Moving to France with You

I have been living in France for two and a half months now, and lately I’ve found myself missing certain aspects of New York. So, today, I re-read one of my favorite New York School poems, “Having a Coke with You” by Frank O’Hara. The New York School of poets began in the early 1960s and included O’Hara, John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, as well as the painters Willem DeKoonig and Jasper Johns (among others). O’Hara was interested in both music and in art. For much of his life, he even worked as an assistant curator at The Museum of Modern Art.

Having a Coke with You
     by Frank O'Hara 

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne   

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona   

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary   

it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still   

as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it   

in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth   

between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles 

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint   

you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

                                                                                       I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world   

except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick

which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first

   time   

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism   

just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or   

at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow 

    me   

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them   

when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank   

or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully   

as the horse

                   it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

Frank O’Hara, “Having a Coke with You” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1971 by Mauren Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O'Hara. Used by the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc, www.randomhouse.com/category/poetry/.

Source: The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1995) via PoetryFoundation.org

The subject of art is featured prominently throughout this poem. O’Hara places a mundane activity in the foreground, as the title itself is simply “Having a Coke with You”. This contrasts sharply with the first line of the poem which immediately thrusts five exotic places upon the reader. One of the reasons that the poem works so well is that the narrator refuses to romanticize the places that he mentions. The activities that occur on his vacations include, “getting sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona”. The irony of this is that often, while traveling, the most unusual and unpleasant experiences become the best stories from a trip.

The remainder of the first stanza plays up the complexity of sitting in a park with someone the narrator loves. He starts off by declaring his love for “you” and then, unexpectedly admits his partner’s love of something as concrete and practical as yoghurt. After this line, his language becomes more creative, as he brings the “fluorescent orange” color of the tulips into the poem, as well as the “secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary”. However, it is the last line of this stanza that stands out. O’Hara writes: “we are drifting back and forth between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles”. This line is remarkable in that the narrator chooses to use this simile to describe the setting of drinking a coke, instead of a painting or a more exotic location.

The rest of the poem consists of shorter stanzas and more varied line breaks as it shifts away from the park setting and moves towards art. O’Hara mentions several specific artists, art movements, and art works during the last few lines of the poem. He begins this section with a two-word line that begins, “I look / at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.” Instead of dwelling on this line, he then mentions Futurism, Impressionists, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Marino Marini, and Nude Descending a Staircase. He makes it clear that he is knowledgeable about art, and then declares that certain artists “used to wow” him and asks “what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them / when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank / or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully / as the horse.” It is in listing the flaws, instead of the virtues, of things that are usually seen as overtly-romantic, that the narrator is able to describe the strength of his love for an individual.

 “Having a Coke with You” exudes quirkiness, yet at the heart, it’s quite a tender poem. Perhaps the thing that I like best about it is its conversational style. Paired with the long lines and sparse punctuation, it creates a sort of breathless excitement that builds upon itself the way a new relationship does.

Having moved to France because of a relationship, I find myself wanting to go to all of the places that O’Hara mentions in his poem, but I also find myself enjoying a night of just sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, or a can of Coke.

Fontainebleau, France

When my flight touched down in Paris on January 7, I felt a surge of poetic inspiration. It had been 24 hours since I’d slept, but it followed me to the rental car agency and down the A6 as I drove from Charles de Gaulle to Fontainebleau, where we’d be living for the next year. Just 15 minutes away from the airport, the buildings dropped off and we were surrounded by fields, a clear reminder that we weren’t in New York anymore. We entered roundabout after roundabout, and then a stretch of tree-lined streets leading into the town of Fontainebleau.

France has a long-standing reputation as a country that inspires poets and artists—from Gertrude Stein, to Rimbaud, to the Beat poets—I was excited to be here.

Although Gertrude Stein is one of the first poets to spring to mind when I think of American ex-pats living in France, I have never really enjoyed reading her poetry. Her writing has always seemed inventive, but inaccessible. After getting settled in Fontainebleau, I thought I would try to read some of her works again.

Her memoir, titled Paris France, seemed like an apt place to start. Perhaps by looking at a bit of this story and at one of her shorter poems, not far from where they were written, I would be able to better understand her words and her writing style. As Tender Buttons is so well-renowned, I re-read the poem “A Box” from this book.

A BOX.
A large box is handily made of what is necessary to replace any substance. Suppose an example is necessary, the plainer it is made the more reason there is for some outward recognition that there is a result.
A box is made sometimes and them to see to see to it neatly and to have the holes stopped up makes it necessary to use paper.
A custom which is necessary when a box is used and taken is that a large part of the time there are three which have different connections. The one is on the table. The two are on the table. The three are on the table. The one, one is the same length as is shown by the cover being longer. The other is different there is more cover that shows it. The other is different and that makes the corners have the same shade the eight are in singular arrangement to make four necessary.
Lax, to have corners, to be lighter than some weight, to indicate a wedding journey, to last brown and not curious, to be wealthy, cigarettes are established by length and by doubling.
Left open, to be left pounded, to be left closed, to be circulating in summer and winter, and sick color that is grey that is not dusty and red shows, to be sure cigarettes do measure an empty length sooner than a choice in color.
Winged, to be winged means that white is yellow and pieces pieces that are brown are dust color if dust is washed off, then it is choice that is to say it is fitting cigarettes sooner than paper.
An increase why is an increase idle, why is silver cloister, why is the spark brighter, if it is brighter is there any result, hardly more than ever.


From Tender Buttons (1914) by Gertrude Stein.

Stein, like many poets, was very active in the art world. She maintained friendships with painters, including Picasso. One can see how the cubist style that painters, like Picasso, were exploring affected her writing. Even the title “A Box”, implies sharp edges. Like a cubist-style painting, the unconventional repetition that Stein employs consists of sharp lines that run into, or overlap, with one another. She repeats words like “box” several times, as well as “necessary”, “table”, “length”, “increase” and “brighter”. She also packs her poem full of verbs like “to be” and “is” rather than more aggressive verbs.

In her descriptions of “A Box”, Stein makes her readers feel confined by using expressions such as “to have the holes stopped up” and “to be left pounded”, as well as in her descriptions of color, “a sick color that is grey”.

Stein’s writing also seems to take on a bit of a Dadaistic style here as well—like Duchamp she makes viewers/readers question the importance of her work. To this point, her memoir, Paris France, is written in a stream-of-consciousness style. It begins by describing the narrator’s impressions of the city. The memoir starts off:

Paris, France is exciting and peaceful.
I was only four years old when I was first in Paris and talked french there and was photographed there and went to school there and ate soup for early breakfast and had leg of mutton and spinach for lunch, I always liked spinach, and a black cat jumped on my mother's back...There are lots of cats in Paris and in France and they can do what they like, sit on the vegetables or among the groceries, stay in or go out. (Stein, 1)

It occurred to me after reading the start of this novel that I felt the way Stein was writing: scattered and full of sensory overload. The initial excitement of being somewhere new had morphed into a feeling of being completely overwhelmed. A simple trip buy bread had suddenly become a challenge. As in “A Box” from Tender Buttons, Stein plays with repetition, using words like “cats” and “Paris” frequently throughout the text. Once again, the words she chooses to repeat are basic, and are often used in everyday speech. In writing about a place that is new and foreign to her, Stein uses the same jolting language one would use when learning a new language. While the passage is a description from the viewpoint of a child, perhaps she also uses basic language and repetition to explore the way that people learn to speak other languages—often in a jolting, stream-of-consciousness style.

Stein’s writing has always been controversial. The repetition throughout the text, and the way in which she structures her sentences, can seem almost threatening. She peppers her poetry with ominous and often ambiguous sentences, like “there are three on the table”. In poems like “A Box”, the reader has to wonder what is inside the boxes that she refers to—at times she mentions cigarettes, and at other times, she gives an image of a “large box”. In both of the examples seen here, Stein defies conventional writing style.

While I still struggle with the lack of linear paragraphs in Stein’s writing, one has to admire the unique style in which she wrote. In a place where I often find myself speaking French in the same way that Stein begins her memoir in English, I may have a newfound respect for her writing.

An Introduction to My Life in France

Mark Twain once famously remarked that "it has always been a marvel to me—that French language; it has always been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is! How expressive it seems to be! How full of grace it is! . . . And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to understand it."

Having recently moved to a small town just outside of Paris, I find myself straining to eavesdrop on French conversations whenever I leave home, hoping to recognize words or phrases. So far, with my limited grasp on the language, it's been a bit disappointing. In New York, I worked in the publishing industry. With my work experience, and as a writer, I am most at home discussing grammar and playing with words. Here, everything is different.

Moving from a cramped apartment in New York, we now have an entire house. It's a skinny, oddly shaped house, but it's spacious and bright, and just a few steps from the center of town. 

 

The weekly market here, with its tables of fresh fruits and vegetables piled high, is a welcome change from struggling through the aisles of Gristedes. The smell of freshly baked breads, mingled with ripe cheeses, permeates most streets.
Still, these are the stereotypes that one hears about France. As language is a priority to me, and as I work to complete a Master’s degree in Writing, my hope is that this blog will help me to immerse myself in a new culture, through exploring poetry that was written here, on both a personal and a critical level.