Frank OHara and the Poetics of Saying I ISBN-13: 9781611470468

ISBN-13: 9781611470468

Binding: Hardcover

Author: Mattix, Micah

Release Date: 03-03-2011

Languages: English

Number Of Pages: 182

Package Dimensions: 9.0 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches

Details: While recent works of criticism on Frank OHara have focused on the technical similarities between his poetry and painting, or between his use of language and poststructuralism, Frank OHara and the Poetics of Saying I argues that what is most significant in OHaras work is not such much his “borrowing” from painters or his proto-Derridean use of language, but his preoccupation with self exploration and the temporal effects of his work as artifacts. Following Pasternaks understanding of artistic inspiration as an act of love for the material world, OHara explores moments of experience in an effort to both complicate and enrich our experience of the material world. On the one hand, in poems such as Second Avenue, for example, OHara works to “muddy” language through which experience is, in part, mediated with the use of parataxis, allusions, and absurd metaphors and similes. On the other, in his “I do this I do that” poems, he names the events of his lunch hour in an effort, among other things, to experience time as a moment of fullness rather than as a moment of loss.
The book argues, furthermore, that OHaras view of the self as both an expression of the creative force at work in the world and as the temporal aggregate of finite experiences, places him between so-called “Romantic” and “postmodern” theories of the lyric. While it is often argued that OHara is a forerunner of a new, critically informed, “materialist” poetics, this study concludes that OHaras work is somewhat less radical in its understanding of poetic meaning than is often claimed.
Moreover, while OHara is preoccupied with his experience in his poems, the book argues that he espouses, in some respects, a rather traditional view of love. In addition to being a metaphor for the creative act, love, for OHara, is the chance coming together of two entities. Yet, one of the ironies of this is that while love is, for OHara, a feeling that is the result of movement, or the unexpected coming together of two otherwise separ