Problems of making art are the problems of communicating for Frank O'Hara or his friends who are Abstract Expressionists, ACTION PAINTERS. Their process is the meaning of the painting. In a class of 30,000 people called ModPo, students talk about this O'Hara poem and nine of ten vividly describe the process of writing poetry as if it were tangible. They have felt, seen and heard the proces through O'Hara's poem. Studying this poem has made POETING obvious. These readers have forgotten that O'Hara was there watching his friend Mike Goldberg paint. The process is not hidden in O'Hara's brain. The poet desires what his painter friends do. That they skip clearly define subject matter. Abstraction and the New York School-visual and verbal-want to speak plainly, without telling the entire story, letting users comprehend according to their own needs and efforts. Readers/viewers are invited in. They add to the works. Making art is about the struggle to communicate relative to the time with other humans with visual means, words or other devices. About Painting: "Painters were first to break with the 19th century and earlier constraints on their art and poets derived ideas from their work," said Stephen Guggenheim. "Perhaps if he were a painter, he would feel his work was more original," he adds granting something to painting, but goes on to say that even though O'Hara is in the studio watching Goldberg paint, "painting does not show him its process. He might have kind of seen how the painting was progressing." Another student said the painting seems like "A process of continual creation, but not necessarily in a linear sense." "The image, whatever be or be not in it, will be a tension," says anothr. Massimo Soranzio points out 'I drop in' appears in lines 5, 11 and 13, and it sounds as if he were a drop of colour added to the scene." "The painter whose mode of work necessarily objectifies language, express itself through spontaneous and imaginative abstract images to create something beyond a simple, straightforward representation." - Christina Salvatore. "Not concerned with the depicted image itself, but with the process of making it" - Juliana Brina Corr&etilde;a Lima de Carvalho. ModPo students then read with others have written and one reinforces this: The painter is painting right from the start while the poet is searching for words. The painting is always present from beginning to end. "He invites the poet to drink while working, such a pleasurable activity! The poet could enviously experience the process of the painting." - Ravitte Kentwortz. "And what now about EXIT? (IF? EXIF?) The poet saw this and didn't tell us. What might the painting say that the poet didn't or couldn't? Exit/if -- as if there is a way out? As if the question is whether (anticipating an emergency) a word abstracted or material best shows how a word points the way? As if the painting says: can anything better point to the materiality of "this" than this? As if a sequence of clean type, letters pressed like sardines, can pretend to the composite layers we see thick right here? Not a figure of abstracted I and what am l not, but pluriform material We, and the urgency of where do we go from here, pressed like this? -Douglas Knox. And me, I quit being a literature major in college because I didn't want to be so literal. Words seem to be so already filled up with meaning and in using them you have so little control, a mark with so little humanity. When I watch this painting, SARDINES, fill in the background behind this poem, I'm distracted by many interesting marks so humanly made that do something to the colors or shapes beside them, and I joyfully recognize relationships in each little line of the canvas. THE POEM ORANGE "Orange is one of only two words in the English language that doesn't rhyme - S.E.Ingraham. "The value of a limitlessly creative process within the framework of the passing of time for the finite artist. The terrible nature of orange of life of days going by." - Anothony Risser. 'Began with a word, progressed to lines, pages and more poems. Shows how it progresses from his questions about painting. There should be so much more left behind not because it was too much, but because it was too little readers come up with his own interpretation of ORANGE."It seems that this "poet" thing is in his DNA," said Celine Teagarden. to create something beyond a simple, straightforward representation. While the audience does not have the opportunity to witness the struggle of the painter-Christina Salvare. Not concerned with the depicted image itself, but with the process of making it. - Juliana Brina Correa Lima de Carvalho. Started his poem with the thought about the color orange.This is something a painter would do.-Kevin Conder. The poet begins alone, thinking of a colour. As a 'real poet' he knows prose can also be a poem - Claire King. ModPo readers think that his poeting process is easier to see. That is absurd; what a great job O'Hara does to show the poeting process. POETING.Susan Howe, who wrote My Emily Dickinson, wrote: ÒConnections between unconnected things are the unreal reality of poetryÓ ÒA poem is an invocation, rebellious return to the blessedness of beginning again, wandering free in pure process of forgetting and finding.Ó The enactment of the poetic process-Elenor Smagarinsky.Enactment of the poem itself-Cynthia Elliot. creation changes. There are no constraints like the edge of the canvas.OÕHara does not directly say that he thinks poetry has an edge over painting...creation changes...start with one thing and end up somewhere elseO'Hara has gone on and on, can break out of form. Be inspired by one thing but in the process of creation that original thing can be transformed into something completely different. -S.Guggenheim. questioning what representational capacities poetry might have that painting doesn't.-Emily Harnett. Mocking the stereotypical pessimistic introspection of poets and poetry.-Tristram Williams. And then a comment by anonymous on Williams' essay:He's a poet because (or if ) we think he is poetic. By writing a poem about writing a poem and not painting a painting, the poet who will describe his own experience with words, classify poetry if not by separating it from, and contrasting it to, prose.-Marie Gallagher, a poem comment on someone else's essay. Now I collage more commnets:Stop and scribble routine, no use for rhythm nor rhyme. Abstraction (in poetry, not in painting) involves personal removal by the poet..." Finally, he almost knew why he's a poet! -Aya Wali. "I am a poet" despite/or because of the title. Would a painter be able to make such a startling statement on life? -Lydia Cortes. He cannot seem to help focusing on words and language. Writing as a process of uncovering as opposed to obscuring.-Ryan C. Welch. Writing pertains to the successive, mechanical, repetitive phase of production.The process of writing is depicted as a difficult, magical process. The meaning that is so needed, and is so hard to portray. - Ravitte again.