News & Views: Nothing much to say edition
Apr. 7th, 2026 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stonepicnicking_okapi1. New client is an architect. Seems to be okay but we'll see. The one issue is that they (he and wife) have never ever had a caregiver so we'll see what they decide to do with me. There is something to be said for jazz man who has had caregivers 3 to 4 times a day every day for years and my Indian lady who grew up with actual servants that they know how to order me around properly. :) I also will try out a new Friday guy. He is hospice. :(
2. Spring break was fine. Easter was fine. The boys are back at school.
3. BTS will have the first concert of their tour on Wednesday. They have dropped much content, which is enjoyable. I have made a new ARMY friend of a long-time commentor on my fic so that's nice.
4. I just finished a biography of Keats, which I will talk about tomorrow. I am also making my way through an Inspector Rebus short story omnibus.
5. This day in jazz tells me it is the birthday of Billie Holliday so have two poems about her. The second one calls to mind the moment in ACD's "The Dying Detective" when Watson reads about the attack on Holmes in the newspaper.
---
Canary by Rita Dove
for Michael S. Harper
Billie Holiday’s burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.
(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)
Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.
If you can’t be free, be a mystery.
--
The Day Lady Died by Frank O’Hara
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
2. Spring break was fine. Easter was fine. The boys are back at school.
3. BTS will have the first concert of their tour on Wednesday. They have dropped much content, which is enjoyable. I have made a new ARMY friend of a long-time commentor on my fic so that's nice.
4. I just finished a biography of Keats, which I will talk about tomorrow. I am also making my way through an Inspector Rebus short story omnibus.
5. This day in jazz tells me it is the birthday of Billie Holliday so have two poems about her. The second one calls to mind the moment in ACD's "The Dying Detective" when Watson reads about the attack on Holmes in the newspaper.
---
Canary by Rita Dove
for Michael S. Harper
Billie Holiday’s burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.
(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)
Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.
If you can’t be free, be a mystery.
--
The Day Lady Died by Frank O’Hara
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
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