I loved “Personism: A Manifesto” by Frank O’Hara. After the videos we watched in class, I really admired and took a liking to him after seeing how laid back he was as a person and a writer. After having this notion that all poets are pretentiously obsessed with a abstract, it was a breath of fresh air to see someone with such great character and sense of humor taking a light-hearted approach to writing poetry.
Frank O’Hara’s concept of Personism is basically connecting a single piece of poetry to one unique person. Abstraction involves personal removal of the poet. Rather than connecting the piece to every single reader and trying to emotionally hit them hard, it only pertains to the one person and “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”. It seems that Frank O’Hara’s resentment for the elitist idea that poetry should be abstract has fueled Personism, and his manifesto was a funny, clever, and thoughtful read.
