A TRUE ACCOUNT OF TALKING TO THE SUN ON FIRE ISLAND (by Frank O'Hara)

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) brought a refreshing new casualness and spontaneity to poetry, making deliriously funny and surprisingly moving verse out of everyday activities recounted in conversational tones. (What he called his “I do this I do that” poems often featured glimpses of his adored New York City or anecdotes about friends—most of whom were themselves poets or painters.) His brilliant career as a writer and art curator was cut tragically short by a freak dune buggy accident on Fire Island in New York.

(from www.poetryfoundation.org)


The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally

so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."

"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."

"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."

I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.

"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.

Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.

If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.

And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"

"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.

And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.

Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."

"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"

Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

JOE

Joe Brainard seems to have been drawn to forms of containment, in which the unruly or rupturing experiences of life are brought into the kind of reductive clarity that we often associate with classical modalities . . . . Not surprisingly, along with this gift for distillation, Brainard had an uncanny eye for essential, revelatorydetail; these contribute to the vivid immediacy and spontaneity of his work. In essence, such specific distillations can be understood as a form of abstraction, not the abstraction we affiliate with nonrepresentational art, but something perhaps closer to the poetics we have come to associate with the New York School of poetry: an"aesthetics of attention" as critic Marjorie Perloff has said about its most important avatar, Frank O'Hara . . . . Distillation, specificity, and a keen sense of intimate scale allowed Brainard to locate the extraordinary in the ordinary and, curiously, something like the reverse; he could make the extraordinary seem ordinary.

-- Ann Lauterbach, The Nancy Book


A JOE BRAINARD SAMPLING:


WHAT'S COOKING?

I went to a bake sale in a neighboring town one evening and I
bought some exceptionally delicious bars. I happened to know one
of the ladies that was selling things at the sale so the next day I
called her up and asked her if she could find out for me who made
those bars so I could ask for the recipe. She laughed and laughed.
They were so moist and delicious.

POEM

Sometimes
everything
seems
so
oh, I don't know.

NIGHT

Day, you have gone
and done it again.

TREES

Have you ever stopped to wonder what the world would be life
without any trees? Just a big brown ball.

Do you know how many trees there are in the world? Nobody
does.

There is nothing I love more than trees. Except people and
flowers. (Some people, and some flowers.) Of course, not all trees
are perfect either.


VAN GOGH

Who is Van Gogh?

Van Gogh is a famous painter whose paintings are full of inner
turmoil and bright colors.

Perhaps Van Gosh's most famous painting is "Starry Night": a
landscape painting full of inner turmoil and bright colors.

There are many different sides to Van Gogh, the man.

When Van Gogh fell in love with a girl who didn't return his
love he cut off his ear and gave it to her as a present. It isn't hard
to imagine her reaction.

Van Gogh's portrait of a mailman with a red beard is probably
one of the most sensitive paintings of a mailman ever painted.

It is interesting to note that Van Gogh himself had a red beard.

When Van Gogh was alive nobody liked his paintings except
his brother Theo. Today people flock to see his exhibitions.

Van Gogh once said of himself: "There is something inside of
me -- what is it?"

http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Writings-Brainard-Library-America/dp/1598531492/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328625640&sr=8-2