"The Day Lady Died": Fifty Years Later

. . . she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Billie Holiday’s death on this date fifty years ago (July 17, 1959) inspired one of the most famous American poems in the second-half of the twentieth century, Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died.” In a previous post at “One Poet’s Notes,” “Grace Hartigan and Frank O’Hara,” I have included the poem, as well as an artwork of the same title by Hartigan.