Why I Am Not a Painter is one of my favourite Frank O’Hara poems. He wrote it after a series of visits to his friend Michael Goldberg, the American abstract expressionist painter. Like many have done so before and since O’Hara grapples with the idea of the many forms of expression open to the human creative spirit.

I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well,

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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.

O’Hara’s title for his poem seems to suggest it will be about the differences between the two art forms, painting and poetry. However, in its execution, this poem seems to concentrate more on the similarities between the two.

In fact, one can even go so far as to say that the poem is a celebration of art in all its forms. Frank O’Hara creates his art with words while his friend, Mike Goldberg, does so with paint and visual imagery. Each is different but, O’Hara seems to be saying, both are valid expressions of the creative mind.

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In the opening line we are led to infer that poetry and painting are different:

“I am not a painter, I am a poet.”

But O’Hara then goes on to highlight the similarities of the two processes: Goldberg’s process of painting, in the second stanza, and O’Hara’s process of creating poetry, in the third. In fact, these two stanzas can almost be read in parallel, with the same creative impulse being expressed, the one at his easel, the other at his typewriter.

O’Hara’s poem is called ‘Orange’ and is inspired by that colour. His friend’s painting, when O’Hara first sees it, has the word ‘SARDINES’ in it. Later he sees that this is all but gone from the finished picture, ‘all that’s left is just letters’. The picture, however, is now called ‘SARDINES’. Thus, both the poet and the painter are inspired by a particular word, though neither word is immediately obvious in the finished work.

The painter’s creative process seems to be about refining, concentrating his imagery from a starting point as he works towards the finished object. O’Hara’s working method, on the other hand, seems to be cumulative, an expansion of words that leads him towards his finished poem:

‘………. Pretty soon it is a/whole page of words, not lines./Then another page.’

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Why I Am Not a Painter is recognisably a poem of the New York School following, as it does, the I-do-this-I-do-that pacing of many of the works identified with this school of poets. Whilst this style produces a relaxed, seemingly spontaneous effect, O’Hara’s poem is, in fact, carefully structured.

He uses an introductory stanza of four lines to set up the premise of his being a poet and not a painter, although, almost as an aside, he lets slip that he thinks he might like to be a painter. He then employs two further stanzas, each of thirteen lines. In the second stanza O’Hara visits Mike Goldberg’s studio and reflects on his friend’s way of working and creating his art. O’Hara then discusses his own working method, in the third stanza, before describing the finished poem and the completed painting in the final few lines.

O’Hara breaks many of his lines in this poem with seemingly odd small words such as ‘is’, ‘a’, ‘in’ and ‘of’. He even ends the first stanza with ‘Well’. But rather than disrupting the flow of the poem, as one might expect, these line breaks give it a sense of unity and progression by referring forward to the next line and back to the one which preceded it.

The creative process may be sparked by a moment of inspiration but, O’Hara seems to suggest in this poem that producing a work of art, be it a poem or a painting, takes time and effort. A number of phrases in the poem are suggestive of the passing of time while the poet and the painter work away at their craft: ‘the days go by’, ‘pretty soon’, ‘Days go by’ and ‘one day’.

O’Hara, as the poem draws to a conclusion, seems to be satisfied with his chosen art form: ‘I am a real poet’. Then the final two lines bracket together the poem and the painting, each with its own somewhat enigmatic title, as if to emphasise the creative unity of the two.

Why I Am Not a Painter – reproduced courtesy of the estate of Frank O’Hara

Sardines – reproduced courtesy of the estate of Michael Goldberg

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Category: WHY