The Full Text of “The Day Lady Died”
The Full Text of “The Day Lady Died”
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“The Day Lady Died” Introduction
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"The Day Lady Died" is a celebrated poem from Frank O'Hara's classic collection Lunch Poems (1964). An unconventional elegy for the jazz singer Billie Holiday (a.k.a. "Lady Day"), it dates to the actual day of her death: July 17, 1959. Its speaker, O'Hara himself, narrates the mundane things he was doing—lunching, shopping, etc.—before he noticed Holiday's photo in a tabloid and learned she had passed away. The poem ends with a tribute to her music: a memory of a performance that left the audience breathless.
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“The Day Lady Died” Summary
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It's 12:20 in the afternoon in New York City on Friday, July 17, 1959, three days after France's national holiday. I get my shoes polished, because when I get off the 4:19 train in East Hampton, NY, at 7:15, I'll be headed right to a dinner party, and the hosts are strangers (whom I'd like to make a good impression on).
I head up the street as the humid day gets sunnier. I grab a burger and a malted milkshake for lunch, then purchase the unattractive literary journal called New World Writing, curious to see what poets in western Africa have been writing lately.
I stop by my bank, where the teller, Miss Stillwagon (or Linda, as I heard her called once), doesn't check how much money is in my account, the way she usually does. Next, in the Golden Griffin bookstore, I buy my friend Patsy a small book of poems by the 19th-century French poet Paul Verlaine, illustrated by the modern French artist Pierre Bonnard. I consider buying, instead, a book of poetry by the ancient Greek writer Hesiod, translated by the American classicist Richmond Lattimore; or the new play (The Hostage) by the Irish writer Brendan Behan; or the plays Le Balcon or Les Nègres, by the French writer Jean Genet. But after I've almost bored myself to sleep with indecision, I go ahead and buy the Verlaine book.
As for my friend Mike's gift, I simply walk into the Park Lane liquor store and buy him some Italian herbal liqueur. Then I head to 6th Avenue, where I started, and stop by the tobacco shop at the Broadway theater called the Ziegfeld. I nonchalantly buy two cartons of cigarettes—the brands called Gauloises and Picayunes—and a New York tabloid with a photo of Billie Holiday (who's just died) on the cover.
At this point, I'm soaked with sweat. I remember standing by the bathroom door in the jazz club called the Five Spot Café, listening to her sing softly, accompanied by Mal Waldron on the piano. Her performance took everyone's breath away.
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“The Day Lady Died” Themes
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Loss, Mourning, and Memory
"The Day Lady Died" is an elegy for the jazz singer Billie Holiday, who was nicknamed "Lady Day." Though O'Hara didn't know Holiday personally, he deeply admired her music. O'Hara memorializes Holiday by narrating his activities on the afternoon of July 17, 1959, the date of her death. At first, his experiences seem ordinary—buying lunch, a book, cigarettes, etc.—but they culminate in an extraordinary memory of Holiday's singing, prompted by the sight of her photo in a newspaper. The poem shows how a shocking loss can seem to freeze surrounding events in the mind, as in the cliché about "remembering where you were the day [X] died."
The day the poem describes isn't particularly eventful for O'Hara himself; "only" the death of a beloved celebrity makes it memorable. Outwardly, O'Hara's experience of that day consists of mundane activities: getting a shoeshine, buying lunch, going to the bank, etc. (O'Hara was known for using real-life details in his poems—including, in this poem, the names of two of his friends—so it's fair to assume this speaker is the poet himself.)
O'Hara's attitude also seems lighthearted and nonchalant at first. As he "stroll[s]" around New York, he isn't grieving, at least not outwardly. But the news of Holiday's untimely death (she was just 44) causes an intense inner experience: a memory of the breathtaking live performance O'Hara once saw her give. It's possible that she's been in the back of his mind all along: she died early in the morning, so he may have already heard the news by the time he buys a newspaper "with her face on it." More likely, however, the sight of the newspaper informs him of the tragedy.
O'Hara memorializes this otherwise average day with extreme detail and clarity, implying that Holiday's death has made its smallest moments meaningful. He narrates the poem—which he really wrote the day Billie Holiday died!—in the present tense. The loss is fresh, and he's recording all the events surrounding it as if documenting a historic event. As death overshadows his daily routine, it makes even trivial events seem potentially momentous.
For example, O'Hara's bank teller "doesn't even look up [his] balance for once in her life"—is this a coincidence or an omen that something is "off" about this day? Similarly, O'Hara "sweat[s] a lot" after buying the newspaper with Holiday's picture: is this just because he's been walking around in "muggy" weather, or because he feels shaken?
By the end of the poem, the rush of superficially random events seems like an inevitable buildup to a tragic climax. O'Hara is actually describing a pretty lazy lunch break, but the poem's blur of details creates a sense of restless tension, which seems to foreshadow and accentuate the bad news. On the one hand, Holiday is just a face in the news with modern life swirling all around; on the other hand, even in busy New York City, her death seems to stop the world for a moment.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-29
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The Transformative Power of Art
"The Day Lady Died" not only mourns Billie Holiday's death but also celebrates her music—as well as the arts more generally. O'Hara devotes much of the "Day" he narrates to shopping for books and literary journals: evidence that literature is central to his life. And his narration builds to the memory of a Holiday song that left him breathless. By comparison, the other events he describes are fairly minor, background details. He clearly likes eating, drinking, and hanging out with friends, but he seems to live for the arts. He also shows that the art Holiday left behind outlives her, and implicitly, shines through the many struggles and indignities of her life. Whether it's a beautiful book or a captivating song, the poem suggests, art can be so transcendent that it makes the rest of life look secondary.
Though it's an elegy for Holiday, the poem is also a snapshot of a day in the life of Frank O'Hara (one of what he called his "I do this I do that" poems). Based on his description of his "Day," the poet seems to prioritize and value artistic experiences over other kinds. This snapshot captures all sorts of small incidents and details, but the overwhelming focus is on his experience of literature, art, and music. He comes off as a free spirit who enjoys life's pleasures—good food, liquor, friends, etc.—but whose greatest pleasures are aesthetic:
- Throughout most of the poem, he's purchasing things, but he spends more of the poem commenting on the arts-related purchases (journal, book, newspaper with Holiday's photo) than the others. He's a consumer of many things, but he's a connoisseur of the arts.
- He also seems to be on his Friday lunch break (the poem appears in the collection Lunch Poems), and he spends most of that break at a bookstore and a Broadway theater. Given some free time in the heart of the big city, he naturally gravitates toward arts-related spaces.
- The climactic memory at the end of the poem also takes place in a performance space: the jazz club where he heard Holiday sing.
The poet's particular responses make clear that art, in general, can be tremendously important and even life-changing:
- O'Hara quips that he buys an "ugly" international literary journal just "to see what the poets / in Ghana are doing these days." But despite his flip humor, he pays real money to satisfy his curiosity about poetry on the other side of the world. Only a poetry lover would make this kind of purchase on an average lunch break!
- O'Hara then elaborately describes his "quandariness" (indecision) in the bookstore. Again, despite the facetious phrasing, he actually seems to feel there's a lot riding on his book purchase. (Will his friend like it? Is he making the best possible choice? etc.) By extension, he feels that literature and reading are high-stakes, meaningful endeavors.
- Finally, he reminisces about a Holiday performance that made "everyone and I stop[] breathing." The performance was powerful enough that it made life seem to stop (in a seeming preview of Holiday's own death). It also lodged in the poet's memory and, evidently, inspired the poem itself. In other words, the music changed him—in a way he may not have fully appreciated until now, with the news of "Lady's" passing.
O'Hara also emphasizes Holiday's transcendent art rather than her famously challenging life, suggesting the one outweighs the other. Unlike a traditional elegy, which would cover its subject in greater depth, O'Hara's singles out a moment in which Holiday made sublime art. This, he seems to say, is what her life truly meant (at least to me). The phrase "whispered a song" hints at the decline of her later years, in which she struggled with drug addiction, alcoholism, and other personal problems. Her voice was only a whisper toward the end—but that whisper, O'Hara suggests, was hauntingly beautiful.
Amid the blur of daily minutiae (meals, errands, etc.), it's ultimately the enduring value of art that stands out. Irreverent as it first appears, the poem takes the arts seriously and celebrates a major artist in the process.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 8-10
- Lines 14-19
- Lines 22-23
- Lines 25-29
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Celebrity, Consumerism, and American Culture
"The Day Lady Died" consistently draws attention to its cultural setting: the fast-paced, consumerist, mass-media-driven America of the mid-20th century. As he shops in cosmopolitan New York City, O'Hara has the world at his fingertips. He can buy artifacts of "high" and "low" culture from around the globe—a burger one minute, a book of French poetry the next. In classic American fashion, he also buys a tabloid and mourns the death of a celebrity: a Black woman whose life differed greatly from his own, but whose exceptional art reached and touched him nevertheless. The tragedy in the poem isn't personal; O'Hara never knew Holiday. Yet in mass-media culture, the poem suggests, famous figures can seem as important to us as people we do know, and their deaths can move us as deeply as deaths in our own social circle.
O'Hara is at the center of what came to be called a "globalized" city, and he can pick whatever cultural experiences he wishes. He buys various things throughout the poem, and many of his purchases (or prospective purchases) have an international flavor: "NEW WORLD WRITING"; books of Greek, Irish, and French literature; French cigarettes; Italian liqueur, etc. Others are quintessentially American: "a hamburger and a malted," the "NEW YORK POST." At one point, he's so overwhelmed by his consumer options that he almost "go[es] to sleep with quandariness," or indecision! In general, he's a man about town, spending eagerly, taking full advantage of the fact that he lives in a global hub.
In this modern society, the poem shows, a dizzying range of cultural encounters are possible, and the death of a famous stranger can feel as meaningful as the death of a loved one. The poem's title refers to Holiday (a.k.a. "Lady Day") simply as "Lady": a gesture that suggests both affection and reverence. ("Lady" is a title you might call an aristocrat.) And the memory of her breathtaking "song" hints that her music had a genuine impact on him. (Including, perhaps, on his art, since O'Hara's poetry shares an improvised quality with jazz.) He recalls the live performance he witnessed as something special, a connection that transcends the other consumer and cultural experiences in the poem.
Ultimately, the poem is a heartfelt tribute: O'Hara dedicates both a poem and a day to a woman he admired, albeit from a distance. Much as other countries might mourn the passing of royalty, this American poet mourns the passing of a modern American icon. A normal Friday is suddenly elevated to "The Day Lady Died."
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Line 3
- Lines 8-10
- Lines 14-29
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Day Lady Died”
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Lines 1-3
It is 12:20 ...
... it is 1959The poem begins by specifying its setting. O'Hara seems to have written "The Day Lady Died" on the actual day of Billie Holiday's death, and he establishes that sense of immediacy right up front.
The speaker—O'Hara himself, as later details make clear—narrates events in the present tense, naming the day of the week ("Friday"), the time of day ("12:20" p.m.), the year ("1959"), and his current location ("New York" City). He also specifies that it's "three days after Bastille day"—meaning France's national holiday, which is celebrated annually on July 14. So the poem takes place on the afternoon of July 17, 1959, in the city where Holiday, the "Lady" of the title (her nickname was "Lady Day"), had died of cirrhosis hours earlier.
Right away, the narration style is fast-paced, a rapid blur of detail with very few pauses. Line 2 contains one of only a handful of caesuras (the comma before "yes) in a poem of 29 lines. For the most part, O'Hara omits punctuation where it would normally go: for example, after "New York" and Friday" in line 1 ("It is 12:20 in New York a Friday"). The poem also uses heavily enjambed free verse, with no meter, rhyme scheme, or regular stanza pattern.
These techniques make the poem feel dashed-off and spontaneous, as if O'Hara is jotting down his impressions and experiences as fast as possible. (He once claimed that poetry sounds best if "You just go on your nerve.") The resulting language feels fresh, candid, and also a little anxious.
As the title hints, he's recording his impressions on this particular day because the death of Billie Holiday feels like a historic event. Interestingly, he starts by invoking a famous event from French history: the storming of the Bastille (a political prison) during the French Revolution. This reference suggests that "The Day" of Holiday's death is also, in its way, a major occasion, which he's rushing to document and commemorate.
It might also subtly relate to Holiday's career. She was considered a revolutionary artist; her art was sometimes political; she had trouble with the law (in part due to her art/politics), spent time in prison, etc. The same is true of other artists the poem mentions later, including Jean "Genet" (line 18).
In all these ways, the seemingly random "Bastille day" detail may be a meaningful allusion. If nothing else, it shows that O'Hara is keenly aware of international culture—a trait he'll continue to demonstrate throughout the poem.
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Lines 3-6
and I go ...
... will feed me -
Lines 7-10
I walk up ...
... doing these days -
Lines 11-13
I go on ...
... in her life -
Lines 14-18
and in the GOLDEN ...
... of Genet, -
Lines 18-19
but I don’t, ...
... sleep with quandariness -
Lines 20-25
and for Mike ...
... face on it -
Lines 26-29
and I am ...
... I stopped breathing
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“The Day Lady Died” Symbols
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Breathing
Breath symbolizes life. When Billie Holiday's performance leaves everyone in the "5 SPOT" breathless, it's as though the power of her art has caused life to stop for a moment. But in the context of the poem, this moment also becomes a foreshadowing of her death—the permanent end of her own life. As she "whispered" her song, she was the only one in the jazz club making a sound, or even breathing. Ironically, she may now be the only one of that crowd not breathing—that is, dead. The end of her life is all the more tragic because it's also the end of her art.
Breath can also be symbolically associated with artistic inspiration. Inspire, in fact, originally meant "to breathe upon or breathe into," as in ancient myths of gods breathing life into mortals. (Many writers in the Western tradition, dating back at least to ancient Rome, have imagined artists' inspiration as coming from a divine breath or wind.) During her show at the "5 SPOT," Holiday's "whisper[ing]" performance is so inspired that it takes the breath away from her listeners. In that moment, she's the great artist in the room; everyone else is the audience.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 28-29: “while she whispered a song along the keyboard / to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing”
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“The Day Lady Died” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
"The Day Lady Died" doesn't contain much vivid imagery—until the end. Most of it catalogues O'Hara's errands and purchases without supplying a lot of sensory detail. (For example, he mentions the "drawings by Bonnard" in the book he buys, but he doesn't describe them; if readers don't know that artist's work, they can't picture it in their minds.)
There are occasional exceptions: in lines 7-9, for example, he describes the "muggy" weather, the brightening of the "sun," and the "ugly" cover of the magazine he buys (although this last description is pretty limited). Arguably, his mention of his lunch—"[I] have a hamburger and a malted"—engages with the reader's sense of taste. But even here, he doesn't describe how these things tasted; he just rattles them off like items on a shopping list.
Things get more concrete in the closing lines, though. In fact, the relative lack of imagery in the first 25 lines might be seen as a setup for the final stanza, which becomes all the more vivid by comparison. In line 25, O'Hara buys a tabloid "with her face on it," meaning a photo of Billie Holiday, the "Lady" who has just "Died." Then, in lines 26-27, he describes "sweating a lot"—an uncomfortable tactile, or touch-related, image—and remembering a Holiday performance he once saw. As he "lean[ed]" against the men's room "door" of a jazz club, "she whispered a song along the keyboard," so beautifully that a hush fell over the crowd.
In other words, in this humble, uncomfortable location (by the bathroom), he witnessed something sublime: a song that still echoes in his mind years later. The verb "whispered" conveys a gentle, haunting, intimate quality, while hinting at the vocal strain Holiday experienced in her later years. This image stands out powerfully against the hush described in the final line: "everyone and I stopped breathing."
Where imagery appears in the poem:- Lines 7-9: “I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun / and have a hamburger and a malted and buy / an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING”
- Line 25: “and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it”
- Lines 26-29: “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”
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Juxtaposition
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Parataxis
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Enjambment
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Caesura
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"The Day Lady Died" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Bastille day
- Shoeshine
- The 4:19
- Easthampton
- Sun
- Malted
- NEW WORLD WRITING
- Ghana
- Balance
- The GOLDEN GRIFFIN
- Verlaine
- Patsy
- Bonnard
- Trans.
- Hesiod
- Richmond Lattimore
- Brendan Behan
- Genet
- Les Nègres
- Le Balcon
- Quandariness
- PARK LANE Liquor Store
- Strega
- 6th Avenue
- Tobacconist
- Ziegfeld Theatre
- Gauloises
- Picayunes
- NEW YORK POST
- John
- 5 SPOT
- Mal Waldron
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(Location in poem: Line 2: “three days after Bastille day, yes”)
France's national holiday, celebrated on July 14 (the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, a political prison, during the French Revolution). In France, it's known as the Fête de la Fédération.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Day Lady Died”
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Form
"The Day Lady Died" is a free verse poem broken into stanzas of mixed length. Technically, there are four stanzas, though there may appear to be five, since lines 10-11 ("in Ghana [...] I go on to the bank") in the second stanza are "stepped": there's a drop in the middle that indicates a line break, but not a stanza break.
The poem's lack of rhyme, meter, and other formal structures helps it achieve a fast-paced, almost stream-of-consciousness style. O'Hara even drops the punctuation at the ends of sentences, suggesting the way one thought blurs into another. This style helps him convey his rapid rush of actions, thoughts, and impressions on an unexpectedly sad day.
Throughout his career, O'Hara tended to avoid strict poetic forms, which struck him as somewhat stiff and old-fashioned. In his essay "Personism: A Manifesto," he famously wrote:
[...] I don't even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, "Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep."
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Meter
As a free verse poem, "The Day Lady Died" has no meter. Written on the actual day Billie Holiday died, it captures a series of impressions in a quick, loose, spontaneous style. Any kind of strict formal pattern would ruin that sense of spontaneity. However, the poem's lines aren't completely all over the place; O'Hara breaks them into roughly even lengths (10-15 syllables each, aside from the shorter line 2 and the "stepped" lines 10-11), imposing some degree of regularity on the rapid flow of his thoughts.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem is written in free verse, so it has no rhyme scheme. There's one internal rhyme in line 3 ("1959"/"shoeshine"), but as the critic Robert von Hallberg has written, it's "only a chance thing." The poet's stream of thought rushes ahead without any formal pattern shaping it. The result is a feeling of improvisation and you-are-there immediacy.
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“The Day Lady Died” Speaker
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The speaker of "The Day Lady Died" is the poet, Frank O'Hara. O'Hara was known for his highly personal style (which he half-jokingly called "Personism") and for using details from his real life in his work. This poem is no exception: it's a basically accurate account of what he was doing the day Billie Holiday died, and he wrote it that same afternoon. (See the Context section of this guide for more details.) The poem appeared in his collection Lunch Poems (1964), much of which he wrote during lunch breaks from his day job at New York City's Museum of Modern Art.
As he depicts himself here, he's a man about town, running errands on his Friday lunch break and looking forward to a dinner party in "Easthampton" (East Hampton, NY) that evening. He doesn't know the hosts of the party ("the people who will feed me"), but he's been invited by his friends "Patsy" and "Mike" (Patsy Southgate and Mike Goldberg). He's buying them "a little Verlaine" (a book of poems) and "a bottle of Strega" (some herbal liqueur), respectively, as thank-you gifts. He's a connoisseur of literature and the arts—he hesitates for a long time at the bookstore, trying to choose the perfect book—but in many ways, he's also an ordinary mid-20th-century American, enjoying his burger, milkshake, and cigarettes.
Finally, he's a fan of the jazz singer Billie Holiday, the subject of the poem, who once took his breath away in a live performance. (As things turned out in real life, the dinner party was canceled, and O'Hara, Mike, and Patsy spent the evening listening to Holiday records.)
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“The Day Lady Died” Setting
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The poem has a highly specific and well-established setting: midtown Manhattan, New York City, around 12:20 in the afternoon of Friday, July 17, 1959. In this setting, the speaker, O'Hara, runs a series of errands on his lunch break. He names several locations on his route, so one can pretty much map his movements, even though most of these city landmarks are long gone.
O'Hara worked at the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd Street (between 5th and "6th Avenue"), so that's his likely starting point, though he doesn't mention it by name. He buys lunch at an unnamed "hamburger" place, buys a magazine (at a newsstand, perhaps), stops at an unnamed "bank," then heads to the "GOLDEN GRIFFIN," a now-defunct bookstore formerly located at 611 Madison Avenue. Next, he stops by the "PARK LANE / Liquor Store" (also defunct) before heading to the famous "Ziegfeld Theatre," a Broadway theater that stood at 1341 6th Avenue and was demolished in 1966. All these errands take place within a few midtown blocks.
The poem mentions several other locations as well. "Easthampton" (usually spelled East Hampton) is a town on Long Island, known as a fashionable summer destination for New Yorkers. "Ghana" is a West African country, which at the time had only recently (1957) won independence within the British Commonwealth. Finally, the "5 SPOT" (the Five Spot Café) was a jazz club, then located at 1 Cooper Square in the Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan, frequented by many famous writers and artists as well as musicians.
Like many of O'Hara's poems, "The Day Lady Died" showcases the poet's love of New York City and his deep familiarity with its arts scene. The frenetic urban whirl provides the backdrop against which Billie Holiday's death, and the quiet memory it brings, takes place. (Holiday died in Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem, also in Manhattan.)
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Day Lady Died”
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Literary Context
Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) was one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century. Along with his friends John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, he was a leading light of the poetry movement that critics came to call the New York School.
The New York School poets valued improvisation, formal experimentation, urbane wit, and a style combining sophisticated allusions with American vernacular and pop culture references. In their embrace of both "high" and "low" culture, they sometimes resembled "Pop" artists such as Andy Warhol, who were part of the same generation and broader New York arts scene. In fact, O'Hara, in his day job as a curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), was an expert on the visual arts and a friend to many artists—including the painter Mike Goldberg, the "Mike" of this poem.
"The Day Lady Died" is one of the most famous poems from O'Hara's Lunch Poems (1964), which also includes such classics as "Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]" and "Personal Poem." (The former is a tribute to another headline-making celebrity, the movie star Lana Turner, while the second mentions another jazz legend, Miles Davis.) Like many of the Lunch Poems, this one draws on the city sights and sounds O'Hara witnessed during lunch breaks from his job. In fact, O'Hara seems to have actually composed it on July 17, 1959, the day of Billie Holiday's death. According to biographer Brad Gooch:
O'Hara had written his poem on his lunch hour. Later he caught the train with LeSueur to East Hampton where they were met by Mike Goldberg in the olive-drab Bugatti he had bought the year before [...] Goldberg explained in the parking lot, "We're eating in, the dinner was called off." On the drive to the house Goldberg was renting that summer on Georgica Pond [in East Hampton], the only topic of discussion was the tragedy of Billie Holiday's death at the young age of forty-four. "I've been playing her records all afternoon," said Goldberg. Arriving back at the house, Goldberg put a Billie Holiday record on the hi-fi while Patsy Southgate, having finished putting the two kids to bed, brought out a tray of hors d'oeuvres. O'Hara, who had been silent about the matter throughout the trip, pulled a poem out of his pocket that he announced he had just written that afternoon and read it straight down to its concluding stanza [...]
A star during her lifetime, Holiday is still regarded as one of the greatest jazz singers of all time. Her passing was tragic in part because she was still relatively young: she died at age 44, from complications related to alcohol and drug addiction. Seven years after he wrote his tribute to her, O'Hara died even younger, at age 40, when a vehicle struck him in a freak accident on New York's Fire Island.
Historical Context
Written in the present tense on the day it describes, the poem now provides a historical snapshot of mid-20th-century New York City, including a number of landmarks (the Ziegfeld Theatre, Five Spot Café, etc.) that have long since vanished. It's also a cultural snapshot of mid-20th-century America, not only in its tribute to the jazz singer Billie Holiday but in its details: the "hamburger and malted [milkshake]" lunch, the tabloid newspaper, and so on.
Interestingly, the poem alludes to French history as well: it mentions "Bastille day," a holiday honoring the 1789 storming of the Bastille (a political prison) during the French Revolution. This detail may subtly relate to the writers and artists the poet mentions—two of whom were French, several of whom revolutionized their respective art forms and/or saw prison time in their respective countries. O'Hara, as a gay artist, had his own outsider relationship to mainstream American culture, so his interest in these rebellious figures may reflect his own experience. He name-checks, for example:
- The French poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), who was imprisoned for two years after shooting his lover, Arthur Rimbaud, in the hand.
- The Irish writer Brendan Behan (1923-1964), who served two separate prison sentences as a member of the Irish Republican Army.
- The French writer Jean Genet (1910-1986), who was a petty criminal in his early life, served numerous prison sentences, and wrote his first novel behind bars.
Billie Holiday herself battled drug and alcohol addiction, as well as the extreme racism and sexism of mainstream, mid-20th-century America. A Black female star before the civil rights and feminist movements of the 1950s and 1960s, she became a primary target of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, particularly after her celebrated recording of the anti-lynching protest song "Strange Fruit." After serving a prison sentence for drug possession, she lost her cabaret performer's license and, with it, a major source of income. (The performance O'Hara describes in lines 27-29 was technically illegal, as Holiday was no longer permitted to sing in venues that served alcohol.) Legal troubles, substance abuse, and abusive relationships all contributed to her decline.
In many ways, Holiday's art exemplifies the kind of cultural connections democratic society is said to foster. Jazz originated in Black American communities, but by O'Hara's time, it had long since become popular with audiences of all races. Many critics and listeners saw it as bridging social divisions, as well as supposed divisions between "popular" and "high" art. Yet, like many successful Black American artists, Holiday found her career hampered by racism, including harassment by law enforcement. O'Hara doesn't mention this context directly, but his poem signals some awareness of and concern with racial divisions (e.g., he considers buying the Jean Genet play about racism) along with an interest in Black artistry (jazz, "the poets / in Ghana").
In elegizing Holiday, then, O'Hara seems to honor an artist who exemplified the best within her culture, but whose life held a mirror to that culture's flaws.
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More “The Day Lady Died” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Frank O'Hara reads "The Day Lady Died."
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Holiday and Waldron on Record — Listen to a 1957 performance by Billie Holiday (with Mal Waldron on piano).
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The Poet's Life — Read a short biography of Frank O'Hara at the Poetry Foundation.
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"Lady Day" on Film — Watch a documentary about jazz singer Billie Holiday (the "Lady" of the title).
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An Introduction to the New York School — A brief guide to the literary movement with which O'Hara is closely associated.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Frank O'Hara
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