September 30

In all of Frank O’Hara’s poetry beauty is represented just as Baudelaire described, through the eternal and invariable and the relative circumstances of the contemporary society in which it was written. In Why I’m Not A Painter he juxtaposes the beauty of the modern environment with the invariable beauty of nature, “the beautiful urban fountains of Madrid as the Niger joins the Gulf of Guinea near the Menemsha Bar” and taking it farther with the contrast of environments “I don’t have to slide down between buildings to get your ear. I know you love Manhattan, but you ought to look up more often. And always embrace things, people earth sky stars, as I do, freely and with the appropriate sense of space”
The Day Lady Died is a complete glamorization of contemporary society which is a particularly good example of Baudelaire’s description of the relativeness of fashion and beauty. O’Hara mentions chorus girls which is an image of modern sex appeal and the line “skirts are flipping above heels and blow up over grates” creates a visual of modern style within a modern environment.