The Poetry Stash: 16Feb2024

The Day Lady Died by Frank O'Hara

Today’s poem is “The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara, from the collection, Frank O’Hara, Selected Poems. The book is available for purchase here.

The Day 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 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 Negres
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

Prompts:

1.	Begin with “It is 12:20 in…”
2.	Begin with “I am sweating a lot…”
3.	Write a draft describing a day’s errands before taking a trip.
4.	This poem describes the day the speaker learns about the death of the jazz singer Billie Holiday. Draft an elegy, a poem that memorializes or honors someone who has died.
5.	Write a draft using proper nouns. For example, in this poem, the publications are cited by their titles and authors, the places and people the speaker refers to have specific names, and items he purchases are referred to by their brands: Strega, Gauloises, and Picayunes.

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