It’s her birthday today.
Here is Frank O’Hara’s poem called “The Day Lady Died.” Notice that he doesn’t say her name.
The Day Lady Died
It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
Ahhhh. Makes me miss both those geniuses.
I know!! O’Hara’s last line … goosebumps.
I love the jostle of life he describes – food and cigarettes and dinner parties (where he might not get enough food so he eats beforehand), and brand-names/artists/writers/playwrights – the whole shebang – the whole damn American culture – and she is the only thing not named. She doesn’t need to be named. She is not just part of that culture he describes – she helped create it.
Looking forward to seeing you Thursday! It’s been too long
O’Hara is the New York City poet, at least of mid-20th century. Thanks for posting this one. It’s wonderful. Up there with his famous Lana Turner Has Collapsed (more images of life on the sidewalks.) And those last lines
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
WOW! After putting his pen down, Frank walked over and sat in front of the fan, blowing the hot limpid mid-summer Manhattan air into the room off the iron fire escape, and sipped a little of his Dewars, neat. He was just in his shorts and wife-beater tee, but he was soaked with sweat. It was 3 AM. The milky light behind the whirring fan hinted at another approaching day, another scorcher.
… gorgeous. Just gorgeous – thank you.
Although Billie Holiday’s most noted work happens in more or less the last half of her career, her early work, with I think Teddie Wilson at the keyboard, is incredible. She’s so young and happy, and her singing and phrasing is glorious. It’s available.
Amazing how a poem which is on the surface somewhat prosaic can be so poetically powerful.
Boyce – I know, right? I totally agree.
The first thing I saw was the incredible picture of Billie Holliday in a pool of light, surrounded by white regular people. I’m so impressed by the picture. It reminds me of something I read by Julio Cortazar about a mirror put on a wall with African masks, where you see yourself a the poor white man you are.
Sorry, I’ll read the poem later, right now I don’t want to think about anything else but the photograph.
My 7 year old self walked down the stairs to the kitchen where my mother stood staring while the small radio played in the corner. I asked what was wrong. Lady Day died. Who? Billie Holiday. For us it was one of the remember-where-you-were events.
Thanks to you and Frank O’Hara, for transporting me.
Peggy – thank you so much for sharing this memory.