« Adresse lyrique et refus de correspondre dans la poésie de Frank O’Hara »
Résumé
Hovering between biographical precision and lyrical
elaboration, Frank O’Hara’s poems are often addressed to
friends and lovers. As the mock manifesto “Personism”
reveals, the issue of communication lies at the heart of his
poetics : instead of picking up the telephone, the poet, O’Hara
says, can write a poem to the person he wanted to call. Instead
of writing letters, O’Hara wrote a number of epistolary poems
to his would be addressees. Feeding on aborted telephone calls
and unwritten letters, O’Hara’s lyricism explores a new mode
of communication, which he deemed more “personal”. His
poems create the illusion of an ongoing conversation between
friends and lovers, while really aspiring to “the ideal
possibility of not communicating” (Kaufmann). Perverting the
impulse to communicate even as it claims to be nourished by it,
Frank O’Hara’s poetry calls for the dispersion of the author’s
voice by invoking the reader, who eavesdrops on every
exchange, yet whose intervention is necessary to the poem’s
survival. O’Hara’s messages never seem to reach their
addressees without giving them the reassuring or disheartening
impression that they are not alone in receiving them.