Frank O'Hara: Poems Literary Elements

The poem ‘’Why I am not a painter?’’ is told from the perspective of a first person narrator. This way of narrating the poem gives it a personal touch and makes it seem as if the narrator is transmitting his own intimate thoughts with the reader.

The poem ‘’Augustus’’ is written in an iambic pentameter.

In the poem ‘’A Man without a Country’’ the main character is compared with electricity when his journey is described. The reason why the man is compared with electricity is to show just how determined the man was to finish his journey and how nothing could stop him.

We find assonance in the line ‘’And now again it is drifting, like a kiss on the air’’ in the poem ‘’Lisztiana’’.

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The poem ‘’Ave Maria’’ is a meditative poem.

The poem entitled ‘’Poem (Laura Turner has Collapsed!) takes place on the streets of New York during an evening during winter. The fact that it is winter is suggested by the description of the weather which is described as being a combination of snow and rain.

The tone used in the poem ‘’Ave Maria’’ is an ironic one, used by the narrator to transmit the way he felt about technology affecting the current society.

In the poem ‘’Homosexuality’’, the protagonists are the men who take down their masks and the antagonists are the ‘’cows’’ criticizing them and yelling at them.

The major conflict in the poem ‘’Ave Maria’’ is between the children who want to experience everything and never be bored and between the mothers who want to protect their children.

The poem ‘’Why I am not a painter’’ reaches its climax when the narrator returns to the painter and sees that the sardines are replaced by something else.

The fall from grace of Lana Turner is foreshadowed in the poem entitled ‘’Poem (Lana Turner has Collapsed!)’’ by the description of the weather in the beginning of the poem.

When the narrator urges the mothers in the poem ‘’Ave Maria’’ to let their children to everything they want because that way they will love their parents more in an understatement as it is later revealed that those children ended up becoming even more alienated from their families.

The fact that the narrator is homosexual is alluded in the poem entitled ‘’Homosexuality’’ where he talks about coming out and revealing one’s true self.

The color ‘’orange’’ is used in the poem ‘’Why I am not a painter?’’ as a general term to make reference to the creative process.

We find a personification in the poem ‘’Augustus’’ in the line ‘’waterfalls knelt’’.

We find a hyperbole in the line ‘’The hot plate works, it is the sole heath on earth’’ in the poem ‘’Cambridge’’.

We find an onomatopoeia in the line ‘’cries in the white air’’ in the poem ‘’Augusts’’.