Why poetry could be better than painting: “Why I Am Not a Painter” by Frank O’Hara

Negative sentences vs affirmative sentences

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.

I start this with a simple comparison of the terms painter, painting vs poet, poem(s). The first terms appear, including the title, seven times and the second, four times. We read: “I am not a Painter… I am Not a Painter… I would rather be a Painter… Mike Goldberg is starting a painting… The painting is going on… The painting is finished… I see Mike’s painting…” As a kind of opposite statement, we read: “I am a poet… I am a real poet. My poem is finished…. It’s twelve poems…” Thus, we consider two minimal sequences of particular artistic actions well plotted: painting & poetry.

The painting plot seems more complex and indirect. From the first person, the speaker itself, expressing a negative statement, negative –I think–in terms of a strong conviction at the beginning, to a modal statement in the next. The process of distancing keeps going because the next statement has changed the subject to the third person, the real painter, Mike Goldberg, who now is working in his painting. The subject keeps changing or moving to the painting, from the beginning of the artistic work to the finish of the work. Finally as a kind of an ellipse path the voice returns to the I-speaker. On the other hand, the poetry plot is more assertive or affirmative and shorter than the painting plot, but, contrary to one painting work, the poetic working produces twelve poems (that real exist: “Oranges: 12 Pastorals” from O´Hara). This is one of the confirmations of the big questions about art: I write. He paints. I am Not a Painter, I am a real poet. But, the poem is created under the topic of the colors, orange particularly. Maybe the non-sequentially principle is not so clear or implicated here, but the complex of the double plot creates a not so easy interpretation. The meta-poetic reading could help us to try to understand this poem.

The casual tone is expressed by the use of statements like “Sit down and have a drink”, but the expression “I drop in…” appears three times in the first part of the poem. So the art opens its realms of action. The poem takes form oscillating between the painting and the poetry as well as by the paratactic strategy or, in some many words, implying coordinate connectors: I do this [and] I do that: I see the work of the painter and I think of colors; I do this [but] I do that: I think of colors but I am writing.

Why a meta-poetic reading? I think, we can imply that the O´Hara´s principle, “I-do-this, I-do-that” is close to I do this [but] I [really] do that. I mean, the poem express something like: I think of a painting, I see the painter, I appreciate the work, BUT actually I write, I am writing a poem AND I am writing this poem BUT I am thinking of the next poems. “One day I am thinking of a color”.

If we remember the Latin topic “Ut pictura poiesis”, at the first sight no maters what the poet oscillates from one to another: poetry to painting or vice versa, the important thing is the look for, in the middle of the every day or in the immediacy of the life, the artistic object, the artistic point of view of that way of life. The painter looks for SARDINES, and the I — as a real poet — look for the ORANGES things to write about. Thus, the poet can think of colors but actually the same poet with other language (the verbal language) is writing words, maybe not lines, but words accumulated in one page, and then, in another pages. So the real poem is created by “orange pages”.

Finally, this poem is very interesting because the two arts are plotted here, but the really really work produced this poem and other poems. If the Gallery shows the painting, this page and others more exist by a real poet.

I do thoughts but I do words: I see orange but I write a poem: I-do-this, I-do-that

Thoughts…