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Frank O’Hara’s ‘Personism’ Poetry Manifesto
If you don’t need poetry, ‘bully for you’!
“Now, come on. I don’t believe in god, so I don’t have to make elaborately sounded structures.” — Frank O’Hara
O’Hara (1926 — 1966) is writing about “personism, a movement which I recently founded and which nobody knows about.” Admittedly, I myself just heard of it. I looked him up and noticed that he died exactly 60 years ago today. His ‘personism’ manifesto, written in 1959, is only about two pages. It’s a parody, but there is truth in parody.
“Personism,” you see, “has nothing to do with philosophy, it’s all art.” It’s also about having real relationships with the people about whom you’re writing. Literally you can just call them on the phone. Maybe instead of writing the poem.
The movement
was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a…
