Freewrite

With this freewrite, as well as all freewrites, do not put any pressure on yourself to be good. You are simply getting thoughts on the page. You can write in poetry or in prose, but feel free to write poorly, sloppily, redundantly, and with cliches. Now is the time for ideas—we will eventually sculpt those ideas into art.

Think of someone you often have conversations with. What kinds of words do you use? How do you speak with one another?

Freewrite for 8-10 minutes as though you’re having a conversation with that person. Tell them about your day, or what you’re feeling right now. Use the kind of language you would actually use in conversation—do not affect a poetic manner of speech, unless that’s accurate to your way of conversing.

Poem: “Having a Coke With You” by Frank O’Hara

Retrieved here. 

You can also listen to the poet reading this poem here. 

Divinations

Frank O’Hara is probably the best known poet of The New York School—a group of poets in the 1950s and 1960s whose work incorporated avant-garde, ekphrastic elements with a sense of urbane wit, conversationalism, and improvisation. (Frank O’Hara himself would scribble first drafts of poems on his lunch breaks and throw them in a drawer.)

Indeed, many New York School poems almost feel like you’re having an intelligent conversation with someone you know well. This poem was clearly written for someone in particular, a lover of sorts, and yet it almost feels like I, the reader, am the poem’s object.

What do you make of this poem? It is unconventional in many ways—it’s long, winding syntax, it’s odd line breaks and prose poem-like stream-of-consciousness, its lack of periods, etc. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the poem arrives at sudden epiphanies. The image of a tree breathing through its spectacles is no less than a revelation, as does the moment of insight about being cheated of some marvelous experience—one which the speaker is certainly sharing with us.

Notice, also, the poem’s artistic reference and allusions. These, again, have the quality of being in conversation with someone who is already in the know. Personally, I don’t know the significance of the cities Hendaye or Biarritz, and I have to google The Polish Rider (the featured image) and Nude Descending a Staircase—which, unsurprisingly, is a work of Cubism. (The New York School poets were inspired by Modernist and Surrealist art.)

What I get from this poem is less a moment of understanding in the world, more a moment of surprising intimacy, the feeling of someone reaching his hand across me at a dinner table, of seeing someone solely through their voice.

Conversational Poetry Prompt

Write a poem in the form of a conversation to someone you love. Use syntax and word choice as though you are speaking to that person—do not affect the manner of someone writing poetry.