O'Hara's "Personism" and "Personal Poem"

“I’m not saying that I don’t have practically the most lofty ideas of anyone writing today, but what difference does that make?” In his brief essay entitled, “Personism,” Frank O’Hara claims to have “modestly” found “the death of literature as we know it.” Though intentionally humorous, Personism is undoubtedly tied to his poetry, as O’Hara ironically congratulates himself for his poetic faculties. A new style of poetry with a distinct aversion to abstraction, Personism (always capitalized in the essay) “puts the poem squarely between poet and the person…and the poem is correspondingly gratified.” However, O’Hara claims that there is no personality or intimacy involved in Personism, “far from it!” It seems to me that this essay is an attempt by O’Hara to push the progressive envelope, in a sense, experimenting with the unconventional.
O’Hara claims that Personism is his response to the trend of abstraction taking place in poetry, which Allen Ginsberg discusses in It Is. Abstraction, to O’Hara, “involves personal removal by the poet,” in order to appeal to a mass audience. O’Hara, on the other hand, doesn’t “give a damn whether they eat or not,” using the metaphor of a mother force-feeding her children. By making his references so specific, and so personal, O’Hara’s poetry can only to be understood by a select group of people of his choosing, particularly the New York School of intellectuals with whom he associates. Thus, O’Hara’s poetry is decidedly esoteric, and personal, though “far from” being intimate, “evoking love without destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity.” Of course, O’Hara gives only a “vague idea” what Personism is actually about, perhaps to prevent his poetry from abstraction, and appeal to a mass audience.
It is clear that O’Hara’s “Personal Poem” is closely tied to this idea of Personism. For one,
O’Hara makes references to “LeRoi” in the poem, and to be sure, it seems as though the speaker, O’Hara, is meeting LeRoi for lunch. In the essay, O’Hara mentions having written a poem for someone whom he was in love with after having lunch with Leroi Jones, the Black Arts poet. In “Personal Poem,” O’Hara makes a reference to “one person out of the 8,000,000,” perhaps the person with whom he is in love, out of the entire population of New York City. In reading “Personal Poem,” this idea of connecting directly to an audience without being intimate, seemingly contradictory ideas, is more easily understood.
I don’t know how many readers come across O’Hara’s poetry and understand all of his personal references, specifically “Lionel Trilling” and “Don Allen,” but if I were to guess, I’d imagine it’s a small group of people. This being the case, perhaps this poem is directed only to one person, that person being the only person to understand able to understand what exactly is going on in this poem, that person being the person with whom O’Hara had fallen in love.

Meningitis and Sylvia Plath

Illnesses, psychological and otherwise, as well as suicide are topics Sylvia Plath readily explores in her poetry. “This is Number Three/What a trash/To annihilate each decade,” Plath writes in “Lady Lazarus,” alluding to her suicide attempts in life, which apparently take place every ten years. A sufferer of severe chronic depression, Plath is a testament to the idea that beauty is borne out of profound suffering; as painfully as Plath conveys her disposition, her poetry is nothing short of brilliant, if at times unbearably morose. As someone who has recently overcome a potentially life-threatening illness, I found much of Plath’s poetry, as an outlet of the pain she endured, oddly consoling.
To say that my illness is comparable to Plath’s would be unfair to Plath; I was fortunate to receive a specific and treatable diagnosis, whereas Plath chronically suffered from a depression she was never able to overcome. If there is one thing to be said about receiving treatment for an illness, the best part is when you no longer have to receive treatment, and the illness is terminated. Being off an intravenous antibiotic, and able to resume a normal life is liberating for me. Unfortunately for Plath, this same liberty came at the price of her life.
Quite often in Plath’s volume Ariel, particularly in this excerpt from “Edge,” I’m inclined to believe Plath is vividly foreshadowing the scene of her own suicide:

The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over. (1-8)

In spite of being the scene of a death the tone conveys “accomplishment” rather than grieving; it is as if Plath writes from the point of view of her own soul, gladdened by the transcending of a miserable corporeal existence. The image of the Grecian toga calls to mind the image of a Greek goddess, reinforcing to this idea of transcendence through death. Aside from the issue of suicide in “Edge,” this poem suggests that the human is perfected when it no longer exists in body. This, of course, is a dangerous interpretation. “The moon has nothing to be sad about/…/She is used to this sort of thing,” Plath writes. In juxtaposing her death with the image of a celestial body, Plath glorifies the act of dying, in order to justify the crime she later commits against herself.
“Edge” is not the only poem in which Plath foretells, or at least refers to, suicide or illness. “Paralytic,” “Fever 103 degrees,” and “Hangman” each indicate these topics in their titles alone. This being the case, it is clear that merely living was an act of suffering for Plath, in which she saw no end. I thought about this as I read, and as I waited for a tube to be removed from my arm. Between having to leave Seville, Spain without saying bye to my friends, losing my credits for the semester, and being left at home mostly alone, I had plenty of time to feel sorry for myself. Reading Sylvia Plath could have easily been the straw that broke the camel’s back, as most would agree that her poetry is anything but uplifting. Plath, however, accepts her inconsolable disposition:

I smile, a Buddha, all
Wants, desire
Falling from me like rings
Hugging their lights.

In this excerpt from “Paralytic,” Plath conveys a sense of content. Free of worldly desires, Plath is at peace with her suffering—which would not end. In my case, there was a specific day in which my IV would be taken out, and I would be able to resume normal activity. In understanding that Sylvia Plath could come to terms with a suffering that would not leave her, my temporary illness began to pale in comparison.

A Close Reading of Ginsberg's America

In America, Allen Ginsberg yearns to pay homage to the country he dearly loves, but due to the nation’s political and social shortcomings, he is resigned to address his homeland with an air of dissidence, as the following line epitomizes: “America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?” The poet’s disdain for the ever-increasing trend of conservatism and industrialization endemic in his contemporary America is unmistakable throughout the poem. Above all, however, Ginsberg is of the wary of the war-driven politics and xenophobia threatening the fabric of American society. Further, in America Ginsberg’s sympathetic outlook towards Communism is present. Though most appropriately categorized as free verse, the poet ironically employs the classic form of litany throughout America to reflect his desire to draft a patriotic celebratory poem, one in which he would laud the liberties and expansiveness of the United States of America.

“America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing,” Ginsberg states in the opening line of America, reflecting the exhausted outlook that defined the writers of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg’s claim a few lines down of not being in the “right mind” (Ln. 7) can be attributed more so to the country’s deficiencies and faults rather than his own madness. In telling America to “Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb” (Ln. 5), as well as pleading to “end the human war,” Ginsberg’s pacifistic attitude is evident. In asking, “When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites,” it is clear that this poem, published amid the Cold War and the McCarthy trials, caused a great deal of controversy when it was written.

On the second page of the poem, beginning with the line “Are you being sinister or is this just some sort of practical joke?” Ginsberg’s gripes about America are less specific, but no less apparent. Clearly, Ginsberg has major ethical concerns regarding the build up of artillery, perhaps more specifically nuclear artillery, thus questioning those in charge as pulling a “practical joke”. The line “America stop pushing I know what I’m doing,” serves to elucidate Ginsberg’s fear and rejection of conformity, driven by the American media. Ginsberg’s rebellious attitude is furthermore apparent in divulging both his marijuana usage, and previous association with the Communist party.

In juxtaposing the lines “My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right” with “I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations,” Ginsberg celebrates his sagacity as a poet—or perhaps, in irony, questioning his own sanity. The latter would seem more accurate considering references on this page of “sit[ting] in my house for days on end and star[ing] at the roses in my closet”.

The next stanza, still on the second page, continues to address Ginsberg’s fight against conformity, in condemning America for letting its “emotional life be run by Time Magazine.” In irony, however, Ginsberg divulges that he is “obsessed by Time Magazine.” Ginsberg addresses to the magazine’s call for responsibility, concluding, “Everybody’s serious but me.”

In the next line, (“It occurs to me that I am America,” and the following, (“I am talking to myself again,”) a shift in speaker takes place, in which Ginsberg, seemingly believing himself to be a microcosm of America, begins in the next stanza to speak from America’s point of view. “Asia is rising against me./I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance,” he writes, elucidating a common fear of the growing superpowers in the East. As America, Ginsberg concerns himself with more than just foreign affairs: “I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.” A clear criticism of American society regarding poverty and the prison system, Ginsberg’s championing of the poor and the working class throughout the poem further punctuate his connection to Communism.

On the following page, within the same stanza, the voice shifts back to exclusively Ginsberg’s. He satirically compares himself to Henry Ford and in mocking capitalism, further confirms his support of communism or socialism: “America I will sell you strophes $2500 a piece $500 down on your old strophe.” This sentiment is echoed in the lines that follow, offering support to Tom Mooney, a socialist and labor union figure from San Francisco, as well as to Spanish Loyalists, opposed to the Fascist regime of Franco. Ginsberg’s support for communism is never clearer in the extended line enjambment in which he recalls attending a communist meeting with his mother, and he jokingly concludes, “Everybody must have been a spy.”

In the last twelve lines of the poem, Ginsberg concerns himself with the prospect of war with the Soviet Union, and the xenophobia that accompanied with this possibility. “America it’s them bad Russians,” Ginsberg writes, “The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take out cars from out our garages.” If there are two things to notice from these lines, it is the use of improper grammar and irrational fear. When coupled together, it is clear that Ginsberg is expressing the irrational fears of the uneducated regarding the Soviet Union. This fear is the kind that would drive people into wanting to go to war, rather than work out the differences with the Soviet Union diplomatically. “America is this correct?” Ginsberg asks, wary of the ignorance he perceives and what it might lead to.

One cannot help but notice the differences between reading Ginsberg’s America, and hearing the poem read to a live audience. In reading the poem, Ginsberg’s tone is accusatory and serious, in spite of the ironies dispersed throughout. In listening to Ginsberg perform the poem live, particularly a version I found from March 18^th, 1956, the comic elements of the poem come to light. One line in particular, “America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?” engenders two vastly different connotations when read in the book, compared to hearing Ginsberg performing it live. When read in the book, it appears as a sad statement, as if something a parent would say to a child when they have done something wrong. By contrast, when Ginsberg read the line on March 18^th, 1956, the crowd erupted with effusive laughter. Perhaps the comedy that arises in this line, or any line, within the poem does not take away from the seriousness that Ginsberg is trying to convey in America.