Here are some questions I’d like you to consider for tomorrow’s class. Of course, read all of the poems closely at least two or three times (there aren’t that many). Write a few reflections on the questions below in the comments of this post (I will have to accept the comment the first time, but after that, you should be able to comment freely). You don’t have to answer every question below, just use them to guide your thoughts.
1. Write about Frank O’Hara’s “manifesto” Personism (included in the file) in relation to “Having a Coke With You.” How serious is O’Hara in this manifesto? What is it like to write a poem to exactly one person?
2. Looking at the draft version of “Howl” and the finished version, what do you think guided some of his decisions? Or does it seem arbitrary? Did the poem change much when he changed the lineation? What do you learn by looking at an early draft of a poem?
New York Underground in Film, Music and Literature 1955-85 
1. O’Hara in his manifesto discusses his idea of personism poetry as “verging on a true abstraction” having nothing to do with philosophy, but all art. It seems that he is saying rather than expressing an idea to an audience through a general abstraction, his poetry is simply his thoughts addressed towards one person, making his ideas abstract to anyone but himself. This idea is particularly interesting when looking at his poem “Having a Coke with you.” What I gathered from this poem was that O’Hara believes that artists miss out on the true beauty of what they are painting or creating because they are preoccupied with attempting to communicate the beauty to whoever will view the art. The theme of this poem seems to agree with his manifesto in that his poetry is “art” because it avoids the consideration of the audience and only communicates his personal sentiments at that moment. This distances the reader from the experience of the poet because the line of thought of the poem doesn’t add up to any clear picture other than the poet’s own train of thought. This lack of larger picture combined with the missing punctuation throughout “Having a Coke with you” allows each reader to experience and understand the poem differently, which seems to be in accord with the “true abstraction” idea that O’Hara mentioned in his manifesto. His personal communication of the “real” situation in front of him has a different effect than a poem that tries to tell the story in one larger abstraction.
2. Upon first glance, the edits didn’t appear to have that much significance to me. The meanings of the words or phrases still remained. But when I read them all together, the poem overall seems to hit a little harder with the edits. The changes that he made in conjunction with the rest of the poem seem to give his ideas more significance or emphasis. Although the ideas remain largely the same, the tone seems to shift towards more severity. To me, it seems that in some places he removed particularly obscene, or shocking, phrases to replace them with more simple terms, and in other spots, he did the opposite. Although this changed the meaning of particular sections, it reinforced the meaning of the poem in its entirety. His edits appear very methodical but simple in the way that he just seems to be fine-tuning his ideas. Contrastingly, reading the draft surprised me because of the number of changes that were made. I kind of always thought of poems as being thoughts of the poet in the minute that they were written, so I never really considered any substantial revising process. But given that “Howl” was so influential and discussed such significant issues, I understand how his edits were important in making the poem have the impact that it did.
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1. Frank O’Hara’s “manifesto” grapples with multiple ideas, however, a key aspect centers around pain and logic. As he suggests that “pain produces logic,” he associates physical suffering with mental reasoning of what is right and what is wrong in an individual’s eyes. O’Hara’s focus upon love both within the manifesto and “Having a coke with you”, ties love with pain in an intriguing manner. Through pain, he indicates infinite suffering that love can often bring which is unhealthy for the individual. Both texts couple together to pinpoint a singular person, through a focus upon stillness. In the consistent pain within the manifesto and the portrait within “Having a Coke with You”, O’Hara hints at something that is always visible to the eyes of others. The visibility of pain and a portrait further suggest the logic behind the pain becomes something the individual he is addressing must endure.
2. Comparing both the draft and the final version of “Howl”, the lineation differs between the two. As Soloman begins his draft of “Howl” he integrates short lines which are followed by even shorter stanzas. However, when comparing this with the final it becomes evident that Soloman has not only shifted the structure of these lines, yet he has added a detailed description to each line. Soloman’s integration of not only more detail within each line yet visibility of the expanding lines suggests his inclusion of multiple identities within his poem. As if the author continuously stumbles upon more people which fit not only an audience he was aiming at yet an identity he was hoping to find as he wrote. The repetitious “who” remains cemented within both drafts and does not differ despite the lineation altering. Soloman’s list acts as a laundry list of individuals, yet all ties back to one individual. When looking at the changes in lineation with the word “who” in the draft, it becomes explicit that Soloman desired in showcasing the “who” as the initial word the reader views. Revealing his overall desires in identifying himself as one of these “who’s”, or understanding the “who” behind every story. Whether these stories remain painful or easeful, he attempts in tackling each one which becomes noticeable through the altercations he makes between the drafts.
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1. “Having a Coke With You” is an example of a new poetic movement called Personism that O’Hara declares in his manifesto. It is dedicated to one person, a lover. It is concerned with describing this person and is addressed to them too. Writing a poem like this is a very direct expression of appreciation for a singular person. It is “between two persons” as O’Hara describes it, an acknowledgement of the traits of their relationship, like the “secrecy our smiles take on.” The poem serves as a recording of all these details to make sure they are not lost, but remembered and celebrated in writing.
2. The finished version of “Howl” seems more connected, meaning the parallel lineage suggests which sections of the parataxis go together and when a new description begins. By seeing the changes in diction and tense that Ginsberg makes between the draft and final version, one can learn more about what he is attempting to say. The revisions imply a sense of corporeality. They also shift more from a recollection of the past to something more recent, almost his present.
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1. Frank O’Hara sounds quite tongue-in-cheek about presenting Personism as a movement, with lines like “a movement which I recently founded and which nobody knows about” and “It was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27.” However, I do think the philosophy he outlines is at the core of some of his poems; “Having a Coke With You” is very clearly written to one person. I was a bit tripped up by his declaration that Personism “does not have to do with personality or intimacy, far from it!” as the aforementioned poem struck me as very intimate. (I’m not entirely sure why, but it reminded me of the book/film “Call Me By Your Name.”) With those words, he seems to align himself with Rimbaud’s “Je est un autre” stance. This led me to think of the narratorial presence addressing the poem’s single-person audience as a consciously mediated, filtered entity, rather one that professes to be O’Hara’s authentic, true self. This conception of the narrator fits in better with the delicate balance of feeling that O’Hara says is integral to Personism/what makes it work.
2. To me, it felt like many of Ginsberg’s changes to his draft resulted in a more frantic, disorienting poem – in particular, his change in lineation and omittance of punctuation. The sensory overload that results from long, unpunctuated lines works well with the poem’s textual content, which is difficult to process because of its intricate detail, long lists, and dark, gritty themes. The poem in its final form is a much more exhausting read – as it should be given its content.
It was particularly interesting to me to see Ginsberg’s line edits within his draft – in fact, the seeming arbitrariness of some of these changes (“anarchy” to “Arkansas”, “humorlessly” to “homosexually”) dissuaded me from reading too much into the specific differences between draft and finished poem. It seems clear to me that Ginsberg was more interested in producing a very specific visceral effect than in conveying information, even when he adds detail to a line – such as in changing “who poverty and tatters and fantastic minds sat up all night in lofts contemplating jazz” to “who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz.”
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1.
O’ Hara claims, somewhat sarcastically, that personism could be the death of literature because it puts personal meaning in the lines of poetry, which becomes a kind of letter in prose. This could be because of the accessibility of many more people to authorship, the ability to write a letter and enough education to inspire a personal poem. O’ Hara said the moment he realized he could make a telephone call instead, personism was born. The purpose of the poem had been usurped, one could express all their wishes and admirations over the telephone. The poem then inhabits the space of what can’t be said in a phone call, all those feelings and associations that crowd the side of the mental image of that other person. In ‘Sharing a Coke with You,’ O’ Hara cycles though his associations of the person whom the poem is addressed, repeating the tangent ‘partially because. . .’ trying to explain part of the magic of their relationship. The stanza separations are not properly indented, rather beginning right where the other left off, almost like a series of telephone calls or postcards. All the locations and imagery are inferior to the subject of the painting, the object of admiration, who is presented less abstractedly then the lyric narrator.
2.
One trend in the editing serves to remove some tropes of destruction and entropy, and steers away from poems in the tradition of ‘Ozymandias’ (Percy Shelley) or Yeats’s ‘Second Coming’. Instead of being mystical seers of bedlam, the figures of ‘Howl’ are simply angry. They swim in poisons and meaning evaporates on the editing room floor. Words like ‘anarchy’, ‘illumination’, and ‘poetry’ are omitted; post-war scholars simply burned in turpentine. There is an emphasis on breaking down any societal perspective. The poem paints a scene that is in front of everybody, but it takes a special pair of eyes, almost chemically treated, to see what the poem sees. The answer to what those eyes are seeing are the hidden effects of drug abuse, which Ginsberg is equally terrified and fixated by, which often go hand in hand.
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1. I loved O’Hara’s manifesto on Personism. It felt very tongue in cheek and sarcastic at times, I loved the little quips he has throughout that made it clear he was not being entirely serious and was approaching this in a lighter way, but it also was clear that he was exploring the depth of a very serious idea relating to how poetry can function as a connection between two people and even just what poetry itself is and means. “Having a Coke with You” seems like a perfect example of what O’Hara is getting into because of how intimate the writing is, how the fact that it’s being said to one single person changes so greatly the level of intimacy and joy and connection found within the poem. That, and the fact that O’Hara doesn’t seem to follow any strict rules or form with it, and instead the entire thing is one long, running sentence that at times seems to cut itself off or get ahead of itself or change topics quickly; it feels almost like it’s all being spoken in a long, hurried breath, which adds a tone of passionate excitement that further enhances the intimate joy from one person to another. The poem itself is a reflection of the connection between people, working as a middle ground between the speaker and the receiver of this affection, an expression of intimate love rather than worrying about being confined by rules or having anything outside pressuring the speaker to change anything, because it’s for no one but the other person – And even they might not ever read it, so perhaps, in the end, it is actually only for the writer. That complexity seems to be a lot of what O’Hara is getting at with Personism.
2. I feel like I may be somewhat biased in saying this because I’m already very familiar with “Howl” as a poem, but I feel like the changes made primarily helped the poem flow more as I read it. Part of what makes “Howl” stand out as a poem to me is the endless flow of it, the almost dreamlike quality in the way the vivid lists flow endlessly, and the word choice of the final draft seems to suit that better. Changes such as adding more to a description in order to further the repetitive, imagery-heavy and list-like nature of the poem makes it have the more dreamlike endless flow that I expect from the poem, and there’s more detail and at times it seems more severity and urgency in the language he uses. Some of the subtle word changes really interest me, such as the way that he adds “their” a few times when there was no possessive before, implying a personal human connection to what he’s describing, or when he changes “dragged” to “dragging,” making what he’s talking about happening in the present rather than the past. It shows how much adding or modifying a single word can change the connotation of the rest of the poem, and it shows how aware Ginsberg was of the weight of those minor changes when he was editing.
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Frank O’Hara writes “Personism, A Manifesto” in order to define and intrigue people about his new movement. He explains that Personism is “a movement which [he] recently founded and which nobody knows about”. He created Personism to characterize his style of poetry and attract readers. O’Hara underscores how Personism allows poets to focus on one person and their relationship with that sole person. He entices readers by saying that although the poem is written for one it can still be enjoyed by others since it is part of a particular style, Personism. Personism poems are not trying to cater to a large audience. Everyone can enjoy the poem by vicariously experiencing the relationship between the poet and his/her muse. A perfect example of Personism is O’Hara “Having a Coke with You”. In which it is clear O’Hara is addressing a single person by his use of “you”. The poem is intimate and romantic. He says “I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world”. This falls in line with O’Hara’s idea in his manifesto that a Personism poem could be the transcript of a telephone call, “I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem”. The phone call analogy reminds readers of the people involved in the poem. Like a phone call, the poem is meant to be the words detailing the relationship between two people.
I was surprised at the size of the draft. By the number of descriptive scenes in the draft it seemed like Ginsberg was an astute observer who noticed everything around him and took note. I think Ginsberg’s main focus of “Howl” was to use it as a social commentary by vividly describing those “who” did not have a concrete place in society. To create the final piece, he chose the most powerful examples of the people and scenes he wanted to highlight. Ginsberg selected the most impactful scenes to make “Howl” less like a rambling poem describing an assortment of scenes and more like a speech detailing societal boundaries and frustration.
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1. In his “manifesto,” Frank O’Hara discusses the purpose behind the movement and justifies writing a poem “squarely between the poet and the person.” It was interesting how, in the manifesto, which is titled “Personism, A Manifesto,” he doesn’t introduce the term ‘Personism’ until the end. Instead, he discusses the significance of poetry itself, specifically for the poet. To me, this indicates that he was not serious about the actual movement but rather about the relationship of a poet with his poem. The metaphor that O’Hara introduces towards the middle of the manifesto, “I don’t give a damn whether they [kids] eat or not,” encapsulates his attitude towards poetry and who the audience should be. To me, comparing the poets to middle-aged mothers and the audience to her kids implies that poets often consider themselves to be the forerunners for the readers, or society in general. They consider themselves to be responsible for instilling values and emotions into the readers, which O’Hara argues against. Him saying he “doesn’t give a damn” about what the readers absorb from his work demonstrates how his focal point isn’t the audience but rather the individual for whom the poetry is for. This is clearly evident from his poem “Having a Coke with You,” where he highlights specific moments that he shared with one individual and their essence dictating the emotions that O’Hara and the “You” felt at the time. Instead of attempting to make the poem relatable for the audience, O’Hara instead focuses on structuring it with the lack of punctuation, with fragmentation, and even with not capitalizing the first letter of each line. Each of these techniques specify this poem to be one moment, composed of multiple transitory ones, in the poet’s life. This makes the poem extremely abstract for the readers and heightens it to be about emotions between two individuals as opposed to about literary techniques and words on paper.
2. Although I have read Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” multiple times, I had never read its transcript and the edits that were made to produce the final version. Upon reading the draft version, it made Ginsberg’s motive behind writing the poem more evident. From changing the actual diction of the poem, “anarchy” to “Arkansas,” to merely changing the tense of the words, “who dragged” to “dragging,” he transformed it to be ambiguously specific (as paradoxical as that sounds) and generated a heightened sense of urgency. In addition, the altered structure changed the poem to visually appear as a prose while sonically be a poem. For me, the changes in the lineation enhanced the poem’s effect on me – as a reader – because it flowed like a prose while having the rhythm of a poem. Furthermore, the altered lineation also effectively emphasized the parallelism at the beginning of each line, making it very clearly about the “best minds of” his “generation.” As minute as the changes appear in the transcript, if it is read and then compared to the final version, their overall impact is evident. Finally, maneuvering through both versions of “Howl,” the readers are able to follow Ginsberg’s thought process and also comprehend what he, as the poet, sought to emphasize; it is as if the readers get to peek inside Ginsberg’s mind, which makes both the poem and him more accessible to them.
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For the first question, I do think that the poet is serious about his poetics in his manifesto, although sometime he adopts a tone of irony, expressing his idea.
In his manifesto, his general idea is that, first of all, poetry should not be limited by strict forms such as rhymes, rhythms or other conventions such as assonance. We can see the practice in terms of this point in “Having a Coke with You,” for the language is a colloquial one spoken in the street (literarily in the street!). On the other hand, the subject should not be confined to something lofty. I think that expressing this point, O’Hara takes an ironic tone, as if his poem excludes all lofty or philosophical concerns lest he should be smothered by his own thought. Here I consider him attacking certain trend of contemporary poets who tend to keep their works out of a mundane world or throw them into a world of ethereal existence, whereas in O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You,” we see the speaker departure from a quotidian action, expresses his emotions through stream of consciousness, yet still goes into a serious yet not highbrow discussion of art. Indeed, by claiming that from the tradition of Rembrandt to the work of Marino Marini nothing overweighs the impression shared by the two right now and right here, O’Hara is trying to be serious with his honestly instead of with any formulation.
In terms of his poetics in general, in my understanding, what he is trying to say is that a poem is an intermediator between the author and the addressee; however, according to his personism, at the same time, poetry isn’t necessarily responsible for an accurate interpersonal communication; that is, it is totally loyal to the creator him/herself, yet at the same time conveys meaningful information to readers, completing a mode of interaction echoing to Barthe and new criticism. For O’Hara, poetry is at the same time no more than a participant in the cliched failure of human communication, and a somehow intimate moment shared by an addresser and his/her addressee. Yet I am curious about the following questions: 1) How well does this theory function? This spring we have read Yeats and T.S. Eliot. When we came to Auden and Larkin I got already a little bit confused. The confusion grows when I read vers libre of O’Hara: to what extent ca we say that this is poetry? What is poetry’s language, despite its beauty in O’Hara’s case, if the language is no longer condensed in some traditional way? 2) What is the poet talking about in the last stanza? I want to know more about his discussion of post-renaissance art since it is still unclear for me till this moment.
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These questions at the end are very good! If you want to talk about them in office hours or something, let me know.
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1. In his manifesto, O’Hara seems to be stating that he does not care much for poetry nor the literary rules emplaced by it, rather he chooses to write based on what he is feeling. This movement he has started, Personism, focuses on writing a poem that is only meant to be understood by two people, which can be very direct. He claims that the reception of other readers should not be as vital as others make it seem, “how then can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what?” The piece, “Having a Coke With You,” is an example of what O’Hara described as Personmism. It is directly addressed to an individual — a lover — and simply focuses on his feelings and thoughts he wants conveyed rather than how others may perceive it; which is what makes it art. It completely disregards the audience and cares only about expressing his true feelings.
2. It seems to me that the draft is a longer, darker, more descriptive version of the final version of “Howl.” I personally believe that the final draft is an easier read because it focuses more on what the message is trying to convey, thus making it more impactful for the reader. He emphasizes the more important and darker features of humaniyt/society. Being able to view the draft allows the reader to gain a more insightful look about the poem and what Soloman’s original thoughts were. It aids in further understanding the final draft as well as pinpointing the main focus of it through changes made. He effectively removed or added certain phrases in order to further emphasize his observations and their meaning.
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Frank O’Hara’s idea of personism gave a very evocative human perspective to his poetry, and, as he stated, his ultimate goal was to take away the pages and just talk to one person. This is very apparent in “Having a Coke with You”, as he speaks directly to his lover or someone he is in love with at that time. It really reads like a conversation, there isn’t much rhyme or rhythm or any type of poetic structure that one comes to except from a poem. There is no punctuation, which makes it seems much more stream of consciousness, him just kind of running through his thoughts and scribbling them down. This does what he suggests as being a pillar of the personism movement, which is lacking intimacy and personality. I cannot tell through his writing his very tongue and cheek attitude toward the movement as a whole, saying this movement, “will undoubtedly have lots of adherents”, I assume he’s poking fun at himself, and thinks that personism won’t be that popular. He also gives a sort of straight laced answer to his discovery of it, that instead of writing the poem he could of used the telephone, and that was personism’s birth, which is kind of funny. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, but I do think he takes the idea’s and tenants of this style that he created seriously enough.
I’ve read this poem a few times at this point, and always noticed the other day in class, that like Whitman, in Howl, Ginsberg’s lineation lends itself to be little snapshots of beat life in San Fransisco. The early drafts don’t give this feeling, they kind of feel like an unfolding continuous story, not little pictures from a bunch of different ones. When you look at an early draft of poems it gives you a general guidance to where the poet is taking his ideas, and which direction he wants to go. I’m not sure what to make of all the specific changes to Ginsberg’s poem, the main idea though would have to creating some sort of idea that sticks with the reader, many of these choices seemed to have to do with serving that purpose.
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1) Frank O’Hara’s “manifesto” Personism outlines a recently founded literary movement that is illustrated in poem “Having a Coke with You.” Personism, as O’Hara explains, essentially places the poem “in between” the writer and person whom the poem focuses on. This way, feelings are expressed not to the person, but to the writing, something more eternal and in some ways closer to the writer’s core. This is demonstrated in “Having a Coke with You,” which deals with a deeply personal relationship through fragmented writing that employs allusions to art and intellectuals. This poem incorporates personism–the idea of writing between poet and subject–by carrying intimate details that captures a snapshot of specific feeling and wanting.
In “Having a Coke with You,” speaker O’Hara takes the subject seriously with levity. It is written in free verse, with broken stanzas that add a stream-of-consciousness dimension to his writing, heightening the heart he puts in his writing. The wide reach of details in the poem is crucial to understanding O’Hara’s earnestness in the writing, as it provides an element of worldliness. By referencing travel destinations, paintings, and artists, O’Hara demonstrates a firm grasp of intellectual discourse and reinforces the effort he places in writing. Though the poem is peppered with humorous remarks, such as “I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for the Polish Rider” that serve to lighten the mood, it is evident that O’Hara has sincere reverence for the subject matter.
Writing a poem to exactly one person in the Personism style requires a degree of personal involvement that goes beyond praising a love–one must impart an imprint of themselves in their speaking style. In the case of “Having a Coke with You,” the author imprints his intellect and shares small details that make things more personal. This added personal touch strengthens the connection the writing has with the subject, as they are more prone to understand these references. The poem is a thread of sorts that connects the speaker and person.
2) Ginsberg’s “Howl” has much progression between rough draft and final version. Most notably, one can trace interesting decisions in word choice. In the draft, words such as “mystical,” “anarchy,” and “poetry and paint” are made more specific. For example, mystical becomes “hysterical,” which underscores the mania he conveys in his subject. Altering “poetry and paint” to “turpentine and paint” conjures acrid imagery and intensifies the depiction of hell, in which scholars burn.
Additionally, “Howl” adopts a different structure in the final version when compared to the rough draft. The latter sees brief lines and simpler stanzas, suggesting a more direct and composed approach to the subject matter. The final version, however, is vast and carries broad stanzas, denoting a wider vision. Additionally, this version lacks punctuation for the most part, which adds a sense of unstoppability to Ginsberg’s writing, as though the flow of his mind cannot pause and will not cease.
I believe Ginsberg’s own desire to elicit a strong emotional response in readers guided these decisions. Compared to the rough draft, “Howl” is at times disorienting and consistently expanding upon its own ideas. Changes to widen the dizzying scope of the poem and choice word changes that result in more vivid imagery indicate the writer’s goal of producing a visceral reaction in readers.
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1. When O’Hara describes how Personism was born, he discusses how while writing a poem to someone he loved, he felt as if he could have used the telephone to tell them his feelings and thoughts just as easily. This concept is evident in “Having a Coke with You” as the poem feels as if it is “squarely between the poet and the person instead of two pages”. The details within the poem, such as his lover’s “orange shirt” or “love for yoghurt”, contribute to Personism quite well since the descriptions are clearly about one person O’Hara has in mind. In his manifesto, O’Hara mentions that a number of poets try force feeding their audience their ideas, but he doesn’t feel the need to do this. In “Having a Coke with You”, the poem itself doesn’t feel forced. There is a natural, conversational flow to it that relates back to O’Hara’s writing style he discusses in his manifesto. He doesn’t focus so much on the assonance or rhythm, but rather goes on his nerve. There is a lightness to his manifesto with comedic asides to the audience he includes in parentheses, and while he is writing about a serious topic, it feels as if he doesn’t want the reader to take him completely seriously. He is rather sarcastic in some places with overstatements like, “Personism, a movement which I recently found and which nobody knows about, interests me a great deal…” giving his manifesto a facetious quality.
2. The changes Ginsberg made to “Howl” created a more dramatic and harsh quality that pulled the poem to life. By changing the text in subtle ways, a severity to the flow was created. In changing the word “stumbled” in “who stumbled on out of cars” to the word “flew”, there is a stronger intensity to the action. Patterns of these changes emerge in the draft and all together create a relentlessness within the structure. In his edits, Ginsberg also pays attention to consonance in some sections, changing lines from “and the solid light of sun revolved in their hair” to “and the solid light of sun stood still in the height over their hair”. These changes contribute to the movement of the poem and give it a musicality that is detected when spoken.
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1. Frank O’Hara’s “Personism, A Manifesto”, is the poet’s explanation that poetry isn’t mechanical in nature but rather that which is born out of instinct and fundamental human needs. Personism, to me however, has always been associated with a philosophical school of though that summarized social and human characteristics. This is further made evident by O’Hara’s reference to Allen Ginsberg, a fellow poet and one of his peers–who happens to be from a different school of thought. This whole notion of “schools of thought” and “principle” definitely give off a feeling that his manifesto is seeking to argue the principle of Personim. Yet, the poet makes it very clear that said subject matter is no philosophy at all. The final lines of the first stanza summarize his actual argument perfectly: “You just go on your nerve. If someone’s chasing you down the street wit ha knife you just run, you don’t turn around and shout, “Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.” This statement is obviously an indication that the poet is not being the most serious in his manifesto, for he is clearly making a satirical and comedic exaggeration on a situation that could very well end fatally. Essentially, I believe O’hara is trying to show that poetry doesn’t really work in a cookie cutter fashion and that the greatest forms of poetic expression are born out of humanly interaction between two individuals filled with heavy emotions. O’hara’s poem, “Having a coke with you” is a great example of the concept conveyed in this manifesto. In that piece, the language is very informal almost like every phrase embodies an idea that can only be best understood by the individual for which the poem is addressed to. Because of this, different people be effected by his writing in unique ways, which ties perfectly back to his manifesto where he discusses this natural and organic feeling that poetry should be a catalyst for.
2.While the general idea and sentence structure of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” remains relatively similar, the addition of much more descriptive words and certain repetition breaks give the poem more identity and voice. For the the edits were great in the sense that helped me as a reader see what the poet is trying to convey much clearer. For example, in many cases, addition description words are included to further emphasize certain nouns and ideas. Adding the word “screaming” in front of “sun” is one of these instances where it gives a rather inanimate object a certain degree of life through personification. Furthermore, areas were the repeating “who” pattern is broken adds a great deal of pause in the piece which signal readers that they have stumbled upon a line or idea of certain significance. With that said, the sentence structure of the repeating “who“ followed by the hanging indents remains relatively untouched. For me personally, I believe the usage of the repeating “who” is a direct reference back to the title itself: “Howl”. A howl is essentially a sound and who seems to act as that sound effect that echoes throughout the poem’s lines. Looking at the draft definitely taught me a bunch about Ginsberg’s writing process. It showed me how he is a relatively adamant person when it comes to his sentence structures but more flexible when it comes to specific word choice and language usage. I was also taken aback by the shear number of edits made by Miles to the poem. It just showed me how difficult the process was to produce a piece of poetry that will perfectly convey the author’s message to readers.
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1. Frank O’Hara is really entertaining to read, in a sort of I-want-to-burn-down-the-house-and-don’t care-if-it’s-rebuilt kind of way. In both “Having a Coke With You” and his manifesto, he expresses his dislike for the formal rules and regulation of poetry and other “high” forms of art very bluntly. He doesn’t see why everything needs to be so divided and neatly cut up, because (as he hints at in ‘Having a Coke With You’) that’s not the way life is. Even the creators of the highest of the high, so to speak, did not have the exact perfection that they are trying to portray. I think that the way O’Hara writes about poetry as a concept is very sarcastic, almost biting at times. He’s trying to go against the grain, and tear down all of the mostly-meaningless artistic standards that have perverted the art of poetry from its purest form.
2. As for Ginsburg, the first version of HOWL seems much more extreme than the final, almost more actionable. While the final, famous version of the poem is almost a celebration of the tragedy that has befallen so many of his contemporaries, the first version seems to be more like the story of their downfall, and a more actionable celebration of just how different from the mainstream they were. One line that really stood out to me in the beginning of the first version was: “Who burned the hells of poetry/ whose apartments flared up in the joyous fires/ in their heavenly brains.” This line depicts the figurative destruction of previously held ideals about art and poetry in a very literal way, using imagery of fire and destruction to create something “joyous,” almost manic. The final version of the poem focuses less on the destruction of ideas, and more on the destruction of the people participating themselves. I don’t think that the poem changed all that much just from the lineation, because he also changed the content fairly dramatically. Looking at the earlier draft of the poem just made it more clear to me that he was trying to break down the norms surrounding poetry and art into this emblematic counterculture. In the final version of the poem, he focuses on the people of the emerging culture, and not so much on the norms of the one that they are breaking away from.
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After reading Frank O’Hara’s poems, I felt like the beginning few were almost like acknowledgements. He seemed to be thanking people, or objects for the way he as a writer improved. In “Having a Coke With You” I felt it was about love and how amazing it is to be so infatuated with someone. He has these hopes and dreams for the lady that he talks about. He compliments her and claims her beauty is that of something Michaelangelo should draw. I felt this poem was very light and dreamy. O’Hara seems thankful for the experience that he has or had with the women. As I continued reading and finally got to “Personism, A Manifesto” I felt as if he too had changed. I think he remains grateful to all his experiences but I also feel like he does not care to be an amazing poet. O’Hara simply wants to be the best he can be. I feel this idea comes about also in “A True Account of talking to the Sun at Fire Island” the sun tells him not to worry about how others perceive him just to focus on himself. And in the “Personism, A Manifesto” he doesn’t use the sun to tell others to mind their business, he does it himself. I feel “Having a Coke With You” relates to “Personism, A Manifesto” through the idea that O’Hara’s poetry is not for others, the same way his relationship between him and his partner is special to him. I feel “Having a Coke With You” is an example of how he writes for himself and not for the pleasure of others; which is similarly stated in “Personism, A Manifesto,” where he says as a poet he cannot make people feel certain things.
I never read a draft and then the original before so this was a new assignment for me. It seems to me that most of his changes were on the descriptions of the text. I feel he wanted to paint a picture of what he saw or felt was happening to a community that was not receiving the proper attention. He writes about drug addicts and rebels but I don’t feel it was in a negative sense but more of a cautionary tale. He praises them by calling them the best minds of his generation. He mentions these big cities that were affected but he is not talking about the beauty or the innovation. Its the side that doesn’t receive recognition.Overall I feel most of his changes improved his imagery and allowed the reader to properly understand his own opinion on the world.
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1. Frank O’hara’s concept of Personism, elucidated in his short essay “Personism, a A Manifesto”, presents a concept of poetry that concerns the relationship between the poet and the audience; namely, he argues that poetry should take place “squarely between the poet and the person” (20). In other words, the affect of the poetry comes from the abstract relationship that takes place between the unfolding of the poem between speaker and audience. In this way, Personism is addressed to one person in order to evoke a feeling of love “while preventing love from distracting him into feeling about the person” (19). The goal of this poetry is the “love” that is created between the poet and person and maintains the affect of the poem on the poem itself. O’harah demonstrates this in “Having a Coke with You” in several ways. First, much of the content of the poem concerns feelings that take place “in between” the speaker and the audience. It notes both the speaker’s “love for you [the subject]” (4) and the subject’s “love for yoghurt” (4). Furthermore, their experience is shaped “before people and statuary” (6); it takes place not in the speaker’s perspective, but in view for all to see from different perspectives. The poem further demonstrates Personism by highlighting the subject of the poem of art itself. The speaker “would rather look at [the subject] than all the portraits in the world” (14). Furthermore, the subject is so fulfilling that they “[take] care of Futurism” (17). In this way, O’harah shows that the subject is more important than the different forms that art takes. O’harah ends his poem with a demonstration of his Personism, referring to how he is “telling you about it” (25). This “you” is a direct reference to the audience of the poem; O’harah wants the poem to not “go wasted on [himself]” (25), but he wants to create a feeling of love that takes place in the poem between himself and the audience.
2. While it can be dubious to make conclusions about what motivated an author’s writing, it is nevertheless fun and productive to examine the differences between the drafts. I do not believe that these decisions were arbitrary; rather, I believe that there are a number of motivation factors that could have influenced Ginsberg’s final draft of Howl. First, there are a number of aesthetic changes that occur between the drafts. For example, the change from “mystical” to “hysterical” (13) in the third line of the poem is a change in the line’s syllable length. Although Ginsberg may not have consciously been thinking about syllabic meter or other devices, these decisions can be unconsciously influenced by an author’s aesthetic desires. Another example is the change from “flying” to “roaring” (13) later on; the change creates consonance with the “r” sound in “winter” (13). Furthermore, changes in tense can change “mood” of the content of the poem. Changing “dragged” to “dragging” (13) or “listened” to “listening” (13) can make the poem feel alive and in the present. Ginsberg also changed several lines to become more specific in their references. “Arkansaw” (13), although misspelled, is much more specific than “anarchy” (13), and the addition of “Tangier” to “migraines” (13) adds a new meaning to the line. Finally, many of Ginsberg’s changes were meant to affect the content of the poem itself. The many deletions present can drastically change the direction of the poem. Furthermore, specific word changes, such as “incarnation” to “incarceration” (15) or “future” to “past” to “present” (15), affect the content of the line and the poem as a whole. Although impossible to tell, many of these changes may have been guided by Ginsberg’s desire for aesthetic changes in the poem, as well as changes in the entire meaning of the poem to make it feel more active and specific.
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1. ‘Having A Coke with You’ values the beauty of reality, through describing the power of an ephemeral moment with a person he loved. He compares this beauty to paintings, and states the pity he feels for these artists, as they find joy in capturing love, not experiencing it. He argues that art cannot represent the intimacy or joy one experiences with another person, and that his mindset shift is recent, as he states that “a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me.” In turn, he discredits the beauty of being engulfed in a fantasy through art, and believes that the reality of love is superior.
‘Having A Coke with You’ and ‘Personism, A Manifesto’ tonally differ; both pieces have a critical perspective of superiority regarding the meaning of art, yet Personism, A Manifesto lacks the fascination for love, and is more apathetic and humorous. O’Hara states that he founded this form of poetry after understanding his love for another person, yet it appears that his perception of intimate love is jaded. He cites the pain in love, and states that Personism will evoke “overtones of love without destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity.” This influences his new ideology to remove the poet from the work, therefore removing vulnerability from art, and making poetry more analytical. I see it as a rebellious, dissociation from reality, in hopes of sinking into a falsified fantasy, since he is, perhaps, insecure that he can not mutually love who he desires.
Howl Comparison
2. I see that the revisions of ‘Howl’ gave the piece more of a poetic structure by strengthening the tone and by choosing words that created distincter imagery, mostly with the setting of New York. I feel that the piece became less romantic, and more literal and specific. In turn, the stakes became higher, and the audience is more drawn to the rebellious and distorted counter culture that is being destroyed.
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1. Reading the entire “manifesto,” it is somewhat apparent that O’Hara does not mean for everything he writes to be taken completely seriously and analyzed, including his described Personism movement. We see in his last paragraph evidence of this, as he cheekily writes “What can we expect from Personism? (This is getting good, isn’t it?) Everything, but we won’t get it. It is too new, too vital a movement to promise anything.” (O’Hara 3). Rather, this manifesto seems to be O’Hara lightly mocking a few other styles of poetry while describing a “movement” mimicking precisely his own style of poetry, which cannot be replicated and, thus, cannot really become a large movement with many followers. The description he gives of his own poetic style, Personism, is quite fascinating and is made even more apparent in “Having a Coke with You.” Concisely, Personism “puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person, Lucky Pierre style, and the poem is correspondingly gratified. The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages.” (O’Hara 2). Breaking down his manifesto and taking “Having a Coke with You” as support, we see that O’Hara seems to place his poetry between himself and another person he loves, to whom the poem is addressed (in “Having a Coke with You,” this person is a lover). However, the poem does not exist for the purpose of the loved one. We see in “Having a Coke with You” that O’Hara does not spend much time flattering his lover and going on about their beauty. Rather, the loved one is brought in for the purposes of the poem, as “everything is in the poems” (O’Hara 1). The poem then reaps the benefits of “thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity, and sustaining the poet’s feelings towards the poem while preventing love from distracting him into feeling about the person.” (O’Hara 2). The poem benefits from bringing in a loved person to address; it does not exist for the loved person.
2. Analyzing the first draft of “Howl” in relation to the final draft, much of the diction and lineation changed. In terms of diction, not all the edits can be grouped into a single category of change. However, there are a considerable number of edits taking verbs like “who dragged” to “dragging” (5) or “who suffered” to “suffering,” i.e. making past tense verbs present tense. This heightens the sense of urgency within the poem. When verbs go from being in the past to the present, the now, it quickens the pace of the poem. No longer is Ginsberg referring to the past where people used to drag or used to suffer, but people are in the present, right now, dragging and suffering. We see other glimpses of more urgent, present diction as well in line 37 where he changes “to find out the future” to “to find out the Present.” In terms of lineation, the combination of several lines of the rough draft allows the poem to sound more like prose. Personally, it reads easier and improves the rhythm of its reading.
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1. O’Hara does not believe in structure and uniformity in his work of poetry because it presents a lack of creativity and does not seem genuine in the part of the poet. Doing what you want and “go on your nerve” by following human instinct is what keeps the poetry authentic. Seeing everything through a logical lens creates a reality that is almost limiting. Doing things that are illogical are what keeps life going and taking risks and chances is what makes our lives worth living. Personism is a concept that O’Hara came up with to explain that the relationship between the poet and his poetry should not be distracted by the subject of his poetry such as a lover. Instead, show exactly what he is feeling toward the person through the actions he takes in his everyday life. The informality of his poems such as in “Having a coke with you”, give a sense of how unconventional his romanticism is toward his lover by, “evoking overtones of love without destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity,” in order to engage with his poetry in a way that does not explicitly spell out love but rather expresses it through his descriptive actions and comparisons. He keeps the construct of love alive without overflowing it with meaningless words that do not show what love really is. He engages with the poetry by describing activities that show the depth of his love toward the individual he’s addressing it to.
2. Overall, the revisions on the final draft constructed a clearer structure that seemed much more organized. His ideas flowed nicely with much more detail that made the reader feel as if they could feel and see whatever he is describing. What guided some of the decisions Ginsberg made in the final draft of “Howl” verses the first draft were the people he surrounded himself with that supported his antiwar, anti capitalist beliefs. His passion toward changing the social norms that keep society trapped is what drives him to be as vulgar and real as possible. He expresses this by not holding back in the new draft, because before his final draft, he was plagued by rules and limitations that stopped him from writing something real and genuine. He creates more character in his new draft as he says , “starving hysterical naked” instead of mystical in the old draft to better explain that he is not portraying these people through an outsider’s perspective, but rather places himself within their community. Thereby, calling them hysterical because he too can understand why they chose the lifestyle they did.
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1.
“Having a Coke with You” accurately exemplifies O’Hara’s concept of “personism.” As he writes in his manifesto on the concept, personism “puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person… and the poem is correspondingly gratified.” Although the poet clearly addresses another person in the lines of “Having a Coke with You,” the poem is neither about the poet nor the individual it’s addressed to. Rather, it is about the space in between the two. It’s about the space around the simple action of sharing a Coke, not the action itself. O’Hara hints at the true subject of his poem (the space in between) when he writes, “in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth / between each other…”
2.
Perhaps the most obvious changes Ginsberg made throughout his various drafts of “Howl” were to the structure of the stanzas. In some earlier versions of the poem, the text is indented and seems to drift towards the right side of the page, giving the words a sense of laziness, rather than the intensity that is apparent in later versions. In another draft, the text is tightly confined to a column in the middle of the page, causing both the words and the general flow to feel restrained. In his final version, Ginsberg fills the entire page with text, indenting only to emphasize the beginning of every other line, many of which begin with “who.” Filling the page with text from margin to margin helps emphasize the swiftly flowing, often overwhelming tone of the poem, because the reader is overwhelmed both by the poem’s language, and by its structure.
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Throughout the manifesto there is a tone of arrogance that portrays seriousness, though is quite comical in its approach towards the exploration of Personism. He questions mortality throughout the short work, and states, “But how then can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? For death? Why hurry them along? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes” (paragraph 4). His dark sense of humor shines through his writing, as he uses this brief digression to joke about what individuals fear the most, death. Jokes regarding morality are typically the last resort of authors, because fear of it is universal. O’Hara is in favor of any approach towards poetry that may be unconventional or questionable, proven by his use of death as a comedic means of appealing to his audience. Many of his poems are potent and sometimes devoid of flowery language which would, otherwise place him on par with other “pretentious” poets of the era. His untraditional writing style, being as powerful as it is, is able to portray his passion for any artistic medium, and the ability for the individual to express themselves without criticism from those that cannot comprehend their artistic vision. He is largely about portraying emotion effectively, though without the sentimentality of earlier poetry.
In “Having a Coke with You,” utilizes the aforementioned ideas of utilizing less to evoke a stronger emotional response. He employs an almost childlike interest or passion when he speaks freely about his romantic interest. In the midst of his discourse O’Hara states, “I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time” (lines 12-16). He begins the stanza comparing her beauty to that of paintings, proceeds to joke about a painting he would actually prefer to see more, and lastly mentioning how he would love to take her to a museum they discussed previously. Through his writing he is able to express his excitement and eagerness. In relation to O’Hara’s manifesto, he uses nontraditional poetic means to express his immense love.
2. It was very difficult for me to discern parts of the transcripts, though I believe that his revision of sentence structure and diction added definition to the text. Providing more descriptive language to sentences definitely contributed to the effectiveness of the poem and the feel of the city. Words utilized and added throughout the poem elicited a stronger emotional response, and forced the reader to feel the plight of the lower-class New York population. Repetition of the word “who” at the beginning of most life is representative of another individual or group lost to drugs and city life. Additionally, the flow of the poem improved and was easier to read once revised by the author.
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Despite the sarcastic and witty nature of O’Hara’s tone and style, and I’m assuming his personality as a whole, I genuinely believe that he wholeheartedly takes his personism manifesto seriously. This is obviously highlighted within “Having A Coke With You”, however, there are many other assigned works that exemplify the most striking characteristic’s of personism.
Within “Meditations in an Emergency”, O’Hara states, “Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?” This excerpt integrates the idea that one could use the telephone instead of writing the actual poem. O’Hara credits this thought to his creation of personism, and the way in which his writing allows for the poem to be put “squarely between the poet and the person” as he states within his manifesto. Through this small quote from “Mediations in an Emergency”, the reader feels as though they are witnessing a quarrel between two lovers more so than the after-effects of intimacy or the feelings a lover can evoke upon a poet.
However, the range of personism not only extends the realm of romantic poetry, but also introduces, at least to me, a way in which to glorify the normality of day-to-day life. Within “A Step Away from Them”, O’Hara outlines his lunch hour walk with a kind of brevity and conciseness that evokes reminders of daily journal entries. The entirety of this poem can be read as a transcription of a conversation, and flows as if O’Hara is solely explaining his day to a roommate or loved one. Revision seems totally out of the question. Despite the vast differences this poem has with “Having A Coke With You”, they both embody personism in a way that accentuates its range and overall possibility as a movement.
I genuinely feel as though O’Hara’s serious use of personism is what allows me to treat his work as truthful and genuine. He states within his manifesto that personism “sustains the poet’s feelings towards the poem while preventing love from distracting him into feeling about person”. There are many times that I have read poem’s that contain so many abstractions which, in turn, allow my mind to wander from the stated subject or the subject my subconscious has created in order to re-identify the path the poet has been outlining for me. Many situations have ensued where I cannot find why I have been lost and where to return to. Within O’Hara’s poems, and especially in “Having a Coke With You”, I never become lost due to it’s simplicity. By simplicity, I don’t want to overgeneralize the poem with the idea that anything within the piece is “easy” or “bare”, however, I want to analyze the way in which O’Hara turns normality into a feeling (within me at least) that is highly meaningful. There is something with his use of the color orange that fascinates me. He states, “Partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian” and continues to state, “partly because of your love for yoghurt”. Through these small trivialities within the lover’s appearance and personality, O’Hara makes the reader feel as though his lover OWNS the color. He OWNS all yoghurt. Despite what happens in the future, despite whether or not they end up together, whenever O’Hara sees that shade of orange on the street or sees his lovers’ favorite yoghurt in the grocery store, the memories and feelings of the relationship will always come to the surface. Even though this notion has been stated many times in many poems, songs, and books, O’Hara states it without really stating it with the commonplace adjectives of “happier” and “love”, because there is no need to accentuate the truth when the truth is powerful. He is not using countless devices because that’s not how he speaks to his lover, and that reality makes the piece all the more intimate and timeless.
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1. In O’Hara’s “manifesto” Personism, there is a thick coating of irony and satire, coming across as a critique on how poetry can favor the elitist who strive for technique over content. While O’Hara is somewhat making fun of a critic’s rebuke of his style and embrace of the abstract, he does include his credo of what poetry should be: the importance of focusing on forgoing logic and “elaborately sounded structures.” O’Hara lays out a warning of a continuation for the demand of poetic expression in a finite and constricted way. He writes, “Force feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete).” This fear of stagnancy seems to be the inspiration for Personism. “Having a coke with you” follows the style of Personism. The poem blends abstract images with specific insignificant details to create a closeness to the abstract idea the poem is revolving around, in this case, love. This paring of contradictions produces a feel that is organic and personal: “the poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages.” What might have started off as a mockery of how serious and strict poetry has become, O’Hara’s want for continued poetic agency and exploration of the abstract and infinite shines through.
2. The change in the physical structure and lineation of the poem seems deliberate in that Ginsberg extends the sustenance and eliminates the interruption/line breaks, creating an effect of exhaustion. The prolonged sentence structure, lack of punctuation or break, and continued alliterations leaves you tired and breathless, mirroring the images and situation presented in the poem. The main difference I noticed between the early draft and final product was the change of language rather than substance: change in tenses, synonyms, and increase in specificity. Furthermore, the addition of the ending four stanzas helps conclude the poem in showing the outcomes of the lives and experiences told in the poem. Ginsberg concludes with, “with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.” The ending line, perfectly summarizing a pessimism and grittiness present throughout. Ginsburg’s leads us through an examination into the different types of people making up his generation, and their ultimate shared fate.
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1. I think O’Hara seems serious inasmuch as the complaints he lodges against the poetry community are things he actually has a problem with. In particular, he mentions “yearning;” O’Hara says in Personism that the technical aspects of a poem should function for it the way a tight pair of pants does, “so everyone will want to go to bed with you… Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you’re experiencing is ‘yearning.’” Later, he mentions Personism’s attempt to avoid “destroying love’s life-giving vulgarity.” This seems to be a restatement of one idea, which is that poetry has been sanitized (of sex, and perhaps of more) and has suffered for it. Because of that restatement, I believe this segment was somewhat serious. But when he writes about Personism overthrowing literature, and in his use of lighthearted humor, it’s clear not everything is meant to be taken so seriously. And that’s perhaps the point — that some people take poetry much too seriously.
In comparison to “Having a Coke With You,” it’s clear that the poem resulted in intimacy and immediacy. O’Hara says that he “was realizing that if [he] wanted to [he] could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born.” In other words, there must be a reason that what he’s saying has to be put down in a poem, and not just said. In “Having a Coke With You,” there’s a beauty to the words that I think would be lost in dialogue. All the tactile experiences of the objects he associates with his lover would be difficult to grasp, but in poetry form they can be pored over and relished. The poem, because it’s directed at one person, has that clear direction, and authenticity, specificity. It’s not “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” it’s a poem that only that one person could fully understand and enjoy the way it was meant to be.
2. The changes in the first few lines seem most important. By changing ‘mystical’ to ‘hysterical,’ Ginsberg avoids sounding trite and instead underscores the sense of madness he’s trying to portray. Likewise, beginning the next line with “dragging” rather than “who dragged” changes its meaning. The phrase from the first line now carries into it, and the “who…” segment starts a shift in the poem away from those first few lines. He also edits many words out, sometimes entire lines. Toward the end of our selection, there are the lines:
and mustard gas of sinister intelligent manners
with an eye nervous on the ball
and the subconscious bloops of the hand grenades
This is rewritten so that ‘manners’ becomes ‘editors,’ and the entire second line is struck. In my opinion, the struck material was chaff separated from wheat; it didn’t add anything. On the other hand, trading ‘manners’ for ‘editors,’ much illuminated a previously inscrutable line. Overall, the edits do seem to help clarify and make the word choice stronger.
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