Thoughts on Art & Poetry

While we're on the topic of the Beat Generation ...

My favorite poem ever written is “Why I’m not a painter”
by Frank O’Hara.

The first time I read this I was at Michigan. I remember reading it once, and then over and over again ... I still love it to this day :)

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

As a result, this is my most favorite painting:

(Sardines, Michael Goldberg, 1955)

That in mind, it comes as no surprise that my second favorite painting in the world is Mark Rothko’s “Orange”:

But even though I love both “Sardines” and “Orange” madly, there may be no greater work of art than my third favorite “painting”…

Tee hee :)