Friday, October 12, 2012

the gift of common sense courtesy of frank o'hara

As a graduate writing student, I had to read Frank O'Hara's manifesto Personism, which was fine by me as I liked his magnum opus, Lunch Poems and Personism turned out to be quite good too, funny, name-drops LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka) and Alain Robbe-Grillet and is to date, the best piece of literature to cite the act referred to in the contemporary quotidian as the Lucky Pierre.

That said, I took to heart most seriously from Personism, not a discourse the nostalgia of negative capability or the benefits of abstraction versus precision, but the following piece of conventional wisdom i.e. common sense: "You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife, you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'"

Go on your nerve.
Don't brag about high school athletics when being chased.
Honestly, the applications are endless. . .

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