Summary
The speaker explicitly identifies the date, time, day of the week, and place of the poem's setting: 12:20 PM on Friday, July 17, 1959, in New York City. The speaker remembers that this day is three days after Bastille Day, a holiday commemorating July 14, the day on which French revolutionaries stormed the Bastille in Paris in 1789. He then begins to recount the events of his day in present tense, bringing various trains of thought into the poem's verse. He tells us that he gets a shoeshine early in the afternoon because of a dinner party he will attend later that evening, hosted by people he doesn't know well.
Analysis
In this first stanza, the reader swiftly enters the action of the poem, swept along with the rush of the speaker's day immediately after being grounded in place. O'Hara frequently uses simple clauses and conjunctions to advance the action without pause. By denying resolution to the poem's phrases through deft enjambments, O'Hara allows the tone, pace, and voice of the poem to mimic the pace of city life. Once you get going in New York City, it can be incredibly to difficult to slow down, let alone stop. It would take a major event, obstacle, or setback to force you to settle down.
In addition to establishing the poem's setting and pace, O'Hara clues us in to a crucial element of the speaker's character. By stating the date as "three days after Bastille Day," instead of simply "July 17th," the speaker hints at the significance and influence of francophone culture in his life. This will become important later, when the speaker visits a book store to purchase a gift for his friend Patsy.
