The Day the Lady Died (July 17th)

[Lazaro Vega]

The Day the Lady Died

By Frank O’Hara

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 East Hampton

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 Theatere 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.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Lazaro Vega

[Larry Kart]

When I was youngster at Down Beat in 1969 I got them to obtain the rights to reprint this in the issue that was closest to the anniversary of her death.

[ghost of miles]

This is from an old, old Night Lights show--the third one I ever recorded, so please forgive the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time vocal delivery, if you happen across it...but if you scroll in to about 53:55 on the Real Audio file, you can hear O'Hara in 1966 (I think) reading "The Day Lady Died":

The Day Lady Died

[NavSJ]

That was nice. Thanks for sharing.

[Mark Stryker]

Thanks for posting the reading, David. First time I've heard O'Hara's voice. This is, of course, one of O'Hara's finest poems, a quintessential example of the "I do this I do that" genre that he pioneered.

"City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara" by Brad Gooch includes some interesting background surrounding the creation of "The Day Lady Died." The last time O'Hara heard Holiday was at the Five Spot in 1957. At the time, the club was becoming a replacement for the Cedar Bar as a gathering spot for artists. The Cedar was where the abstract expressionists had hung out, and O'Hara, who wrote for Art News, worked as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art and was tight with Pollock, DeKooning, Kline, Motherwell, David Smith, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, et. al., had been a regular. But publicity surrounding the Cedar was beginning to turn it into a tourist trap, so a migration to the Five Spot had begun. Kenneth Koch and Larry Rivers started holding jazz-and-poetry performances there. One night Koch was reading his poems with Mal Waldron at the piano, and Holiday showed up to see her accompanist and was persuaded to sing a few songs with him. Gooch points out that this was illegal, because at the time Holiday didn't have a Cabaret Card due to the drug busts.

This is how Koch remembered that night: "It was very close to the end of her life, with her voice almost gone, just like the taste of very old wine, but full of spirit. Everybody wanted her to sing. Everybody was crazy about her. She sang some songs in this very whispery beautiful voice. The place was quite crowded. Frank was standing near the toilet door so he had a side view. And Mal Waldron was at the piano. She sang these songs and it was very moving."

Gooch concludes his discussion with more detail about O'Hara's activities on July 17, the Friday that Holiday died. He wrote the poem on his lunch hour and later took the train out to East Hampton to meet up with painter Michael Goldberg and his wife, Patsy Southgate, for dinner (the Patsy and Mike in the poem). O'Hara and Goldberg talked about the tragedy of Holiday's early death on the drive from the station and when they got to the house Goldberg put on a Holiday record. After Southgate put the kids to bed, O'Hara, who hadn't mentioned the poem before then, pulled it out of his pocket and read it for his hosts.

Edited July 2, 2009 by Mark Stryker

[Niko]

Thanks for posting the reading, David. First time I've heard O'Hara's voice. This is, of course, one of O'Hara's finest poems, a quintessential example of the "I do this I do that" genre that he pioneered.

"City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara" by Brad Gooch includes some interesting background surrounding the creation of "The Day Lady Died." The last time O'Hara heard Holiday was at the Five Spot in 1957. At the time, the club was becoming a replacement for the Cedar Bar as a gathering spot for artists. The Cedar was where the abstract expressionists had hung out, and O'Hara, who wrote for Art News, worked as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art and was tight with Pollock, DeKooning, Kline, Motherwell, David Smith, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, et. al., had been a regular. But publicity surrounding the Cedar was beginning to turn it into a tourist trap, so a migration to the Five Spot had begun. Kenneth Koch and Larry Rivers started holding jazz-and-poetry performances there. One night Koch was reading his poems with Mal Waldron at the piano, and Holiday showed up to see her accompanist and was persuaded to sing a few songs with him. Gooch points out that this was illegal, because at the time Holiday didn't have a Cabaret Card due to the drug busts.

This is how Koch remembered that night: "It was very close to the end of her life, with her voice almost gone, just like the taste of very old wine, but full of spirit. Everybody wanted her to sing. Everybody was crazy about her. She sang some songs in this very whispery beautiful voice. The place was quite crowded. Frank was standing near the toilet door so he had a side view. And Mal Waldron was at the piano. She sang these songs and it was very moving."

Gooch concludes his discussion with more detail about O'Hara's activities on July 17, the Friday that Holiday died. He wrote the poem on his lunch hour and later took the train out to East Hampton to meet up with painter Michael Goldberg and his wife, Patsy Southgate, for dinner (the Patsy and Mike in the poem). O'Hara and Goldberg talked about the tragedy of Holiday's early death on the drive from the station and when they got to the house Goldberg put on a Holiday record. After Southgate put the kids to bed, O'Hara, who hadn't mentioned the poem before then, pulled it out of his pocked and read it for his hosts.

thanks!

[Teasing the Korean]

This is a great thread. It's been years since I read O'Hara and am not sure if I ever knew this poem.