FRANK O'HARA'S HEART

In an extraordinary poem Frank O’Hara describes his love for the poet Mayakovsky.  After an outburst of feeling, he writes,

but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

What he is telling us is something unbelievably painful.  Secreted in O’Hara’s thought is the possibility that we create only as dead men.  Who but the dead know what it is to be alive?  Death seems the only metaphor distant enough to truly measure our existence.
 
Frank understood this.  That is why these poems, so colloquial, so conversational, nevertheless seems to be reaching us from some other, infinitely distant place.  

Bad artists throughout history have always tried to make their art like life.  Only the artist who is close to his own life gives us an art that is like death.

From:  Give My Regards To Eighth Street – Collected Writings of Morton Feldman (edited by B.H. Friedman; afterword by Frank O’Hara), Cambridge, Exact Change, 2000


Morton Feldman: The Rothko Chapel, Part 1 (Link) 

                                   

Painting (oil w/sand):  Jim Dine,  Study For This Sovereign Life, 1985

Why I Choose Red -- Hugh MacDiarmid

I fight in red for the same reasons
That Garibaldi chose the red shirt

      -- Because a few men in a field wearing red

Look like many men  -- if there are ten you will think
There are a hundred; if a hundred
You will believe them a thousand.
And the colour of red dances in the enemy's rifle sights
And his aim will be bad – But, best reason of all,
A man in a red shirt can neither hide nor retreat.

Mayakovsky's Last Words

And so they say-

"the incident dissolved"
the love boat smashed up

on the dreary routine.
I'm through with life

and [we] should absolve
from mutual hurts, afflictions and spleen.

* Partial contents of Vladimir Mayakovsky's suicide note, 4-13-30.  Translated by Dina Belyayeva.

Agitprop -- Want It? Enter (Mayakovsky)

Transliteration:

KHOCHESH? VSTUPI

1. Khochesh poborot' Kholod?

2. Khochesh poborot' Golod?

3. Khochesh est'?

4. Khochesh pit?

Speshi v udarnuyu gruppu

Obraztsovago truda vstupit'

Nankompros, ROSTA no. ....

 

Translation:

DO YOU WANT TO? JOIN

1. Do you want to conquer coldness?

2. Do you want to conquer hunger?

3. Do you want to eat?

4. Do you want to drink?

Hurry up to join the strike team of exemplary labor.

Nankompros, ROSTA no. .... 

Comments:

1. The top line is the title of a short agitation verse known as "agitka". 
2. In Russian language the words "coldness" and "hunger" rhyme, and this couple is a ubiquitous cliche in descriptions of harsh living conditions.
3. See Udarnik article for "strike teams of exemplary labor".
4. The smoke in the picture #2 had different associations at these times: today smoke is pollution, then it was a sign of industrial revolution, and posters of early Soviet times abound in smoky chimneys of plants.
5. Each of the links retained above (i.e., for Nankompros, ROSTA and Udarnik) shed light on a different aspect of this work and early Soviet history.   This poster was created ca. 1920.

Past One O'Clock (Mayakovsky, 1930)

Past one o’clock. You're probably in bed.

The Milky Way is like Oka of silver

No need for me to rush. I have no reasons left
to stir you with the lightnings of my cable fervor.
And so they say, the incident dissolved.

The Love Boat smashed up on the dreary routine.
We’re even. There’s no use in keeping the score
of mutual hurts, affliction and spleen.
Look here, the world exudes an eerie calm.

The sky bequeathed to us its constellations.
In periods like this I’d like to be the one
with ages, history and the creation.

Trans. Dina Beljaeva, 2008