After reading Personism, I was left with a lot of questions. O’Hara covered a lot of topic and ideas in “Personism: A Manifesto” and I thought that some of his words were very unique and almost radical. “Nobody should experience anything they don’t need to, if they don’t need poetry bully for them.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say this before and I seems even more absurd because a poet/writer is the one saying it. In school, even if you didn’t like poetry, you would have to read and analyze what’s assigned. Usually teachers say that you should read at least one or two poems even if you don’t enjoy the experience. Of course no one likes to learn about and read poetry this way so I agree with O’Hara in that poems should not be “force fed”. After a paragraph on this topic, he continues to explain Personism (creating more questions in the process).
When Frank O’Hara describes Personism, he says, “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…” I’m not quite sure I fully understand his explanation but I think I get the gist of it. In Personism, a poem is written to another person so that a connection is made for emotions like love to travel from the poet to the reader, but not so much that the emotions distract the poet from the actual poem. It’s extremely strange to me and it seems like a Personism poem needs the perfect balance of love, but not too much.
He called it an “abstract removal” to almost “true abstraction.” If abstraction in poetry is the personal removal of the poet, it makes Personism even more confusing. If the poet was to address the poem to another person, the poet’s voice and intent should still be seen in the poem. So how is Personism almost “true abstraction”?
“While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born.” Why should a poem have to be completely thought out and meticulously planned? We talked about this a little in class and I think this reading will create more ideas if we discussed it again. How is a telephone conversion different from a poem? Can a telephone conversation be written as a poem?
“Poetry being quicker and surer than prose, it is only just that poetry finish literature off.” You can tell he follows his own rules and writes what he feels like writing. Reading this manifesto was extremely refreshing.
