Rivers, Jane Freilicher, and Grace Hartigan were his friends, and he collaborated with Michael Goldberg, Norman Bluhm, and Joe Brainard on several projects. O’Hara also took a few stabs of painting himself. He was not good at it, but a lot of his friends were. Therefore it made him think why.

O’Hara writes a poem and puts his main idea – that he is a poet but not a painter - in the very beginning of the poem. This is interesting because the main idea of any poem is usually considered to be said in its last line (maybe two of them). Having remembered of that, we decided to read the last two lines of the poem more carefully looking for the main idea.

“…And one day in a gallery

I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.”

This is what they say. Perhaps, this is the real idea of the poem – that the ways a poet and a painter create (and – possibly – live, see and feel the life, understand art) are similar? The writer does not want to say that he is not a painter; he wants to say that he paints by writing. Here is the whole poem.

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.

If you do a close reading of this poem you can find some proofs of this idea. First of all, O’Hara says that he would rather be a painter which means that painting attracts him. Writing poetry does not appear to be his vocation (but if he sees writing poetry as painting then it does). Then, O’Hara describes how Michael Goldberg creates his “SARDINES” and how he creates his “Oranges” – and you can see that the real objects that provoked their works to appear do not really appear in the works – in the painting and poetry in the same way. Michael Goldberg’s painting does not have sardines, it has only letters (which also can point out the fact that painting and writing poetry have a lot in common: letters became important for the painters of that time), and Frank O’Hara’s poem does not have the word “orange” despite the fact that the orange color provided him with inspiration for the poem. Moreover, the poem inspired by orange is about how terrible life is. Orange and life, actually. Poets write about life, painters paint life as they see it.

With the line "it was too much" the painter said that painted objects are much more than words (for him). If you want to paint something but find yourself writing poetry about it instead, it means that poetry is your way of painting. And the results are different: in the poem there is no word "orange" while in the picture it is written "SARDINES". So, the picture has sardines in it somehow.

This is notable that in Russian we use the same verb to describe both writing and painting – писать – which just proves the close relation between these two activities.

With this poem a poet could try to accept the reality rather than be tempted to be a painter like his friend. We know that he tried to paint, and we also know that he failed. Therefore, he may have been envious. But here, in this poem, he proves to himself that he shouldn't have.

References:

1. O’Hara, F. Why I Am Not a Painter. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/why-i-am-not-a-painter/ (Retrieved November, 19, 2013).