Frank O’Hara’s The Day Lady Died is an unorthodox elegy to the great Billie Holiday, one that explores a more distant but no less human form of mourning a notable figure from afar when one feels personally invested in them. The Day Lady Died makes good use of a captivatingly talkative first person narrator with a penchant for mentioning seemingly insignificant details that end up being paramount to the poem’s narrative. Its run-on form lends to the nature of the poem being an internal stream of consciousness that aids in capturing those small details and utilizing them to paint a bigger picture of day that will live on both in poetry and in history as The Day Lady Died. The first person narrator of The Day Lady Died is the key to the poem because readers see the poem unfold from his perspective. What the narrator deems signifigant enough to mention is all that readers get to set the scene. Therefore, O’Hara’s abundant use of concrete details to establish the setting through the narrator’s eyes paints a vividly clear picture. For instance it isn’t only “12:20 in New York” (O’Hara, 365), but 12:20 in New York on “…a …show more content…
The referenced ‘her,’ being Billie Holiday. In this memory, where the narrator thinks back to “leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT” (O’Hara, 365), gives us the true crux of the story. In this last stanza readers are taken beyond the superficial level of following a day in the life of the narrator and shown the deeper feelings Billie Holiday evoked in him and why the day has haunted him with such vivid detail. The narrator remembers how “she whispered a song along the keyboard to Mal Waldron” (O’Hara, 365), and that the whispered song held such a power to ensnare the audiences mind that everyone, including the narrator “stopped breathing” (O’Hara,
The readers are apt to feel confused in the contrasting ways the woman in this poem has been depicted. The lady described in the poem leads to contrasting lives during the day and night. She is a normal girl in her Cadillac in the day while in her pink Mustang she is a prostitute driving on highways in the night. In the poem the imagery of body recurs frequently as “moving in the dust” and “every time she is touched”. The reference to woman’s body could possibly be the metaphor for the derogatory ways women’s labor, especially the physical labor is represented. The contrast between day and night possibly highlights the two contrasting ways the women are represented in society.
Joan Didion’s reaction to when her husband passes away is characteristically American because of how she is unable to cope with her husband’s death. “[She] would still get up in the morning and send out the laundry. [She] would still plan a menu for Easter lunch. [She] woul...
Personally one of my favorite artists of all time, Billie Holiday, is known to be a true artist known in American pop and jazz history. She lived an emotional and challenging life, with plenty of stories to tell and enough sorrow to fill a songbook. Holiday sang with incredible profundity, sophistication, and her unique vocals is still considered to be one of the greatest jazz voices of all time.
Many jazz artists as we know it are quite talented. Their talents are unique in that they can translate human emotion through singing or playing their instruments. Many have the ability to reach and touch people’s souls through their amazing gifts. Although this art of turning notes and lyrics into emotional imagery may somewhat come natural, the audience must wonder where their influence comes from. For Billie Holiday, her career was highly influenced by personal experience, the effects of the Great Depression, and the racial challenges of African Americans during her time.
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”
Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday were both prominent jazz singer-songwriters during the same time and masters in their own right, but their worlds could not have been further apart. In 1939, while they were both in the midst of experiencing mainstream success, Ella was touring with Ella and her Famous Orchestra and showcasing her perfect pitch and tone to the world while singing songs that would soon become standards to fellow singers and musicians. Billie was singing solo, comfortable with her limited range, and gaining the adoration of audiences nationwide who loved her soulful voice. Both of these historic singers made contributions to the art of jazz, with vocalists and instrumentalists still using elements of their style today. Ella
Legendary jazz songstress Billie Holiday once said in response to the exclusion of African Americans from jazz clubs on the notorious 52nd Street, “You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.” The comparison between the jazz world, or more specifically 52nd Street, and a plantation show the immense racial tension between blacks and whites in the early to mid part of the twentieth century. In the height of the time leading up to the Civil Rights Movement, Billie Holiday was a prominent African American singer who was one of the most well known amongst white Americans. Holiday was tough enough to survive in a racist, phallocentric world where she was frequently objectified and trivialized. However, she was not strong enough to resist the allure of alcohol and narcotics, which ultimately led to her death in 1959. In addition to her usage of drugs and alcohol, Holiday faced many other challenges in her life, which inspired the beautiful music that she left as her legacy. Despite her heavy abuse of drugs and alcohol, Billie Holiday redefined jazz for the world and instated new sense of equality in with it.
The movie Lady Day: The Many Faces Of Billie Holiday paints an interesting, and thought provoking portrait of one of jazz and blues most charismatic, and influential artists. The incomparable talent of Billie Holiday, both truth and legend are immortalized in this one-hour documentary film. The film follows Holiday, also referred to as “Lady Day” or “Lady”, through the many triumphs and trials of her career, and does it’s very best to separate the facts from fiction. Her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues is used as a rough guide of how she desired her life story to be viewed by her public. Those who knew her, worked with her, and loved her paint a different picture than this popular, and mostly fictional autobiography.
...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.
Jane presents one aspect of woman in The Waking collection (1953): Ross-Bryant views Jane as a young girl who is dead. The poem expresses concern with the coming of death. This poignant elegy is presen...
Billie was born to the name, Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915. She was born in Philadelphia but grew up in the Fell's Point section of Baltimore. Her mother, was just 13 at the time of her birth; her father, was 15. Holidays' teenage parents, Sadie Harris (aka Fagan) and probable father, Clarence Holiday, never married, and they did not live together for a long time. Clarence, a banjo and guitar player worked with Fletcher Henderson's band in the early 30s. He remains a shady figure who left his family. Clarence would often be away from home, and during the stay with Henderson, which lasted until 1932, the guitarist severed connections with the Fagans. Billie was an angry chile who lived a hard life. She was raped at the age of 10 soon she dropped out of school at an early age and began working as a prostitute with her mother. She was sent to a home for wayward girls, and soon was arrested and served four months in prison for prostitution. “Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s than enough”(billie holiday)
Celebrating the death of a person usually starts with a lamentatious mood and grief. “Celebrating”, perhaps, is a misleading word as in today’s society, celebration is linked with parties and events of fun and joy. In Walt Whitman’s book “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (“Lilacs”), he describes the “celebration” of Lincoln’s death throughout the country. Whitman conveys the glum mood of America after their beloved president is assassinated and the everlasting grief that follows in (“Lilacs”).
At a glance, the poem seems simplistic – a detailed observance of nature followed by an invitation to wash a “dear friend’s” hair. Yet this short poem highlights Bishop’s best poetic qualities, including her deliberate choice in diction, and her emotional restraint. Bishop progresses along with the reader to unfold the feelings of both sadness and joy involved in loving a person that will eventually age and pass away. The poem focuses on the intersection of love and death, an intersection that goes beyond gender and sexuality to make a far-reaching statement about the nature of being
Edgar Allan Poe’s 1849 poem, “Annabel Lee”, explores the common themes of romance and death found in many of Poe’s works. The poem tells the story of a beautiful young maiden named Annabel Lee who resides by the sea. The maiden and the narrator of the poem are deeply in love, however the maiden falls ill and dies, leaving the narrator without his beloved Annabel Lee. Contrary to what many might expect from a poem by Poe and yet still depressing, the poem ends with the narrator accepting Annabel’s death and remains confident that they will forever be together despite her parting.
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.