Frank O'Hara vs. Michael Robbins

Immediate notes/thoughts/remarks on O'Hara (vis-à-vis Robbins?) as possible bases/premises for further arguments:

Personism: objects to "abstraction in poetry" ("the absence of the artist's personal voice or style from his or her work"); avoids "philosophy," or abstract speculation.

The poems I've been focusing on are "A Step Away from Them" (because I can relate to it so damn much), "The Day Lady Died," and “Rhapsody;” because they all overtly say what I want to say about O'Hara, especially re what I've been reading about modernism and, also, the poetry of Michael Robbins.

Connections/reactions to modernism: all three poems are reminiscent of Hope Mirrlees’ Paris: A Poem and Guillaume Apollinaire’s “poemes conversations” in their experiential/observational methods, along with their incorporations of (pop-) culture, which one can also see in Pound’s Cantos and Eliot’s The Waste Land; all of which were inspired, in part, by the French Symbolists: Mallarme, Verlaine, Rimbaud, etc (I think); “the cut-up phrases, the lack of syntax, the unclear references, the zipping between an ancient past and modern present.” However, where O’Hara’s poems depart from these/this tradition(s) is by their inclusion of the perspectival “I”. Whereas, in modernism, the first-person perspective was eradicated--or maybe just looked down upon--due to its failure to mimetically represent the socially/politically/culturally fragmented self. O’Hara’s poetry seems to be a response to this by bringing it back to the individual, making it personal, and not necessarily trying to assert some greater meaning; but to just write for and, maybe, entertain that other one person for whom the poem is written.

Trying hard not to lay on the backspace button: not too confident in my historical sense.

In “A Step Away from Them” (something I myself take every lunch break at work to read and chain-smoke cigarettes in some corner of the garage), “my” and “I” are in the first line--the beginning of an “I-do-this I-do-that” poem that isn’t out to prescribe some universal truth. Why do the laborers wear yellow helmets: “They protect them from falling bricks, I guess.” “What do you mean, ‘you guess!?’” “[I mean,] I guess.” “Okay, word.”

“O'Hara's most persistent interest, however, was the image, in all its suddenness, juxtaposed with an equally unlikely image, following techniques not of Imagism but those perfected by the French Surrealists. This period of experimentation and learning (although the imitations and parodies continued) advanced into an interest in post-Symbolist French poetry, especially that of Guillaume Apollinaire and later Pierre Reverdy, along with the big-voiced, roaring surrealism of Vladimir Mayakovsky” (Poetry Foundation).

Dunno how I did historically (in my connections/reactions section): confused.

Coca-Cola, Times Square, Edwin Denby, JULIET’S CORNER, Giulietta Masina, Federico Fellini, Bunny (?), John Latouche, Jackson Pollock, BULLFIGHT, Manhattan Storage Warehouse: just some of the references made in the poem, ranging from the obscure to the obvious; all of which the reader should assume would be understood by the person for whom this poem is written (back to personism).

Ugh, there's so much more I have to read; so much more to know. Might add more later.

Edit: Okay. Here are some snippets from Frank O'Hara's bio section (which have guided my thinking/reasoning), from Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (is O'Hara postmodern?), edited by Paul Hoover and, coincidentally, negatively reviewed by Michael Robbins:

"Characterized  by wit, charm, and everydayness, his work extended William Carlos Williams's emphasis on the American vernacular into urban popular culture of the 1950s and 1960s."

"'[T]he poetry that meant the most to him when he began writing was either French--Rimbaud, Mallarme, and surrealists: poets who speak the language of every day into the reader's dream--or Russian--Pasternak and especially Mayakovsky, from whom he picked up what James Schuyler has called the "intimate yell"' (Ashbery).

"Another of O'Hara's important predecessors was the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Gathering random snatches of overheard conversation on his Paris walks, Apollinaire composed what he called 'Poemes conversations.'"

"'I don't think of fame or posterity (as Keats so grandly and genuinely did), nor do I care about clarifying experiences for anyone or bettering (other than accidentally) anyone's state of social relation, nor am I for any particular development in the American language simply because I find it necessary. What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems'" (O'Hara).

"Immediacy, honesty, and fearlessness are among the attractive qualities of his style: 'You're sort of galloping into the midst of a subject. . . . You're not afraid to think about anything and you're not afraid of being stupid and you're not afraid of being sentimental. You just sort of gallop right in and deal with it'" (O'Hara).

And from volume two of The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, edited by Ramazani, Ellman, and O'Clair (3rd ed.):

"He objects to 'abstraction in poetry,' which he obliquely defines as the absence of the artist's personal voice or style from his or her work; that is not to be confused with abstractness in painting, because even in the work of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, one can still feel the presence of a personal style. O'Hara wants poetry to avoid 'philosophy,' or abstract speculation, but while he is frank about his sexual identity as a gay man, he doesn't opt for 'personality or intimacy' either."

"Some of his poems express a genial appreciation for the neon lights, posters, and other objects that litter the New York landscape (and that received similar attention from the Pop artists). In addition, the dreamlike, irrational sequences of images in some of his poems may have been inspired by surrealist painting and film, the rapid flurry of images dramatizing the dispersal and distraction of postmodern consciousness."

"O'Hara's poems are crammed with the discontinuous sights, names, and places of metropolitan experience, traversing media from advertising and film to high art and music, representing encounters with diverse social classes, ethnicities, and nationalities[;] [...] showing us what it feels like to live in immediate contact with both the inner and outer worlds. Alert and energetically responsive, the poems stay close to the moment of their inspiration, even narrating the experiences and interruptions that went into their composition."

Okay, where Robbins comes in:

Without having a specific poem in mind (maybe not needing one; i.e. it is, by now, self-evident), Robbins pervasive use of "I" is in the same vein as O'Hara poetics (stylistically), but consider the following quote from an interview with Robbins re confessional poetry (not sure if O'Hara should be considered part of this movement, or whether he was a precursor to it, etc.):

"Doubtless there was a time when the confessionals’ star hogged the firmament, in which equally great poets like Frank O’Hara and George Oppen also shone. But that time is past, and the work especially of Lowell, Plath, and Berryman is vital to any contemporary poetics that hopes to understand the relation of affect to subjectivity and of individuals to the public sphere" (Poetry Foundation).

It seems as though the perspectival use of "I" in Robbins's poetry is less an indicator of the "personal"--in the emotionally evocative sense, which, ugh (see next paragraph then come back to me)--and more a continuation of the direct communication between  poet and assumed person; both of whom are connected/engaged (pop-) culturally--in the past and present. And so, both O'Hara and Robbins have modernist ties when it comes to pop-cultural fascinations, but their use of "I" is what divides them: while O'Hara's is more of a "I"-as-narrator, Robbins's is more of a "I"-as-chameleon (though, not necessarily in the "perspectiveless" modernist sense, but in a "perspective-ful" postmodern sense [what?]). Centripetal modernism? Centrifugal postmodernism? Maybe, dunno. I think the term "postmodernism" is bullshit, and "post-postmodernism" is even more bullshit. I'm beginning to think modernism is still in effect, and that the advent of prefixes is just another attempt at commodification.

(Next paragraph here. While the quotes above may assert/suggest that O'Hara wasn't interested in these things--and perhaps he isn't in the three poems I mentioned; but some of his others definitely have a "[R-?] romantic" feel to them. For example, "Autobiographia Literaria" (holy shit) totally has that whole I-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud vibe to it. Now go back.)

Alright, that's all he wrote. Might add more later. Sorry for all the quotes.