21 Etchings and Poems – Franz Kline Collaborates with Frank O'Hara

Having read several poems written about Franz Kline's work, I decided to search for more on the "internets". Late last night I found this work by Franz Kline and Frank O'Hara. Originally part of an artist's book called 21 Etchings and Poems, it embodies the collaboration of not only Kline and O'Hara but also that of poets and painters in the 1950's and 1960's. The book itself was the most significant collaboration to that point between artists and poets in America.



And here so we can all read O'Hara's work is a more legible version...
Poem (To Franz Kline)

I will always love you
though I never loved you

a boy smelling faintly of heather
staring up at your window

the passion that enlightens
and stills and cultivates, gone

while I sought your face
to be familiar in the blueness

or to follow your sharp whistle
around a corner into my light

that was love growing fainter
each time you failed to appear

I spent my whole self searching
love which I thought was you

it was mine so briefly
and I never knew it, or you went

I thought it was outside disappearing
but it is disappearing in my heart

like snow blown in a window
to be gone from the world

Those words stayed with me all night. I awoke to "I will always love you/though I never loved you". Words written by O'Hara, a man who loved life, loved New York and loved action painting. He loved everything that was in the moment that captured precisely the how and when of the present. I dedicate this entry to Amy, the one who embodies the love of the present in our lives. May you continue to give the rest of us the images of the precision of your emotions.