A good poetry practice - write in the style of other greats

Early on in my poetry workshops, we practiced writing poems in the style of other poets we liked. I especially liked Frank O’Hara’s homage to Billie Holiday and tried my hand at writing in this style a couple of times. This poem came to mind when Whitney Houston died two weeks ago.

Here is Frank O’Hara’s poem for Billie Holiday

The Day Lady Died

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 Nègres
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

Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966                         Billie Holiday, 1915-1959 

Here are my attempts (with apologies to Frank O’Hara)

The Day JFK Died

It is late morning in El Segundo, a Friday

five days before Thanksgiving, yes

it is 1963 and I am sitting in my office

not working, just filing my fingernails.

It is a slow day.

I stand around my boss’ office

with the others

and listen to the news on the radio,

smoking another Marlboro

and sobbing into an

already worn out piece of Kleenex.

I leave work early

with the hordes of others.

By 3 pm the parking lot is empty.

The heat of the day hits me

as I walk over the black asphalt.

I start my Lady Bug, light a cigarette,

and begin the drive up the Coast.

The surfers, still out there without wetsuits,

paddle their boards to catch the next waves.

The children play quietly

with their pails and shovels in the sand.

I wait at the light at Culver Boulevard, and already

The Shack patio is full.

I pull into the Sand Dune lot and

go in to buy some Chevis

and a bottle of merlot – something 

to keep us company

while we watch the news tonight.

My husband is already home. He greets me

with a hug. I lean on him

and we don’t say a word.

What more could we say about this day?

The Day My Jazzman Died

It is 7 am in Manhattan Beach a Thursday

three days after Yom Kippur, yes

it is 1999 and I go downstairs to the laundry room

to fold the clothes left there for days

and think about the notice of my ex-father-in-law’s

death in the LA Times.

I’m wearing my purple chenille bathrobe

that I’ve had for years

and I fold for 20 minutes or so

before I realize no noise coming

from behind the closed bathroom door,

the room next to the laundry

where Paul should be getting ready for work.

I go to his room

and the door is half open. I look inside

and it is dark. Then I look in the garage

and it appears he hasn’t left yet. His beige Volvo

is still there. I knock on the bathroom door.

No answer.

And I go upstairs.

Bob is just putting on his shoes and socks,

almost ready to leave for work

and I tell him something is not right

downstairs

and he stops what he is doing and

then we go back where I came from to the downstairs

long hall and Bob tries the bathroom door and

yells, Paul, open the door, open the door,

and he goes out to the garage and gets a screwdriver

and opens the door and goes inside

and when he comes out his face,

red with tears streaming down it, says it all.

He tells me Paul is dead, call 911

and I am shaking a lot by now and

leaning on the stair railing

and Bob holds me

while he whispers Paul is dead,

we whisper, our son, Paul is dead.

Writing down the memories

It was almost an obsession of mine to get my Paul memories written down. I even wrote poems and journal entries about how I went about it. And fortunately I did write them down because a lot of that material ended up in my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On.

Memory List

I’m making a memory list.

I don’t want to forget my son Paul,

So I’m writing down all the things

I can think of that were unique to him.

I keep grabbing, scratching

my bony claws at the surface of my brain

to remember, to rediscover, to reconnect with

how he looked, what he said,

what he did, how he did it.

I am continually searching for

little mannerisms that were so Paul.

I keep adding to it

I keep going back to it

I keep rereading it

I keep editing it,

so I don’t duplicate what’s already on it.

But, hey, I know a little list

of things he did or said

isn’t going to bring him back to me.

That’s the truth.

You should have seen him.

He walked so fast

like the rest of the New Yorkers.

I had to run to keep up with him.

My dad was like that too.

My dad was so in love with Paul.

I can still see them.

Paul perched on my dad’s lap

gazing into each others eyes

with proud grandpa and grandson

grins on their faces.

Maybe they are up there in heaven

taking long fast walks together.

Probably not, but

I'd like to believe that anyway.

Dad with Paul, 1973 

“I want to watch a record,” he would say

as he lay down on the tattered red and black couch

for his afternoon nap,

then much too young to differentiate

between watching and listening.

He was mesmerized by music even then,

calling out from his car seat,

“More Cat Stevens, Mommy,”

and singing “Oh, Baby, Baby, it’s a wild world”

along with the tape.

He sat in that car seat, sucking his fingers

when he wasn’t singing

and holding on to his stuffed green turtle

he loved so hard

we bought a six pack of them

so we could, in good conscience,

throw the old worn ones away.

 Paul and the turtle, at about one year

It came as no surprise he became a musician.

He started out with a sax, then piano,

then an electronic keyboard.

He taught himself how to play the guitar.

He could play almost any tune by ear

and never had my problem memorizing a piece.

By the end of his first year of piano lessons

he played “Chariots of Fire” in a recital.

His music brought him to New York

to study jazz at The New School.

He loved New York: the cold weather, 
the fast pace, the dives, the Indian food,

the subways, the walkups, the late nights,

and the freedom to come and go anytime,

anywhere he pleased.

He was a loner and he fit right in

with the other talented loners there.

That is until he got sick.

Then he became afraid of New York.

He hated the sirens, he feared

people were poisoning his cigarettes and drinks,

he thought the Mafia was out

to hurt his girlfriend,

He saw hit men lurking in doorways

and he began running away.

One year he went back and forth

between New York and Los Angeles four times.

One time he walked from the lower East side

across the George Washington bridge

into New Jersey – just

to get out of the city.

Another time he took a bus

from Los Angeles to Ensenada

and spent the night in a Denny’s

because he didn’t have enough money

to get a room.

But he couldn’t escape.

No matter how many pairs

of brown Doc Martin shoes

he wore out,

he couldn’t walk away from

what was going on in his head.

The music he heard as a little boy

became his demon.

The familiar strains of Cat Stevens

and his beloved John Lennon

became the menacing voices

that told him to kill himself.

So, now I’m making a list of memories.

It keeps growing larger and larger

as one memory begets another

and another

and another.

2001