Why I Am Not a Painter

Presently, many things are in the process for me; i'm looking for an apartment, another job, and trying to work on some art. So in celebration of the"getting there" stage, I thought I would post one of my favorite poems about the creative process and how art can take unexpected turns. 

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.

Why? I think I would rather be

a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg

is starting a painting. I drop in.

"Sit down and have a drink" he

says. I drink; we drink. I look

up. "You have SARDINES in it."

"Yes, it needed something there."

"Oh." I go and the days go by

and I drop in again. The painting

is going on, and I go, and the days

go by. I drop in. The painting is

finished. "Where's SARDINES?"

All that's left is just 

letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of 

a color: orange. I write a line

about orange. Pretty soon it is a

whole page of words, not lines.

Then another page. There should be

so much more, not of orange, of

words, of how terrible orange is

and life. Days go by. It is even in 

prose. I am a real poet. My poem

is finished and I haven't mentioned 

orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call

it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery

I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

--Frank O'Hara

I think all artists have experienced something like that. Sometimes things don't turn out how we expect. This poem makes me smile every time I read it. I hope you like it. Let me know what you think.