Personism: A Manifesto

by Frank O'Hara

Everything is in the poems, but at the risk of sounding like the poor wealthy man's Allen Ginsberg I will write to you be ause I !ust heard that one of my fellow poets thinks that a poem of mine that an't be got at one reading is be ause I was onfused too" #ow, ome on" I don't believe in god, so I don't have to make elaborately sounded stru tures" I hate $a hel %indsay, always have& I don't even like rhythm, assonan e, all that stuff" 'ou !ust go on your nerve" If someone's hasing you down the street with a knife you !ust run, you don't turn around and shout, (Give it up) I was a tra k star for *ineola +rep"( ,hat's for the writing poems part" As for their re eption, suppose you're in love and somebody's mistreating -mal aim. you, you don't say, (Hey, you an't hurt me this way, I are)( you !ust let all the different bodies fall where they may, and they always do may after a few months" /ut that's not why you fell in love in the first pla e, !ust to hang onto life, so you have to take your han es and try to avoid being logi al" +ain always produ es logi , whi h is very bad for you" I'm not saying that I don't have pra ti ally the most lofty ideas of anyone writing today, but what differen e does that make0 ,hey're !ust ideas" ,he only good thing about it is that when I get lofty enough I've stopped thinking and that's when refreshment arrives" /ut how then an you really are if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them" Improves them for what0 For death0 1hy hurry them along0 ,oo many poets a t like a middle2aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too mu h ooked meat, and potatoes with drippings -tears." I don't give a damn whether they eat or not" For ed feeding leads to e3 essive thinness -effete." #obody should e3perien e anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them" I like the movies too" And after all, only 1hitman and 4rane and 1illiams, of the Ameri an poets, are better than the movies" As for measure and other te hni al apparatus, that's !ust ommon sense5 if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you" ,here's nothing metaphysi al about it" 6nless, of ourse, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you're e3perien ing is (yearning"( Abstra tion in poetry, whi h Allen 7Ginsberg8 re ently ommented on in It Is, is intriguing" I think it appears mostly in the minute parti ulars where de ision is ne essary" Abstra tion -in poetry, not painting. involves personal removal by the poet" For instan e, the de ision involved in the hoi e between (the nostalgia of the infinite( and (the nostalgia for the infinite( defines an attitude towards degree of abstra tion" ,he nostalgia of the infinite representing the greater degree of abstra tion, removal, and negative apability -as in 9eats and *allarm:." +ersonism, a movement whi h I re ently founded and whi h nobody knows about, interests me a great deal, being so totally opposed to this kind of abstra t removal that it is verging on a true abstra tion for the first time, really, in the history of poetry" +ersonism is to 1alla e ;tevens what la posi pure was to /:ranger" +ersonism has nothing to do with philosophy, it's all art" It does not have to do with personality or intima y, far from it) /ut to give you a vague idea, one of its minimal aspe ts is to address itself to one person -other than the poet himself., thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love's life2giving

vulgarity, and sustaining the poet's feelings towards the poem while preventing love from distra ting him into feeling about the person" ,hat's part of +ersonism" It was founded by me after lun h with %e<oi =ones on August >?, @ABA, a day in whi h I was in love with someone -not <oi, by the way, a blond." I went ba k to work and wrote a poem for this person" 1hile I was writing it I was realiCing that if I wanted to I ould use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so +ersonism was born" It's a very e3 iting movement whi h will undoubtedly have lots of adherents" It puts the poem sDuarely between the poet and the person, %u ky +ierre style, and the poem is orrespondingly gratified" ,he poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages" In all modesty, I onfess that it may be the death of literature as we know it" 1hile I have ertain regrets, I am still glad I got there before Alain <obbe2Grillet did" +oetry being Dui ker and surer than prose, it is only !ust that poetry finish literature off" For a time people thought that Artaud was going to a omplish this, but a tually, for all their magnifi en e, his polemi al writings are not more outside literature than /ear *ountain is outside #ew 'ork ;tate" His relation is no more astounding than Eubuffet's to painting" 1hat an we e3pe t from +ersonism0 -,his is getting good, isn't it0. Everything, but we won't get it" It is too new, too vital a movement to promise anything" /ut it, like Afri a, is on the way" ,he re ent propagandists for te hniDue on the one hand, and for ontent on the other, had better wat h out" September 3, 1959 2 ;ee more at5 http5FFwww"poets"orgFviewmedia"phpFprm*IEF>GH>@Isthash"$ihoBhbu"dpuf