Frank O'Hara Doesn't Eat his Vegetables

Frank O’Hara’s Personism: A Manifesto in _Twentieth-Century American Poetics_: I think he’s right. I never liked broccoli and knew there was something wrong with George-I the day I discovered he did. This weekend we cooked out on the Weber. The steaks were tremendous since I followed the directions for the most part. But the New Jersey corn was triumphant in its debut too. Eating that corn was like reading a poem aloud. It’s good in the can but the words juice all over your teeth when on the cob.

But how 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 with drippings (tears). I don’t give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don’t need to, if they don’t need poetry bully for them, I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets are better than the movies. As for measure and other technical apparatus, that’s just common sense: 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. There’s nothing metaphysical about it. Unless of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you’re experiencing is "yearning."

The older I get the looser I wear my pants but then again that is the style these days. I usually buy pentameter but in the summer trimeter is good too. Especially when you’re not wearing a sonnet. But I’ve found that too much rhyme scheme in the crotch will chafe, reducing all chances of fertility. It also feels strangely metaphysical. Still I never quite yearn but I do find myself hankering every now and then.