DDCPoetry

Original poem reprinted online here: "Why I Am Not A Painter" by Frank O'Hara Originally read: September 25, 2013 More information about the Poet: Frank O'Hara This poem is hard to explain as a poem, but I think Robert Pinsky in his book the  Singing School: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters  sums this poem best as "freedom." Now this isn't the poem which decides the debate on "what poetry is" with all the terms thrown like "rhyming" or "craft."  However, this poem is from the vantage point of a poet trying to create. "I am not a painter, I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not. Well," Here the speaker is being casual with the language and does set up a rhetorical question which states "why" he isn't a painter.  From the tone of the piece, there's a sense of a shrug, "well" and then the story goes. And with the second stanza ...

Original poem reprinted online here:   "The Day Lady Died" by Frank O'Hara Originally read: July 17, 2013 More information about the Poet: Frank O'Hara I didn't know this poem has many analyses about it.  I think the common thread among the analyses are the poem's references.  Yes, the lady in this poem represents "Billie Holiday."  And yes, there's numerous  mentions of pop-culture, place, and time.  I think the references have been covered over by Shmoop and Modern American Poets websites. So what can I bring to the table?  I'll go stanza by stanza. In the first stanza the speaker knows specifically the time, date, and place, "It is 12:20 in New York a Friday / three days after Bastille day, yes / it is 1959"  Why so specific?  It's funny the construction is specific as though the speaker wants to remember history, but also note that the poem is written in present tense.  The present tense serves a sense of immediacy.  The s...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Ave Maria" by Frank O'Hara Originally read: May 14, 2013 More information about the Poet: Frank O'Hara Prayer for a people.  Usually when I think of prayer, I think of the more internal that's told by a group of people.  Especially when this poem is titled, "Ave Maria" or "Hail Mary."  What this poem does is focus it's prayer outward and to the personal.  Who is the speaker addressing?  "Mothers of America," and "kids." The disjointed lines add a sense of free-form  connection between mother and kids and the speaker's perspective in both.  In the first half of the poem is the impact of having kids search the world on their own, and the speaker makes good claims, "it's true that fresh air is good for the body / but what about the soul / that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images."  Go outside or the soul will fall.  How about these lines, "when you grow ...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Poem" by Frank O'Hara Originally read: April 26, 2013 More information about the Poet:  Frank O'Hara I don't know if I could take this as a riff of a love poem, or as an awkward interesting love poem.  Actually, I don't know if I could take this as a love poem at all.  The drop down line isn't as angular as it could be, nor is the subject matter specific.  The poem is the line that straddles -- well -- any sort of connection and association to the poem. So here's a cute line, "if it rains hard /on our toes."  And I mean cute in the most saccharine sense.  There's the pastoral love going on -- walking, oh it's raining -- but it's on  our feet, how interesting.    But I take this as sincere, not so much as a riff.  Yes, I might be bias against the line, but the focus on how the line is read. In the second stanza, the description of the walk is a bit humorous with the focus on the we strolling li...

Original poem reprinted online here: "Chez Jane" by Frank O'Hara Originally read: April 12, 2013 More information about the Poet: Frank O'Hara Every time I read Frank O'Hara's work, I marvel on the grand themes and serious discourse in his work.  That's a lie.  Frank O'Hara has a sense of humor and tricks the reader by pivoting meaning of words and phrases without sacrificing "meaning" (the grandiose themes) in a tongue-in-cheek way. But first, the set up.  The poem starts out fancy domesticity with "The white chocolate jar full of petals" and the observation of stationary boredom comes at the announcement of time "four o'clocks now and to come." Then suddenly the poem becomes surreal with the introduction of the Tiger -- the description of the tiger is "irritable" and doing a lot of action, but note "without disturbing a hair/ of the flowers' breathless attention, pisses into the pot, right down it...