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Acquaintance or inspiration? Jackson Pollock’s influence on Frank O’Hara
A comparison of Frank O’Hara’s poetry with Jackson Pollock’s drip-paintings
© Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm
Bachelor Essay of Modern English Literatureby
Stephan Raoul VegelienStudent 1614495
Word-count: 5,188
Supervisor: Dr. Jan VeenstraCourse Code: LEL999B10
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 1
Acquaintance or inspiration?
Jackson Pollock’s influence on Frank O’Hara
Introduction
The American poet Frank O‘Hara was unique in his generation. He was active as a poet from
his college years at Harvard (1946-50) until his untimely death at 24 July 1966, when he was
fatally injured by a beach-buggy on Firefly Island, New York. During these twenty years he
wrote many hundreds of poems. O‘Hara was one of the leading figures in the New York
School of Poets, active in New York in the 1950s. This group, essentially a group of
befriended poets—amongst which were James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery—
was interested in modern art and poetry and owed its name to the similarly named group of
painters from the 1940s and 1950s, also known as the Abstract Expressionists. This group of
painters included such artists as Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Grace Hartigan, Franz Kline
and Willem de Kooning. O‘Hara met Rivers on visits to New York during his years at
Harvard and he met Pollock, Hartigan, Kline and de Kooning in 1952 at The Club of the New
York Painters and the Cedar Tavern1. O‘Hara was quite involved in the art world and was
influenced by these artists, as he says in his essay Larry Rivers: A Memoir:
It is interesting to think of 1950-52, and the styles of a whole group of young artists whom I knew rather
intimately. It was a liberal education on top of an academic one…. If you live in the studio next to
Brancusi, you think about Poussin. If you drink with Kline you tend to do your black-and-whites in
pencil on paper.2
O‘Hara moved in the same circles as Pollock, and was, through their contact and his
interest in Pollock‘s work, undoubtedly influenced by Pollock. In his book on O‘Hara, Russell
Ferguson writes:
Of all the so-called New York School poets, it is unquestionably O‘Hara who had the closest
relationship with the painters for whom the term New York School has now become canonical, …
O‘Hara wrote the first monograph on Jackson Pollock (in 1959), he was a close friend of de Kooning
1 From: “A Short Chronology” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.). Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995: xiii-xvi.
2 O’Hara, Frank. “Larry Rivers: A Memoir.” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.). Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995: 513.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 2
and Franz Kline, and he organized The Museum of Modern Art retrospective of Robert Motherwell‘s
work in 1965. … These relationships with the giant figures of Abstract Expressionism remained the
foundation of his career as a curator.3
David Sweet mentions that ―[l]ike the Abstract Expressionists, O‘Hara retains an idea of form
even though he intends to make full use of chance, speed, and the kind of innate creative
energy which the Surrealists believed exceeded the bounds of controlled expression.‖4 And
John Ashbery, another poet of the New York School, wrote: ―Like Pollock, O‘Hara
demonstrates that the act of creation and the finished creation are the same.‖5 This shows not
only the social connection between O‘Hara, but also providing a comparison of their works,
showing that there are some striking similarities between O‘Hara‘s poetry and Pollock‘s
paintings, notably his drip paintings of 1947-50. These similarities can be found in a
comparison of O‘Hara‘s original style of poetry and Pollock‘s ―action painting‖ technique
and in their aesthetics of motion, immediacy and connection between artist and work.
Pollock‘s drip paintings, from the golden years of his career, made him famous. Works such
as Summertime (1948), Number 1 (1949) and Autumn Rhythm (1950) are known for their size,
seemingly chaotic drip technique and the artist‘s way of painting, being in the painting, rather
than looking at it from the outside.
In this essay, I will show the similarities in both artists‘ methods of work and their
aesthetics. There is no doubt that Pollock influenced O‘Hara. As a curator, O‘Hara was very
interested in Pollock, and this resonates in his poetry. There are several references to Pollock,
and one poem is even a digression on a painting by Pollock, ―Digression on Number 1,
1948.‖6 By examining the similarities between Pollock and O‘Hara, such as their techniques
of painting and writing, their aesthetics and characteristic features, I hope to argue that
Pollock did, in fact, influence O‘Hara‘s poetry. In order to answer these questions, there are a
couple of sub-questions to be answered: What are Frank O‘Hara‘s main influences? What
characterizes his poetry, stylistically and thematically? In what way are these characteristics
3 Fergusson, Russell. In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art. Los Angeles: The Museum of
Contemporary Art and Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999: 21.
4 Sweet, David. “Parodic Nostalgia for Aesthetic Machismo: Frank O’Hara and Jackson Pollock. Journal of
Modern Literature, 2000, 23.3-4: 378.
5 Fergusson, Russell. In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art. Los Angeles: The Museum of
Contemporary Art and Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999: 27.
6 O’Hara, Frank. “Digression on Number 1, 1948.” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.).
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 260.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 3
comparable to Pollock? It is important to show what stylistic and aesthetic similarities there
are between O‘Hara and Pollock, in order to draw a conclusion about the degree of Pollock‘s
direct or indirect influence.
O’Hara’s influences
One of the main influences in O‘Hara‘s poetry is the New York art scene of the 1940s and
1950s. But how did O‘Hara become so involved in the New York art scene? In 1951, O‘Hara
moved to Manhattan, where he got a job at the front desk of the Museum of Modern Art.
Poets John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch and O‘Hara—close friends of O‘Hara,
who he met during his college years—came together in the Cedar Tavern in New York City.
This bar was a popular bar with the Abstract Expressionists. In Larry Rivers: A Memoir,
O‘Hara says semi-jokingly.
An interesting sidelight … was that for most of us non-Academic and indeed non-literary poets in the
sense of the American scene at the time, the painters were the only generous audience for our poetry….
The literary establishment cared about as much for our work as the Frick [a New York museum on
European art] cared for Pollock and de Kooning.7
During these years, O‘Hara became involved in the art world, giving and taking lectures on
Abstract Expressionism and related topics at The Club, writing reviews for Art News, and
spending much time with painters. Although O‘Hara was not as close friends with Pollock as
he was with, for instance, Rivers or Hartigan, he was well acquainted with him. Through his
work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Art News, he became interested in
Pollock‘s paintings. In 1959 he was the first to write a monograph on Pollock‘s work, three
years after Pollock‘s fatal car accident.8 In the acknowledgements, O‘Hara writes: ―Through
the years of my acquaintance with Pollock‘s work I have absorbed, consciously and
unconsciously, many insights of artists and friends.‖9 In the monograph, O‘Hara explains
Pollock‘s influences, his strengths and some of his works. The depth of his arguments show
that he had thoroughly studied Pollock‘s work.
7 O’Hara, Frank. “Larry Rivers: A Memoir.” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.). Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995: 512.
8 O’Hara, Frank. Jackson Pollock. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1959.
9 O’Hara, Frank. Jackson Pollock. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1959: 7.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 4
Cathedral is brilliant, clear, incisive, public—its brightness and its linear speed protect and signify, like
the façade of a religious edifice, or, in another context, the mirror in the belly of an African fetish, the
mysterious importance of its interior meaning.10
At the time of his death in 1966, O‘Hara was working on a retrospective exhibition of
Pollock, which indicates how evident Pollock was in O‘Hara‘s professional work. There is a
good chance that Pollock had a similar influence on O‘Hara‘s poetry.
It is not only modern art that had a great influence on O‘Hara‘s poetry. An explanation
for his highly individual style is that he is a poet with a development different from many
other American poets of his generation. He had long studied music and had the ambition to
become a concert pianist, but switched to studying English as a student at Harvard. Music is
an important influence on him, as is evident in some of his early poems, ―Quintet for
Quasimodo,‖ multiple poems ―On Rachmaninoff‘s Birthday‖ and his poem ―Music.‖ Besides
music O‘Hara was influenced by French poets such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Cocteau and
Lautréamont, while most other student poets were inspired by poets such as Yeats, Hopkins,
Eliot, Frost, Tate and Ransom.11
Together with the musical influence, this created a highly
individual style, unlike his contemporaries. O‘Hara did share an ―informality of both tone and
structure, an idiomatic lack of pretension, and a self-conscious, often playful, spontaneity‖12
A final important influence and recurrent theme throughout his poetry remained New
York City. To O‘Hara, New York City is the perfect place for poetry, as it is full of motion, in
contrast to the static nature his predecessors enjoyed. According to him, photographs and
other ―static memories‖13
have no place in the world of the poet. It is the motion picture and
action painting that is interesting as they, according to Marjorie Perloff, ―capture the present
rather than the past, the present in all its chaotic splendor.‖ In this spontaneity and controlled
chaos, New York City played an important role. For O‘Hara this meant that New York City
was his main influence. The city‘s streets, cars, buildings and people resonate throughout his
poetry. New York was an interest shared by Pollock, for whom the city also meant more
stimulus and more influences. In a questionnaire answered in 1944 he said: ―Living is keener,
10 O’Hara, Frank. Jackson Pollock. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1959: 23.
11 Perloff, Marjorie. Frank O’Hara: Poet among Painters. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1977:
34.
12 Ferguson, Russell. In Memory Of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999: 20.
13 Perloff, Marjorie. Frank O’Hara: Poet among Painters. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1977:
21.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 5
more demanding, more intense and expansive in New York than in the West [where he grew
up]; the stimulating influences are more numerous and rewarding. However, he had not been
interested by the city as O‘Hara had been. In 1945 he moved from New York City to The
Springs, New York, where he bought a small studio and spent the rest of his life. For O‘Hara,
New York is essential. ―I can‘t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there‘s a subway
handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life,‖ he said in
―Meditations in an Emergency‖14
. And New York is also one of his most recurring themes. A
few examples: ―and posters for BULLFIGHT and the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, which
they‘ll soon tear down,‖15
―Only you in New York are not boring tonight,‖16
―as under New-
Yorkless Paris‘ night a nude falls open to fire‖17
Not to mention the countless references to
New York‘s traffic, people, buildings, neon signs and most importantly, its artists. O‘Hara‘s
poetry is filled with references to Pollock, de Kooning, Hartigan, Lee Krasner and many
others of the New York art scene.
O’Hara’s styles and methods
Due to the many influences O‘Hara had, and his wide field of interest, O‘Hara‘s poetry has
gone through a long development before reaching his golden years of 1954 to 1961. During
his college years many of his poems were imitations of the poets he read, such as the French
poets Baudelaire and Rimbauld in ―The Muse Considered as a Demon Lover,‖ and
experiments with verse forms, as Perloff shows:
There are, for example, a number of early nature poems written in quatrains…
―Portrait of Jean Marais‖ has both end-rhyme and internal rhyme… The early manuscripts contain
parody ballads… [o]r heroic couplets are used for parody effect as in ―Virtú‖18
14 O’Hara, Frank. “Meditations in an Emergency. The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.).
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 197.
15 O’Hara, Frank. “A Step Away From Them.” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.).
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 257-8.
16 O’Hara, Frank. “Poem Read At Joan Mitchell’s”, The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.).
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 256-8.
17 O’Hara, Frank. “Gregory Corso: Gasoline. The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.).
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 315-6.
18 Perloff, Marjorie. Frank O’Hara: Poet among Painters. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1977:
36-8.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 6
These poems were merely exercises in more traditional verse forms rather than serious poems.
After this period, O‘Hara developed a two-way in style modes: ―One is the clotted, somewhat
mannered Surrealist mode of Oranges: 12 Pastorals; the other, the natural, colloquial,
whimsical, light-hearted mode of ―Les Etiquettes Jaunes‖, a mode clearly derived from
William Carlos Williams.‖19
This second poem already hints towards later style, but is also
much like Williams‘.
I picked up a leaf
today from the sidewalk.
This seems childish.
Leaf! you are so big!
How can you change your
color, then just fall!
As if there were no
such thing as integrity!
You are too relaxed
to answer me. I am too
frightened to insist.
Leaf! don‘t be neurotic
like the small chameleon.20
Here the imitation of Williams become evident. The poem has the same immediacy and light-
heartedness as for example ―This Is Just To Say.‖
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
19 Perloff, Marjorie. Frank O’Hara: Poet among Painters. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1977:
38.
20 O’Hara, Frank. “Les Etiquettes Jaunes” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.). Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995: 21
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 7
They share an immediacy in their tone and voice. As the poets use the first-person singular
and a combination of the past and present tense, the poems become rather playful and
frivolous. Both are poems about something seemingly insignificant. Although O‘Hara
continued this mode of light-hearted poetry, some things changed in a later stage, as he fused
this style with the Surrealist mode Perloff described. When he had completely settled in
Manhattan, he developed a distinct aesthetics, not yet clearly articulated during his college
years when he borrowed and copied from, for instance, the French poets and Williams.
During this period, he was able to fully develop the elements of these more clearly articulated
aesthetics, such as openness and immediacy. Related to this is the informality of tone and
structure and the playful spontaneity, mentioned before. What this meant is that his poems
were written spontaneously and were hardly edited. A nice anecdote to illustrate this is one by
painter Joe LeSueur, a close friend of O‘Hara. In 1962, O‘Hara had to give a poetry reading at
Wagner College on Staten Island, New York. Introducing his poem, O‘Hara said: ―On the
ferry coming over here, I wrote a poem.‖ This poem is ―Lana Turner has collapsed!‖21
. Not
only does this illustrate O‘Hara‘s spontaneity, but also his attitude toward his poetry: one
should not take poetry too seriously. He had developed a characteristic style, not only
spontaneous and immediate, but also not very serious. These are elements that remained
important throughout his work.
―Lana Turner has collapsed!‖ is, however, a poem that is quite unlike his other poems.
It is one of a few poems found by Donald Allen, who collected O‘Hara‘s poems for his
complete works, that is hand-written. All other poems are written on a type-writer. The speed
of typing was crucial to the spontaneity of his poetry. On the other hand, using a type-writer
also undermined the spontaneity of his poetry, as he did not write all his poetry by pen on the
spot, but wrote most of his poetry on the type-writer after the event. O‘Hara became famous
mainly for his occasional walking poems, such as his Lunch Poems, written around 1959, but
published in 1964. Most of these poems were written on the type-writer, in the controlled
environment of his home or work. While they resemble original spontaneous moments during
his lunch hour or during a meeting with friends, it is oftentimes the result of these moments. It
contains the chaos and spontaneity he wished to show, but within a controlled environment. It
is like the city he loved so much, New York. New York City is controlled chaos. The sounds,
the people, the traffic—all work chaotically within boundaries. It shows the spontaneity of all
21 O’Hara, Frank. “Lana Turner has collapsed!” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.).
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 449,
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 8
elements, their speed, all things that O‘Hara enjoyed so much, but it is not chaos. The
boundaries are what makes the city. This is similar to Pollock. Although his work may seem
chaotic to most people, all is within boundaries, and all choices are made controlled and
deliberate.
Another thing that O‘Hara tried to illustrate in his poetry is ‗Personism‘, a theory he
developed in 1959.
One of [Personism‘s] minimal aspects is to address itself to one person (other than the poet himself),
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.22
He argues that in this theory, poetry is no longer between the writer and the poem, and the
reader and the poem, but between the writer and the reader. In accordance with the earlier
mentioned spontaneity, poetry is not ‗made‘. O‘Hara‘s poetry does not contain elaborate
structures and metaphors, but gives you what you read. To O‘Hara poetry is as much part of
daily life as breathing. He realized that he could use the telephone instead of writing a poem.
David Lehman explains this clearly:
To conceive of a poem as a substitute for a telephone call that nevertheless resembles a telephone call is
to recognize that poetry—avant-garde poetry, at any rate—is conditioned by the most technologically
advanced means of communication of the time. Once one has made this discovery for oneself, one‘s
whole notion of writing poetry must change.… One writes a poem that is consciously not a telephone
call but something like a message left on an answering machine.23
This makes O‘Hara‘s poetry casual and conversational in style. This is exactly what O‘Hara
tried to pursue: giving the reader the idea that he is eavesdropping on a conversation between
two people, or part of the conversation itself, instead of reading a poem. By doing so, the poet
makes the act of creation and the finished creation the same. Because the distance between the
poet and the audience disappears, the audience does not read a finished poem, but reads it as if
it is right in the middle of making the poem. O‘Hara creates this sense mainly with his
22 O’Hara, Frank. “Personism: A Manifesto.” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.).
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995: 498-9.
23 Lehman, David. The Last Avant-Garde – the making of the new york school of poets. New York: Doubleday,
1998: 186-7.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 9
narrative style. A good illustration for this is ―Personal Poem,‖24 the poem upon which
Personism was based.
I walk through the luminous humidity
passing the House of Seagram with its wet 10
and its loungers and the construction to
the left that closed the sidewalk if
I ever get to be a construction worker
I‘d like to have a silver hat please
…
a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible
disease but we don‘t give her one we
don‘t like terrible diseases, then
we go eat some fish and some ale it‘s
cool but crowded we don‘t like Lionel Trilling 25
we decide, we like Don Allen we don‘t like
Henry James so much we like Herman Melville
…
and walk on girders in our silvers hats 30
I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is
thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi
…
These few excerpts exemplify how the narrative style shows an immediacy and speed as if the
audience sees what the poet sees at the moment and thinks what he thinks. By using little
punctuation, enjambment and the first-person singular and present tense, the poem is given its
spontaneity and the distance between the poet and the audience disappears completely. What
O‘Hara tried to do is place to reader directly besides the poet, walking down the street. The
reader follows him as he passes the House of Seagram, and suddenly there is a short stream of
thought: ―I ever get to be a construction worker|I‘d like to have a silver hat please,‖ which is
interrupted by the continuation of the poet‘s walk: ―and get to Moriatry‘s where I wait
for|LeRoi.‖ This is characteristic of O‘Hara‘s poetry. It is also something that he learned from
Pollock and de Kooning, according to David Lehman: ―From Jackson Pollock and Willem de
Kooning, [he] learned … that the mind of the poet, rather than the world, could be the true
subject of the poem.‖ The poem—as nearly all of O‘Hara‘s poems written from 1954 to 1961,
his golden years—chronicles the history of its making. It shows the movement of the poem
from beginning to end, from the perspective of the poet, but without excluding the reader
from this perspective.
24 O’Hara, Frank. “Personal Poem.” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.). Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995: 335-6.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 10
A comparison with Pollock
This is exactly what Pollock also tried to do. Pollock believed that his paintings were not
objects on their own, but chronicles of their making. The driving force behind his painting
was the contact between the painter and his work. His techniques were radically new, because
it was only this technique that there was to it. Pollock renounced all symbolism in his drip
paintings of 1947-54. This is quite like O‘Hara, who said in his manifesto that he didn‘t
believe in God and therefore did not ―have to make elaborately sounded structures,‖ such as
rhythm and assonance. However, it was not only the technique that mattered. In an interview
with William Wright in 1950, Pollock was asked: ―[I]sn‘t it true that your method of painting,
your technique, is important and interesting only because of what you accomplish by it?‖ He
replied, ―I hope so. Naturally, the result is the thing and it doesn‘t make much difference how
the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at
a statement.‖25
This is quite similar to O‘Hara saying that he could just as well use the
telephone as writing a poem. It is not the technique that matters—the styles, the metaphors,
the sound structures—but what the artist tries to accomplish.
In Pollock this is an unconscious achievement, as it might very well be for O‘Hara.
Like O‘Hara, he had a general idea of what he was going to paint and what the result would
be. It can be argued that O‘Hara had a general idea of writing about an occurrence, like for
example meeting LeRoi Jones, in ―Personal Poem.‖ The thoughts and the chronicle of the
poem‘s making that make the end result may be elements of unconscious developments. Like
the French Surrealists and later psychedelic painters, Pollock was led by his unconscious. The
drip painting technique is important in this automatic process of painting—automatism. By
pouring and dripping paint onto a canvas he resisted ―mental calculations.‖26
In other words,
he let himself be driven by something that some would call accident or coincidence, but
according to Pollock were not. ―– ah – with experience – it seems to be possible to control the
flow of paint, to a great extent, and I don‘t use – I don‘t use the accident – cause I deny the
accident.‖ He has no fears of changes or destroying the image. ―[t]he painting has a life of its
own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result
25 Wright, William. “Interview with Jackson Pollock.” In: Abstract Expressionism: a Critical Record. David
Shapíro and Cecíle Shapíro (Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990: 358-62.
26 Rosenberg, Harold. “The Mythic Act.” In: Abstract Expressionism: a Critical Record. David Shapíro and
Cecíle Shapíro (Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990: 376.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 11
is a mess.‖27
This means that his paintings are painted unconsciously. He was not aware of
what he was doing, until it was finished or until he looked up after a sort of ―get acquainted‖
period.
The famous photo-series Jackson Pollock by Hans Namuth (1950) show that Pollock,
very concentrated, flings paint as if it were a dance, making motion a fundamental element of
his paintings. These photos were essential in the understanding of Pollock‘s methods and
aesthetics. It connected the painter to the painting, like O‘Hara‘s Personism. It is placing the
painting ―squarely between the [painter] and the person, Lucky Pierre style,‖ as O‘Hara wrote
in his manifesto. While that accounted for his poetry, it fits perfectly into Pollock‘s idea of
minimalizing space between the painter and the painting, optimizing contact. Thereby, the
painting process became part of the painting itself, and the energy that the painter puts in the
effort of making the painting is transferred directly onto the canvas, as the photos showed. In
order to achieve this, Pollock no longer used normal paint and brushes—during his golden
years, after 1946—but used sticks, knives and trowels instead, to drip and pour liquid paint on
the canvas in a continuous flow28
. He was able to ―gain closer touch with the medium than
was possible through applying paint with a brush.‖29
In normal paint stokes, there is a
beginning and an end. With this technique, Pollock was able to transfer motion—and
especially continuity—directly onto the canvas, with no beginning and no end. Pollock
believed this to be far more natural. He once said that when he is in his painting, he is not
aware of what he is doing.30
―I am nature‖31
, he said, being ―obedient to automatic
impulses.‖32
Another important aspect of Pollock‘s all-over drip paintings is that focus is not on
one aspect of the painting. For example, Autumn Rhythm (1950), the painting on the title page
27 Pollock, Jackson. “My Painting.” (1947) In: Reading Abstract Expressionism: context and critique. Ed. Ellen
G. Landau. Yale UP: 2005: 139-40.
28 Tyler, Parker. “Jackson Pollock: The Infinite Labyrinth.” In: Abstract Expressionism: a Critical Record. David
Shapíro and Cecíle Shapíro (Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990: 365-7.
29 Rosenberg, Harold. “The Mythic Act.” In: Abstract Expressionism: a Critical Record. David Shapíro and
Cecíle Shapíro (Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990: 378.
30 Pollock, Jackson. “My Painting.” (1947) In: Reading Abstract Expressionism: context and critique. Ed. Ellen
G. Landau. Yale UP: 2005: 139-40.
31 Quoted in: Lehman, David. The Last Avant-Garde – the making of the new york school of poets. New York:
Doubleday, 1998: 3.
32 Rosenberg, Harold. “The Mythic Act.” In: Abstract Expressionism: a Critical Record. David Shapíro and
Cecíle Shapíro (Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990: 365-7.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 12
of this essay, has many separate elements. The red lines on top of the black drips, some white
drips of paint on the white canvas, still visible, grey and black drips, more blurry parts due to
mixing of paint. All these elements allows us not to enter the painting ―at any one place (or
hundred places). Anywhere is everywhere, and we dip in and out when and where we can,‖ as
Allan Kaprow notes in an Art News essay on Pollock33
. An important way of establishing this
is by the painting‘s size. The painting is a rough 2.7 x 5.3 meters large. Its size ―invites the act
of seeing on the part of the spectator and yet gives his eye nowhere to rest once and for all.‖34
The size of the painting not only makes it practically impossible to focus on the entire
painting at once, but also gives the impression of a mural. His painting thereby seems to go
beyond the boundaries of the canvas, creating a continuum in which the lines go on forever.35
This continuum is one way in which Pollock shows the raw energy of motion that signifies his
painting. Like in O‘Hara‘s poetry, the spectator is taken from one part of the painting to the
next, where he is in constant motion, following the converging lines and drips of paint. In
―The Day That Lady Died,‖36
there is a similar constant motion, where the reader is taken by
the hand from one part to the next:
It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes (ll 1-2)
The use of time and places are especially important in this constant flow of focus shifting.
First the indication of time, 12:20 in New York, followed by
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner (ll.4-5)
It seems like a long leap from 12:20 to 7:15, but this is only a note of what will happen
tonight. The shift returns to 12:20:
33 Kaprow, Allan. “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock.” In: Reading Abstract Expressionism: context and critique.
Ed. Ellen G. Landau. Yale UP: 2005: 184.
34 Fried, Michael. “Jackson Pollock.” In: Reading Abstract Expressionism: context and critique. Ed. Ellen G.
Landau. Yale UP: 2005: 257.
35 Kaprow, Allan. “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock.” In: Reading Abstract Expressionism: context and critique.
Ed. Ellen G. Landau. Yale UP: 2005: 184.
36 O’Hara, Frank. “The Day Lady Died.” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Donald Allen (Ed.). Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995: 325.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 13
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days (ll. 7-10)
Interestingly, during his walk, mentioning Ghana, he shifts focus from the streets of New
York to this African country, and back to the streets,
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesoid, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan‘s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don‘t I stick with Verlaine (ll. 14-18)
The poem continues with realistic speed, as if the reader is there besides the poet, following
all the converging lines of the poem—the true events, looking forward to the dinner party,
buying presents for his friends Patsy and Mike, feelings—ending the poem with:
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
As this shows, O‘Hara, like Pollock, uses these converging lines and shifts of focus to make
the spectator experience the motion of the poem. It is the raw energy of the action—as it is the
raw energy of painting—that make this possible.
All these elements are part of Action Painting, as Pollock‘s art was often called. It got
this name not only through its ability to transfer motion—or action—to canvas, but also
through its desire to be spontaneous and direct. Therefore, like O‘Hara, Pollock did not use
sketches or preliminary drawings and all of his paintings are direct and original paintings,
without a true preconceived idea. Spontaneity was an important element of Pollock‘s painting.
Like O‘Hara, he therefore did not edit his pieces after finishing. All editing he did, changing
or painting over a piece, was to him part of the painting process. Because all his paintings
were spontaneous, he did not want to be influenced by other painters. He would rather be
identified with writers such as Hart Crane, James Joyce or Dylan Thomas than with his
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 14
teachers and contemporary painters.37
This is very much unlike O‘Hara, who was constantly
influenced by painters and poets alike. Pollock‘s drip technique was not influenced by any of
his contemporaries or teachers, but rather by Oriental painters and native American sand
painters.38
Conclusion
Pollock was a major influence in O‘Hara‘s professional life as a curator at the Museum of
Modern Art. He was that much interested in Pollock that he wrote a monograph on him,
organized a European exhibition tour and was working on a retrospective exhibition on
Pollock when he died in ‘66. However, it was not only in his professional life that Pollock
was a source of influence to O‘Hara. Also in his artistic life as a poet, Pollock was evident.
Several poems contain references to Pollock and there is even a poem, ―Digression on
Number 1, 1948‖ entirely devoted to Pollock‘s painting. Through comparing many of Pollock
and O‘Hara‘s stylistic, aesthetic and thematic elements, even more can be said about
Pollock‘s influence. As so many elements of Pollock‘s work seem to resonate in O‘Hara‘s
poetry, it can be concluded that Pollock was also an important influence on O‘Hara‘s poetry.
Several striking similarities can be found when comparing Pollock and O‘Hara. One of these
elements is a shared sense of spontaneity. To both artists, spontaneity is one of the most
important elements of their work. Whether or not driven by an unconscious force, art is to
both purest when it is untouched, unedited. Art is not only a finished product, but the
chronicle of its making. Both artists seem to realise this and incorporate this into their art;
Pollock by his technique, action painting, in which he drips and pours liquid paint onto a
horizontally attached canvas in a continuous flow, O‘Hara through his continuous flow of
input—time, places, people, thoughts, daily events and the writing of poetry itself are all part
of his poems. By doing so both artists show motion, shift of focus and energy in their highly
37 Rosenberg, Harold. “The Mythic Act.” In: Abstract Expressionism: a Critical Record. David Shapíro and
Cecíle Shapíro (Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990: 378.
38 Wright, William. “Interview with Jackson Pollock.” In: Abstract Expressionism: a Critical Record. David
Shapíro and Cecíle Shapíro (Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990: 360.
In his earlier works, native American myth and ritual were important elements. His paintings as The Guardians
of the Secret, The She-Wolf and Night Ceremony, amongst others up to his Action Painting period of 1947-50
(and some later works), resemble this interest in native American culture and art. O’Hara, Polcari and
Rosenberg write quite a bit on this, but as I only focus on the Action Painting period, I will not go deeper into
this subject.
Bachelor of Modern English Literature — Stephan Raoul Vegelien 15
original art. Another aspect that both artists seem to incorporate in their art is what O‘Hara
dubbed ‗Personism‘. In his theory, which perfectly applies to Pollock‘s way of painting, the
artwork is squarely between the artist and the spectator. This not only enables the spectator to
feel as though he is part of the artwork—eavesdropping on the conversation in O‘Hara‘s
poem or dropping in and out of Pollock‘s painting, exploring new elements through constant
shift of focus—but also minimalizes the distance between the artist and the artwork, as though
the artist is literally in the painting or poem.
Since there are so many striking similarities it seems that Pollock is, in fact, a major
influence on O‘Hara‘s poetry. However, he is a major source of influence amongst many, and
can therefore not be seen as the main influence. Moreover, due to the enormous amount of
poems O‘Hara has written, which vary tremendously in both style and genre, Pollock does not
necessarily remain one of the major influences throughout O‘Hara‘s poetry. The restrictions
in size and time of this essay do not allow for such a thorough research that all examples of
possible influence by Pollock can be accounted for. Nevertheless, the similarities in style and
aesthetics are there, allowing a conclusion that Pollock and O‘Hara are evidently comparable
artists, and that Pollock was more than a professional inspiration to O‘Hara, but an important
inspiration for his poetry.