Response To Frank O Hara's Death

Frank O'Hara's introspective response to the death of jazz artist Billie Holiday in 1959 showcased his unique ability to make art out of tragedy. He manifested the lamentations of dejected fanatics into a simplistic yet powerful poem entitled The Day Lady Died so that he could effectively eulogize the beloved singer and pay homage to her short-lived career. In it, he explored the pervasiveness of death and its ability to both transfix and sadden the spirit of an individual. Unconventional form was what allowed him to examine deaths effects and it acted as a catalyst throughout the poem, enabling O’Hara to clearly and unapologetically express his message. Critics note the significance of O’Hara’s form and message in relation to the poems epoch—the

fifties. The decade was painstakingly traditional, marked by white-centric social structures that limited diversity and allowed for success only at the cost of ones individualism. Recognizing this, critics have drawn attention to the fact that O’Hara’s purpose in writing the poem was to challenge the traditional constructs of the era. Putting together collections like Lunch Poems and expressing himself as a homosexual poet allowed O’Hara to voice his political opinion and allowed him to create his own form of artistic expression. For this reason, literary analysts have universally agreed that Frank O’Hara wrote The Day Lady Died in an attempt to showcase his modernist approach to poetry—relying heavily on apparency and casualness, he was able to voice his love for the arts in an informal yet syntactically clever way to depict feelings of grief and to ultimately transcend 1950’s conservatism.
The homogeneous blueprint for how to live during the fifties rooted itself deep in the soils of the new suburban culture, influencing citizens political actions as well as their stances on social issues in the country. On account of traditionalists fighting to uphold such rugged principles of uniformity, men like Frank O’Hara were ostracized for their homosexuality; they were banned from jobs in the federal government and deprived of the basic human right to legally solidify their marriages. Supporters of the anti-gay regulations were notorious for verbally abusing Frank—the abuse was accounted for in poems like At The Old Place, where he retold the story of dancing in a bar with friends when suddenly a bystander declared "I knew they were gay the minute I laid eyes on them!” (223). Comments like these intentionally devalued O’Hara as an individual and belittled other New York poets as well, among which include Pulitzer Prize winner John Ashbery and African-American jazz enthusiast Amiri Baraka. Regardless of the stigmas surrounding homosexuality and interracial friendships in the fifties, these poetic men stuck together, hoping to inspire political and social change. Baraka, for instance, was commended for using his platform to highlight the importance of “[...] maintaining a separate black identity…” and he was also credited for introducing the New York poets to the world of jazz (Diggory). Listening to jazz enabled O’Hara to ignore the oppressive hatred that surrounded homosexuality, and it provided him with a better understanding of himself, of creative initiatives, and of artists like Billie Holiday. With these new feelings of empathy and understanding, he approached The Day Lady Died with amiability, celebrating Holiday as a persecuted artist rather than dejecting her for her race and gender. This idea of solemn commemoration found itself in O’Hara’s poem when he infused his memories of her captivating live performances, saying “. . .everyone and I stopped breathing” (Line 29) in regards to hearing her voice. Being dejected himself for his differences, he was understanding of her situation as well as the possible impact he could make as a gay man by lamenting over her death in an artistically clever way.
Aside from omitting Billie Holiday’s name from the poem completely, saving the news of her death for its concluding lines and using casual language to heighten “. . .the significance of [its] details” were merely a few ways in which Frank O’Hara examined the arbitrary effects of Holiday’s death in The Day Lady Died (Lowney). Ultimately, it was his unique syntactic approach in regards to the chronological structure of the poem that enabled him to freely and sensibly express his love for Holiday’s artistry as well as his grief in reference to her untimely death. Easing readers into the subject matter of death and its impermeable effects, the initial lines of O’Hara’s poem contain short, declarative, present-tense accounts of his day in New York City. Frank magnified the casual nature of his “I do this, I do that” statements by linking them together with the word “and,” which primarily “. . . [called] attention to what seems to be the meaningless flux of time” (Perloff). O’Hara’s constant referencing of time throughout the poem further supported this idea. For example, weaving the line “three days after Bastille Day, yes” (Line 2 ) into the opening stages of the poem allowed Frank to show his readers just how boring and plain a daily routine and can. He upheld this sense of impending monotony by restating the time and date of the poem in three other different ways. His fixation on the time compiled with the sequentiality of the poem itself put into perspective the idea that time is ruthless—time is what killed Billie Holiday, it’s what fostered the spontaneous growth of oppressive social structures, however, it cannot be denied that time is ultimately what drove Frank to write in such an organic, anti-poetic way. His time spent grieving over Holiday’s death—which readers were exposed to during his nostalgic reflection of seeing her perform at the “Five Spot” bar—was necessary for him to experience in order to successfully shine a light on Billie’s career as well as potentially kickstart his own.
O’Hara’s meteoric rise to fame is best understood through the lenses of men and women who harbor uncompromised acceptance for the universal differences found in gender and in artistic expression. His selfless activism and burning passion for art—which prompts a majority of his writing—is what will forever earn him a place in history as one of the most inspiring, compassionate poets of the 20th century. In keeping with the theme of challenging the social constructs of his era, O’Hara used The Day Lady Died to list the activities of his day in a way that mimicked “. . .a woman of means with a busy social schedule” (Ross). This was Frank’s way of criticizing the flawed gender roles of the fifties; refusing to prescribe to a culture that shamed men for walking alone in the city, he intentionally wrote about his routine stops at the local stores, and about appreciating all of the art and beauty that New York's infrastructure had to offer. By saying “I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun” we are able paint a vivid picture in our minds of the city and of how O’Hara fearlessly navigated his way through its streets. This, mixed with the unquestionable femininity that is found in his daily routine have questioned readers and critics alike. At first glance, finding the expressed grief and the defiance of tradition in the beginning of the poem is hard, but it lies transparently within the context of the days of the days events and how they were laid out for us (Mattix).
Marjorie Perloff, the esteemed literary critic and writer of Frank O’Hara: Poet Among Painters, dedicated a section of her book to explaining the motives behind Frank’s unique methodology in simply stating what he does throughout the day.

She took time to discuss the syntactical moves, shifts in tones, and also the impact of explaining his daily events in a feminine way. Bluntly stating that “The 'Day Lady Died' is an account of a lady's day, played out by a man through an imagined lunch hour” allowed Marjorie to showcase O’Hara’s ability to stand out in spite of the highly saturated and eerily similar culture that he was apart of (Perloff). Not only did this assertion solidify Frank O’Hara’s ability to transcend the normalities of the fifties, but it was followed by another assertion from Perloff—that O’Hara’s hesitancy in mentioning the Billie Holiday’s death was purposely done in an attempt to orchestrate the severity of death’s numbing effects as well as how it will always subconsciously be on our minds. This assertion allowed Perloff to expose her readers to the many different layers and degrees of depth that existed in Frank O’Hara’s poem. The most impactful shift in tone that she noticed was when Frank O’Hara began the poem sounding feminine and ended it sounding gender neutral and reflective in the way that he voiced his lines. Addressing how the first couple lines of the poem are what mark its “. . .obvious distance from the voice of legitimate masculinity…” Perloff

showed how Frank’s reliance on discreet, present-tense phrasing quickly faded along with his feminist sounding tone once he got to the latter end of the poem. His second to last line of the poem “she whispered a song along the keyboard” (Line 28) was the first time the tense shifted from present to past. It was also the first time in the poem that O’Hara stopped describing the events of his day and actively reflected on the immense impact that Billie Holiday had on his musical taste, on his writing career, and on his life in general.
Other critics of The Day Lady Died have argued that O’Hara’s writing style was not at all influenced by the performances of Billie Holiday, but rather the up and coming cultural movements that would soon dominate both suburbias and cities in the 60’s.

Frank’s desire to see himself as well as other disenfranchised members of society actively exercising their voices in an attempt to secure equality was at an all time high. Micah Mattix successfully drew attention to this in his analysis of O’Hara’s upbringing in an essay he wrote for The Atlantic. In it, he explored the ways in which New York City itself shaped O’Hara’s philosophical beliefs—which entailed simplicity as well as the idea that we are simply a cumulation of the days events. Brief descriptions of the poems followed by excerpts of them throughout the article allowed readers to see the unique sentence structure and word play that Mattix made us aware of throughout his analysis of the author and of the authors effective “conversational tone” (Mattix). His assertion that Frank O’Hara deconstructed the fundamentals of poetry and of self expression as a means of promoting change in the years exceeding the 50’s allowed us to better understand Franks angles and ways of thinking in The Day Lady Died. He wrote the poem in the span of an hour and constructed it in a way that showcased the beauty of the city. Mattix believed that “[t]he city offered freedom, possibility, movement, all of which O’Hara associated with life”

(Mattix). With this in mind, a plethora of New York natives and critics alike have agreed that the 1960’s counter culture—which flooded the cities streets and gave life to jazz—was responsible for the growth of new genres and forms of poetry that transcended tradition. Frank O’Hara’s works in particular, will forever be known as the ones that were ahead of their time; his disregard for polished form and for eloquent rhyming schemes as well as the omnipresent effects of his fearless activism are what make poems like The Day Lady Died so revolutionary. Not only did this poem advocate for equality, but it was written in a way allowed Frank to showcase his interests and to assess the complexity of his emotions in regards to Billie Holiday’s death.