Broadcast date: MONDAY, 11 December 2000
Poem: “The Journey,” by Mary Oliver, from Dreamwork (Atlantic Monthly Press).
The Journey One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
It is the birthday of poet and translator Mark Rudman, born in New York City (1948). He’s the editor of Pequod, a journal of contemporary literature and criticism. His books include Rider (1994), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry.
“I gradually discovered that literature legitimized the dark emotions; the characters were suffering from inner divisions which I knew only too well and which had served to isolate me.”
It is the birthday of poet and novelist Jim Harrison, born in Grayling, Michigan (1937), who grew up in a poor family with no television set, so they had plenty of time for talking. His ninth-grade teacher gave him some books that got him interested in writing; he wrote award-winning poetry for years, but made very little money until his trilogy of novellas, Legends of the Fall (1979), came out when he was 42.
“Being a writer requires an intoxication with language, an obsession with language. If you don’t have an incredible playfulness about language, I think you tend to write boring novels....”
It is the birthday of blues singer (Willie Mae) Big Mama Thornton, born in Montgomery, Alabama (1926). She went on the road in the Hot Harlem Review as a singer, dancer and comedienne when she was 14 years old. Big Mama Thornton recorded “(You Ain't Nothin' but a) Hound Dog” (1953) and had a number one hit with it three years before Elvis Presley recorded his version of the song. She was an inspiration to Janis Joplin who asked for, and was granted, permission to record her song, “Ball and Chain.”
It's the birthday of Russian novelist and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, born in Kislovodsk, Russia (1918), winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature. He fought in World War Two as an artillery captain, and was arrested in 1945 for writing a letter to a friend that authorities regarded as anti-Stalin. He was sentenced to eight years hard labor without a trial; his short novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), was based on his prison experience. After his book The Gulag Archipelago (1973) came out, he was charged with treason and exiled. He moved to the United States with his family in 1976, and stayed for nearly twenty years before returning to Russia in 1994.
It is the birthday of cartoonist Marjorie H. Buell, born in Philadelphia (1904), who created the comic strip character Little Lulu, a curly-haired little girl who regularly outsmarted the neighborhood boys.
Broadcast date: TUESDAY, 12 December 2000
Poem: lines from “This Error is the Sign of Love,” by Lewis Hyde, from This Error is the Sign of Love (Milkweed Editions).
This Error is the Sign of Love
Man has to seek God in error and
forgetfulness and foolishness. —Meister EckhartThis error is the sign of love,
the crack in the ice where the otters breathe,
the tear that saves a man from power,
the puff of smoke blown down the chimney one morning, and the
widower sighs and gives up his loneliness,
the lines transposed in the will so the widow must scatter
coins from the cliff instead of ashes and she marries
again, for love,
the speechlessness of lovers that forces them to leave it alone
while it sends up its first pale shoot like an onion
sprouting in the pantry,
this error is the sign of love.The leak in the nest, the hole in the coffin,
the crack in the picture plate a young girl fills with her
secret life to survive the grade school,
the retarded twins who wander house to house, eating,
'til the neighbors have become neighbors.
The teacher's failings in which the students ripen,
Luther's fit in the choir, Darwin's dyspepsia, boy children
stuttering in the gunshop,
boredom, shyness, bodily discomforts like long rows of white
stones at the edge of the highway,
blown head gaskets, darkened choir lofts, stolen kisses,
this error is the sign of love.The nickel in the butter churn, the farthing in the cake,
the first reggae rhythms like seasonal cracks in a government
building,
the rain-damaged instrument that taught us the melodies of black
emotion and red and yellow emotion,
the bubble of erotic energy escaped from a marriage and a week
later the wife dreams of a tiger,
the bee that flies into the guitar and hangs transfixed in the
sound of sound 'til all his wetness leaves him
and he rides that high wind to the Galapagos,
this error is the sign of love.The fault in the sea floor where the fish linger and mate,
The beggar buried in the cathedral,
the birthmark that sets the girl apart and years later she alone
of the sisters finds her calling,
Whitman's idiot brother whom he fed like the rest of us,
those few seconds Bréton fell asleep and dreamed of a pit of sand
with the water starting to flow,
the earth's wobbling axis uncoiling seasons—seeds that need
six months of drought, flowers shaped for the tongues
of moths, summertime
and death's polarized light caught beneath the surface
of Florentine oils,
this error is the sign of love.
the wisdom-hole in the façade of the library,
the corners of the garden that are not harvested,
the hail storm in a South Dakota town that started the
Farmers' Cooperative in 1933,
the Sargasso Sea that gives false hope to sailors and they sail
on and find a new world,
the picnic basket that slips overboard and leads to the invention
of the lobster trap,
the one slack line in a poem where the listener relaxes
and suddenly the poem is in your heart like a fruit
wasp in an apple,
this error is the sign of love!
It’s the birthday of Canadian playwright Robert Lepage, born in Québec City, Canada (1957). He’s the author of many plays, including Circulations (1984), which uses alternating French and English dialogue as the main character moves back and forth between Québec and New York City.
"The theater should be like the Olympics, about human beings trying to be like gods. It is an Olympic place where you see people pretending to fly, trying to achieve things beyond their capability, and where you witness their falls.”
It is the birthday of playwright John Osborne, born in London, England (1929). His third play, Look Back in Anger (1956) shocked audiences, and began a new wave of English drama, often referred to as the “angry young man” school of playwriting. The play’s main character, Jimmy Porter, is an intellectual working class guy, angry at the establishment, who ruins his life with bitterness. Sir Laurence Olivier was so impressed with the play that he commissioned Osborne to write a part for him. The result was The Entertainer (1957), in which Olivier played the third rate, music-hall comedian, Archie Rice.
“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp post what it thinks about dogs.”
It is the birthday of American playwright, screenplay writer, and attorney Howard Koch, born in New York City (1902). With Orson Welles, he created the radio script for The War of The Worlds (1938), performed by Welles and the Mercury Theater players to a huge audience that actually believed the world was being invaded by Martians. He also wrote the screenplay for Casablanca (1943), which won him an Academy Award.
On this day in 1897, The Katzenjammer Kids, Fritz and Hans, first appeared in the New York Journal. The Rudolf Dirks comic strip became one of the longest running ever produced.
It is the birthday of French novelist Gustave Flaubert in Rouen, France (1821). His father and brother were both doctors, and Gustave was considered the family dunce: he failed his law exams, and suffered a nervous breakdown after the experience. After recuperating for a year, he received an allowance from his father and dedicated himself to writing. He wrote very, very slowly, reading sentence by sentence out loud for cadence and word choice. It took him six years to complete his masterpiece, Madame Bovary (1857). The book was impounded before reaching bookstores on the grounds of obscenity, since the book’s main character had committed both adultery and suicide. The furor, of course, made the book incredibly popular, and it remains so today.
It is the birthday of poet and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, born in Newburyport, Massachusetts (1805). He was one of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement, and the founder of the weekly newspaper The Liberator, which ran continuously for 35 years beginning in 1831.
Broadcast date: WEDNESDAY, 13 December 2000
Poem: “A Blessing,” by James Wright, from Above the River: The Complete Poems of James Wright (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, and The University Press of New England).
A Blessing
Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
Today is Santa Lucia Day, the patron saint of writers. In Sweden on this day, the oldest daughter puts on a white robe and a crown of evergreens and candles, and comes down the stairs early to serve saffron buns and coffee to her parents. It’s considered the start of the Christmas season.
It is the birthday of poet and translator James Wright, born in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio (1927). His father worked for 50 years at a glass factory, his mother left school at 14 to work in a laundry. Wright began to write poetry when he was 11, and won the Robert Frost Poetry Prize while attending Kenyon College. His collections include The Branch Will Not Break (1963), Shall We Gather By The River (1968), and I See the Wind (1974). His Collected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.
It is the birthday of mystery writer Ross MacDonald, born Kenneth Millar in Los Gatos, California (1915). After serving in World War Two, he settled in Santa Barbara, where he spent the rest of his life. He started work on a story about a former cop turned private eye named Lou Archer. The book, Moving Target, was published in 1949, and was later turned into the film Harper (1966) starring Paul Neman. MacDonald published 18 more Lou Archer mysteries.
It's the birthday of Episcopal clergyman, Phillips Brooks, born in Boston, Massachusetts (1835). He produced ten volumes of sermons, but he is best remembered as the author of the Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, which he wrote in 1868 for the children in his Sunday school.
It is the birthday of Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the 16th President of the United States, born in Lexington, Kentucky (1818). She excelled in school, appearing in school plays and speaking French fluently. She was ambitious, scholarly, and an excellent conversationalist. When she was 21 years old, she moved to Springfield, Illinois, to live with her older sister, and became quite popular Springfield's society, dating Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln won her heart, and the two were married in 1842.
It is the birthday of German poet Heinrich Heine, born in Düsseldorf, Prussia (1797), most famous for The Book of Songs (1827), a work that is frequently set to music.
Broadcast date: THURSDAY, 14 December 2000
Poem: “A Multitude of Birds,” by Ron McFarland, from Composting at Forty (Confluence Press).
A Multitude of Birds
Sing now the desperate dance of small birds.
Sing where the quail collect after snowfall,
the mud-gutted borders of roads where the last
hard grains of wheat lay heaped with the gravel.Sing the wren's last colorless song,
the solitary vireo's slow cold slur
by the roadside sifting old brown bags
for crusts or breadcrumbs, or perhapsamong the shards of bright green glass
a sip of wine, a claret deep as blood.
Sing then the cunning of sparrows which look
like nothing but dark little rocks,for they will endure, and the starling
whose song is the echo of anything,
and the waxwing, gregarious feeders.
Sing warblers and blackbirds perched on the edgeof winter with ice clinging fast
to their wings, with plentiful seed
lying deep, with songs frozen hard into words,
sing now the desperate dance of small birds.
It is the birthday of short story writer Amy Hempel, born in Chicago, Illinois (1951). Her mother committed suicide when Hempel was 18, and shortly after that, she suffered two serious accidents herself. She became morbid, and afraid of injuries and dying. In an effort to overcome her fears, she took an anatomy class where she dissected cadavers. Her first collection of short stories was Reasons to Live (1985).
It is the birthday of American novelist and short story writer Shirley Jackson, born in San Francisco (1916). Her books include Life Among the Savages (1953), Raising Demons (1957), The Haunting of Hill House (1959), and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). She’s probably best known for her short story The Lottery (1948), which was first published in the New Yorker, and elicited more mail than anything the magazine had ever published.
On this day in 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole, a month ahead of his rival, the English explorer Robert Scott. Amundsen had three advantages over Scott: his base camp was about 60 miles closer to the Pole than Scott's; he'd made a preliminary trip to deposit food along the first part of the route; and he used sled dogs, while Scott used ponies. Scott and his men made it to the pole about a month later, but perished on the way back.
It is the birthday of astronomer Tycho Brahe, in Skane, Denmark (1546). He became interested in astronomy when he saw a total eclipse of the sun on August 21, 1560, as had been predicted. He divided his time between learning law in the daytime, and studying the stars at night. He dedicated his life to the creation of accurate almanac tables, and he recorded observations for years, all without the aid of a telescope.
It is the birthday of French doctor and astrologer Michael Nostradamus, in Saint Remy, France (1503). He’s famous for his uncanny prophecies in rhymed quatrains, published in a book called Centuries (1555). It’s claimed he predicted the Great Fire of London in 1666, the French Revolution, the rise of emperor Napoleon, World Wars One and Two, the Russian Revolution, and Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. He even accurately predicted the date and manner of his own death.
Broadcast date: FRIDAY, 15 December 2000
Poem: “to lean back into it,” by Charles Bukowski, from what matters most is how well you walk through the fire (Black Sparrow Press).
to lean back into it
like in a chair the color of the sun
as you listen to lazy piano music
and the aircraft overhead are not
at war.
where the last drink is as good as
the first
and you realize that the promises
you made yourself were
kept.
that's plenty.
that last: about the promises:
what's not so good is that the few
friends you had are
dead and they seem
irreplacable.
as for women, you didn't know enough
early enough
and you knew enough
too late.
and if more self-analysis is allowed: it's
nice that you turned out well-
honed,
that you arrived late
and remained generally
capable.
outside of that, not much to say
except you can leave without
regret.
until then, a bit more amusement,
a bit more endurance,
leaning back
into it.
like the dog who got across
the busy street:
not all of it was good
luck.
It is the birthday of Irish novelist Edna O’Brien, born in Twamgraney, County Clare, (1932), a small village in the west of Ireland. She had a strict Catholic upbringing, and began writing as a young girl. When she was 14, she left County Clare for Dublin with a suitcase bound with twine and a "head full of fancy." She became a pharmacist, married, and had two sons. Her first novel, The Country Girls (1960), was about two Irish girls who leave their strict homes and convent school for the excitement of life in Dublin. She wrote two sequels to The Country Girls: The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). These and others of her books were banned in Ireland for being obscene and pornographic because they dealt with the sexuality of young women. O'Brien's other books include, August is a Wicked Month (1965), Johnny I Hardly Knew You (1977), and House of Splendid Isolation (1994).
It is the birthday of American poet Muriel Rukeyser, born in New York City (1913), best known for her four decades of poetry concerned with social issues.
It is the birthday of writer Betty Smith, born in Brooklyn, New York (1896), famous for her very successful first novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943).
It is the birthday of playwright Maxwell Anderson, born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania (1888). His first successful play was What Price Glory? (1924), written with Lawrence Stallings. His other plays include Key Largo (1939), Candle in the Wind (1941), Anne of the Thousand Days (1948), and The Bad Seed (1954).
It is the birthday of inventor Charles Duryea, born in Canton, Illinois (1861), who, with his brother Frank, invented the first automobile built and operated in the United States. The brothers demonstrated their invention on the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 22, 1893.
On this day in 1815, Jane Austen’s novel Emma was published, a day before her 40th birthday. In it she points out, “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
On this day in 1791, the American Bill of Rights was ratified. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble, and the right to a speedy, public trial were all guaranteed.
Broadcast date: SATURDAY, 16 December 2000
Poem: “Living by Kindness,” by Kim Stafford, from Places and Stories (Carnegie Mellon University Press).
Living By Kindness
Strange things happen in the mind —
like the time I stopped under a streetlight
to write on an envelope a chance thought
furrowing my head —"we haven't all
killed each other yet"— and then went on
through the dark streets of my Idaho city
trudging coal dust and snow.Next day at the lumber yard, I caught
a clerk glancing at me sideways.
Then I remembered the envelope
in my heart — pocket, its message
bold as a badge: "we haven't
all killed each other yet."He was good to me.
Sliding a pine plank off the rack
so clean and sweet, so long, he said,
"You paid for an eight,
but all we got today is twelves."Words have made nothing happen yet
except a free four feet of pine
and the cradle it made
and the child I held
under a light in the snow.
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge (1944), the last major German offensive in World War Two. Hitler had gathered what remained of his crack troops on the Western Front in Belgium to attack the weakest part of the American front line, creating a huge bulge in the line, near the town of Bastogne, where they were stopped by the heroic stand of the 101st Airborne.
It is the birthday of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, born in Chicago, Illinois (1928). He wrote many, many novel, for very little money: science fiction writing was not well respected in the 50s and 60s, and he earned half a cent a word for his short fiction. His first novel was Solar Lottery (1953). Among his other books was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), which was later made into the film Bladerunner (1982).
It is the birthday of English writer Arthur C(harles) Clarke, born in Minehead, Somerset, (1917). He collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001–A Space Odyssey (1968) based on his short story “The Sentinel” (1951).
It is the birthday of anthropologist Margaret Meade, born in Philadelphia (1901), best known for her book, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928).
It is the birthday of Spanish poet and philosopher George Santayana, in Madrid (1863). He spent part of his childhood in Spain and part in Massachusetts, where he graduated from Harvard in 1886. His five-volume The Life of Reason (1906), focused on the imagination of man, and his four-volume The Realms of Being (1940) focused on systems within nature and the mental activity that relates to them. He’s probably best known for having said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
It is the birthday of Catherine of Aragon, born in Alcala de Henares, Spain (1485), the first wife of England's King Henry the Eighth. She gave birth to a daughter, Mary, who became Queen Mary in 1553. But Henry wanted a male heir, and tried to have his marriage to Catherine annulled by the Pope. He separated from her to marry his next wife, and had his own archbishop annul the marriage. Rome and England broke ties over this crisis, which led to the English Reformation.
Broadcast date: SUNDAY, 17 December 2000
Poem: lines from “Snowbound,” by John Greenleaf Whittier.
Snowbound
The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of grey,
And darkly circled, gave at noon,
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill, no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out...Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,—
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's— grass for the cows.....Unwarmed by any sunset light
The grey day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
and whirl dance of the blinding storm,
As zig-zag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingèd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window frame,
and through the glass the clothes-line posts
looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts....And when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,—
A universe of sky and snow!....
It is the birthday of journalist William Safire, born in New York City (1929), who writes the “On Language” column for the New York Times Sunday Magazine.
It is the birthday of art critic Calvin Tomkins, born in Orange, New Jersey (1925). He was a writer for the New Yorker for many years, and is the author of Living Well is the Best Revenge (1971), a short book about Gerald and Sara Murphy.
It is the birthday of chemist Willard Frank Libby, born in Grand Valley, Colorado (1908). He won the 1960 Nobel prize in chemistry for developing the technique of radioactive carbon dating.
On this day in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully flew the first self-propelled, heavier-than-air craft at Kill Devil Hills, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville made the first flight, staying aloft for 12 seconds. Wilbur flew the longest that day: 852 feet in 59 seconds.
It is the birthday of novelist Erskine Caldwell, born in White Oak, Georgia (1903), author of Tobacco Road (1932), and God’s Little Acre (1933).
It is the birthday of Ford Maddox Ford, born in Merton, Surrey, England (1873). He was editor of The Transatlantic Review, and published work by James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. As a writer he’s best known for his novel The Good Soldier (1915), and his tetralogy Parade’s End, which came out in the 20s.
On this day in 1843, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published. Desperate for money, he wrote the story in six weeks, from the middle of October to the end of November. The first printing of 6,000 copies sold out as soon as they were delivered. The book gave the language a new term: Scrooge, which now means someone who is bitter and unpleasant during the holidays. Dickens said, “I was very much affected by the little book myself, and was reluctant to lay it aside for a moment.”
It’s the birthday of poet John Greenleaf Whittier born in Haverhill, Massachusetts (1807). His nostalgic poem “Snowbound” (1866) brought him national recognition, and provided him with $10,000, ending his life of poverty.
