Fifty years ago today, a Friday like today, was the day Lady died, and Frank O'Hara, on his lunch hour in midtown Manhattan, wrote one of his most famous poems. And yes, I know that Emma Trelles posted this poem most wittily on Basdille Day. Nevertheless, I can't resist this repetition in the cyber world of the eternal act of creation in the human I am.
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
-- Frank O'Hara
Quiz:
1) Who was "Lady Day" and who gave her that
2) Where was the Five Spot and who played there? (Hint: he wore fun hats and took his drinks straight, without a chaser.)
3) Who were "Mike" and "Patsy"? (Last names, please.)
4) Where did Frank work? And what non-fiction book did he publish that year?
5) Whom am I paraphrasing when I write of "a repetition in the cyber world of the immortal act of creation in the human I am"? (Hint: The syntax is the same, the adjectives different.)
-- DL
In truth, I posted Oranges and Sardines on B-day (although I like being thought of as witty). Let's consider this another add to this week's O'Hara oeuvre.
Posted by: Emma Trelles | July 17, 2009 at 12:34 PM
Lady Day was Billie Holiday, and I think either Lester Young or Count Basie gave her the name.
The Five Spot was a club at the corner of Cooper Square and St. Mark's Place. I think you are thinking of Thelonius Monk?
"Mike" is Mike Kanemitsu, who was an artist.(See O'Hara's "Personal Poem.") "Patsy" I can't remember and I left my O'Hara book at school.
Frank O'Hara worked for MOMA and published "Jackson Pollack" in 1959.
You got me on the last one, although maybe it's from O'Hara's "Personism."
Posted by: Laura Orem | July 17, 2009 at 01:15 PM
LO, you are correct about Lady Day. It was Lester Young who gave her that nickname, and she reciprocated with his: Prez. Correct on the Five Spot, Thelonious, MOMA and the Pollock monograph. Mike is Mike Goldberg [the painter in "Why I Am Not a Painter"], Patsy is Patsy Southgate [whom FOH called "the Grace Kelly of our set"), and I was paraphrasing a sentence in Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria." So. . .you get a 90, which, since I mark on a curve) gets you your usual A. Smart work!
Posted by: DL | July 17, 2009 at 01:37 PM
What is the original sentence in Coleridge?
Posted by: Deborah Overmeyer | July 19, 2009 at 12:24 PM