I love how, in his “Why I Am Not a Painter,” Graham Foust just brazenly TAKES the title of Frank O’Hara’s oft-anthologized poem. Do that, too: write a poem called “Why I Am Not a Painter.” 

 

Frank O’Hara

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.

 

 

 

Graham Foust

Why I Am Not a Painter

 

The most difficult beautiful

 

thing I think

 

to paint would be

a close-up, a close-up

 

of a single square

of toilet tissue

 

floating

 

in a bowl.

Or so I’m told.

 

No matter. My bad.

 

There is not genuine thinking

without a sense

 

of indignity.

 

This heart of earth of mine

can only hear

 

is only yours.