“Personism: A Manifesto” by Frank O’ Hara is by far one of my favorite readings I’ve read this whole semester. The reason is because everything O’Hara says about poetry and reading is so true and I couldn’t agree more. He says how poetry is not required to make sense or entertain, but instead it can just be ideas written on paper. A line that I thought was hilarious but made a clear point was when he said, ” 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.” I’ve always believed that there’s always people who like to read and hate to read just like there’s people who like poetry or simply hate it. But those who don’t like poetry sometimes end up liking certain poets and their poetry because they can connect with them or other reasons. Poetry shouldn’t be “forced fed”, you should like it if you enjoy it and can connect to it.
This piece was an easy read and understand, one of the reasons why I liked it. But one thing that was difficult to understand was his definition of personism. Personism is a movement that Frank O’Hara founded and his definition is, “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.” After reading this couple of times, I think his definition of personism is very loose because instead of stating what personism is, he writes more about what personism is not. To be honest I still don’t know what personism is but I like the way O’Hara gives examples and writes his thoughts down to state what his movement means to him. I like that this piece was basically O’Haras thought just written down on a piece of paper.
