MONDAY, 21 MAY 2001
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Poem: "Songs For the Squeeze-Box," by Theodore Roethke, from Collected Poems (Anchor).

Songs For The Squeeze-Box

It wasn't Ernest; it wasn't Scott—
The boys I knew when I went to pot;
They didn't boast, they didn't snivel,
But stepped right up and swung at the Devil;
And after exchanging a punch or two,
They all sat down like me and you
—And began to drink up the money.

It wasn't the Colony; it wasn't the Stork;
It wasn't the joints in New York, New York;
But me and a girl friend learned a lot
In Ecorse, Toledo, and Wynadotte
—About getting rid of our money.

It was jump-in-the-hedge; it was wait-in-the-hall;
It was "Would you believe it—fawther's tall!"
(It turned out she hadn't a father at all)
—But how she could burn up the money!

A place I surely did like to go
Was the underbelly of Cicero;
And East St. Louis and Monongahela
Had the red-hot spots where you feel a
—Lot like losing some money.

Oh, the Synco Septet played for us then,
And even the boys turned out to be men
As we sat there drinking that bathtub gin
—And loosened up with our money.

It was Samoots Matuna and Bugs Moran;
It was Fade me another and Stick out your can;
It was Place and Show and Also Ran
—For you never won with that money.

Oh, it wasn't a crime, it wasn't a sin,
And nobody slipped me a Mickey Finn,
For whenever I could, I dealt them all in
—On that chunk of Grandpa's money.

It was Dead Man's Corner, it was Kelly's Stable;
It was Stand on your feet as long as you're able,
But many a man rolled under the table
—When he tried to drink up the money.

To some it may seem a sad thing to relate,
The dough I spent on Chippewa Kate,
For she finally left town on the Bay City freight
—When she thought I'd run out of money.

The doctors, the lawyers, the cops are all paid—
So I've got to get me a rich ugly old maid
Who isn't unwilling, who isn't afraid
—To help me eat up her money.

It's the birthday of actor and comic writer Al Franken, born in New York City (1951) and raised in Minneapolis. He was a writer and performer for many years on Saturday Night Live, on which he played the character Stuart Smalley, a therapist with a talk show on a public access cable station.

It's the birthday of poet Robert Creeley, born in Arlington, Massachusetts (1926).

It's the birthday of Harold Robbins, born in New York City (1916). He's the author of The Carpet-baggers (1961), and other best-selling books.

It's the birthday of ethnologist Frances Densmore, born in Red Wing, Minnesota (1867). She devoted 60 years of her life to traveling from village to village recording the songs of Sioux Indians.

It's the birthday of the first English poet to make his living from writing: Alexander Pope, born in London (1688). He was known as the chief poet of his day by the time he was 30 for having composed the verse masterpiece The Rape of the Lock (1714). Later he issued translations of Homer's Illiad (1720) and Odyssey (1726), which sold so well they supported him for the rest of his life.

It's the birthday of Dante Alighieri, born in Florence (1265) to a wealthy banker. The first time he saw his lifelong love, Beatrice Portinari, they were both nine years old; they met only one other time, nine years later. Beatrice married another man, and Dante married another woman, but Dante's feelings for Beatrice, who died when he was 25, only intensified. His unrequited passion is recounted in La Vita Nuova, or The New Life (1293). He was a political exile from Florence when he wrote his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy (1310-14). Shortly after completing the third section, Paradiso, Dante died of Malaria at the age of 55.

TUESDAY, 22 MAY 2001
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Poem: "Happiness," by Raymond Carver, from All of Us: The Collected Poems (Alfred A. Kopf).

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

On this day in 1967, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood had its television premiere. It starred Fred Rogers, a Presbyterian minister.

It's the birthday of Garry Wills, born in Atlanta (1934). He's the author of over two-dozen books dealing with subjects as diverse as race relations in America and the Catholic Church. His most recent book is Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (2000). Among his best-known books is Nixon Agonistes (1970) in which he made a case that Richard Nixon was, in fact, a liberal.

It's the birthday of children's author and illustrator Arnold Lobel, born in Los Angeles (1933). He died young, of a heart attack, at the age of 54, but he illustrated over 100 books, including the children's classic Frog and Toad Are Friends (1970).

It's the birthday of Peter Matthiessen, born in New York City (1927). He's the author of many books, including At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965); two volumes of a projected trilogy of novels placed in the Florida Everglades; and the non-fiction titles The Snow Leopard (1978) and Shadows of Africa (1992).

It's the birthday of actor and director Sir Laurence Olivier, born in Surrey, England (1907). His father was a strict Anglican clergyman, but when he saw that the boy had talent, he made him stay in England and study to become an actor. Olivier made his stage debut playing Brutus at a choir school in London. Actress Sybil Thorndike, who was in the audience, later recalled that Olivier had been on stage for only five minutes when she turned to he husband and said, "But this is an actor."

It's the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born at Picardy Place in Edinburgh, Scotland (1859). He's best known for the celebrated series of books featuring the hawk-eyed amateur detective Holmes and his friend and foil Dr. Watson (although the phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson" does not, in fact, appear in any of his Sherlock Holmes books). The first Sherlock Holmes title was A Study in Scarlet (1887).

WEDNESDAY, 23 MAY 2001
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Poem: "In Several Colors," by Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise (Graywolf Press).

In Several Colors

Every morning, cup of coffee
in hand, I look out at the mountain.
Ordinarily it's blue, but today
it's the color of an eggplant.

And the sky turns
from gray to pale apricot
as the sun rolls up
Main Street in Andover

I study the cat's face
and find a trace of white
around each eye, as if
he made himself up today
for a part in the opera.

It's the birthday of poet Jane Kenyon, born in Ann Arbor, Michigan (1947). Her father was a jazz pianist who toured with American jazz bands, and once played with Bix Beiderbecke (1930). At the University of Michigan she majored in English, met poet onald Hall, married him, and moved with him to his family place in New Hampshire. They lived there for just under 20 years until Kenyon died of leukemia, a month before her 48^th birthday.

It's the birthday of singer Rosemary Clooney, born in Maysville, Kentucky (1928). She and her younger sister Betty were staying with their grandfather when they heard that Cincinnati radio station WLW was holding auditions for new talent. They auditioned and they won a job singing every night, for two years, for $20 a week. They sang on the road for a few years, and then Rosemary appeared on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts TV show and won first prize.

It's the birthday of jazz bandleader and clarinetist Artie Shaw, born in New York City (1910). He was a studio musician. Then he formed his own band and had a big hit in 1938 with Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine." He was married to eight different women, including Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. He published an autobiographical novel, The Trouble with Cinderella: An Outline of Identity (1952).

On this day in 1903, the first automobile to drive across the United States left San Francisco — the result of a $50 bet made by Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson. He was in the car with his mechanic, Sewall K. Crocker, in a 1903 20-horsepower Winton. They had three major breakdowns before they managed to get over the Rocky Mountains and across the plains to Omaha — it had taken them 51 days to get there from San Francisco. Beyond Omaha the roads were much better: They made it to New York in 12 more days, completing the crossing in 63 days, 19 of them spent waiting for parts. Through much of their journey, the Winton was the first car that many of the people along the way had ever seen.

It's the birthday of novelist, poet, and playwright Pär Lagerkvist, born in Växjö, Sweden (1891), the son of a very conservative, very religious railroad worker. Lagerkvist went off to the University of Uppsala, then he left for a long stay in Paris, where he decided to become a poet. His first book of poetry, Anguish (1916), was the first expressionist work in Swedish literature. He's best known for his short novel Barabbas, which came out in 1951 – the same year he won the Nobel Prize for literature.

THURSDAY, 24 MAY 2001
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Poem: "A Walk," by Raymond Carver, from All of Us: The Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf).

A Walk

I took a walk on the railroad track.
Followed that for a while
and got off at the country graveyard
where a man sleeps between
two wives. Emily van der Zee,
Loving Wife and Mother,
is at John van der Zee's right.
Mary, the second Mrs. van der Zee
also a loving wife, to his left.
First Emily went, then Mary.
After a few years, the old fellow himself.
Eleven children came from these unions.
And they, too, would all have to be dead now.
This is a quiet place. As good a place as any
to break my walk, sit, and provide against
my own death, which comes on.
But I don't understand, and I don't understand.
All I know about this fine, sweaty life,
my own or anyone else's,
is that in a little while I'll rise up
and leave this astonishing place
that gives shelter to dead people. This graveyard.
And go. Walking first on one rail
and then the other.

On this day in 1941, the British Navy's H.M.S Hood, the largest warship in the world, was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck somewhere between Iceland and Greenland. Most of the Hood's 1,341 officers and men were lost at sea.

On the same day of the same year, Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman) was born in Duluth, Minnesota (1941). He grew up in the nearby town of Hibbing.

It's the birthday of poet Joseph Brodsky, born in Leningrad (1940). He worked as a laborer, mill worker, and merchant seaman while writing poetry. His work was popular within certain literary circles, but the authorities did not care for him, despite their trouble finding anything overtly political to object to in his verse. He was attacked in newspapers, he was interrogated, his papers were seized, and his poetry was denounced. Twice he was put in mental institutions. Brodsky was sentenced to five years in a labor camp, but when a transcript of the trial was smuggled out of the Soviet Union, he became a hero in the West and was allowed to leave the country. He never returned, even after the collapse of the Soviet government. He became an American citizen in 1977, and won many awards, including Nobel Prize for Literature (1987). He died in his apartment in Brooklyn Heights, of a heart attack, at the age of 55, in 1996.

On this day in 1929, the Marx Brothers' first movie, The Cocoanuts, had its premiere in New York City.

It's the birthday of novelist William Trevor, born in Mitchelstown, the Republic of Ireland (1928). His books include A Standard of Behavior (1958), and The Old Boys (1964). He's famous for his black comedies in which the elderly, the orphaned, and the sexually perverted are set loose in decent society.

On this day in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was opened to public traffic. At the time, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, with a main span of 1,595 feet.

It's the birthday of Dr. Lillian Gilbreth, born in Oakland, California (1878). She, along with her husband, was a pioneer of time-and-motion studies. They were also the parents of 12 children, who were celebrated in the memoir Cheaper by the Dozen (1949).

FRIDAY, 25 MAY 2001
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Poem: "Waiting," by Raymond Carver, from All of Us: The Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf).

Waiting

Left off the highway and
down the hill. At the
bottom, hang another left.
Keep bearing left. The road
will make a Y. Left again.
There's a creek on the left.
Keep going. Just before
the road ends, there'll be
another road. Take it
and no other. Otherwise,
your life will be ruined
forever. There's a log house
with a shake roof, on the left.
It's not that house. It's
the next house, just over
a rise. The house
where trees are laden with
fruit. Where phlox, forsythia,
and marigold grow. It's
the house where the woman
stands in the doorway
wearing the sun in her hair. The one
who's been waiting
all this time.
The woman who loves you.
The one who can say,
"What's kept you?"

On this day in 1994, Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, after 20 years abroad, returned to Russia.

It's the birthday of novelist Jamaica Kincaid, born in St. John's, Antigua, in the West Indies (1949). When she was 16 years old, she left home for New York and became a writer for The New Yorker magazine. She's the author of short stories, the novels Annie John (1985) and Lucy (1990), and most recently a collection entitled Talk Stories (2001).

It's the birthday of poet and short story writer Raymond Carver, born in Clatskanie, Oregon (1938), the child of a sawmill worker and a waitress. Within a year of leaving high school, he married and had children. He had some success as a writer in the late 60s: his story "Will you Please Be Quiet, Please?" was selected for the Best American Short Stories anthology in 1967. It was the same year he began drinking heavily, torn between the demands of writing and family. He was in and out of detox programs before he finally quit drinking, through AA, in 1982. He's the author of many collections of stories, including What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral (1983), and Where I'm Calling From (1988). His poetry collections include Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (1985) and Ultramarine (1987).

It's the birthday of suspense novelist Robert Ludlum, born in New York City (1927). His first book, The Scarlatti Inheritance (1971), was a huge best seller.

It's the birthday of poet Theodore Roethke, born in Saginaw, Michigan (1908). His father and his uncle both were in the flower business and owned extensive greenhouses. He was manic-depressive in the days before reliable medication had been developed; as he aged, his breakdowns became more frequent. Still, he managed to do a great deal of good work. His fourth collection, The Waking, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953; Words for the Wind (1957) and The Far Field (1964) both won the National Book Award.

It's the birthday of essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston (1803), descended from a long line of New England clergymen. He, too, after graduating from Harvard, went to divinity school and became a minister in Boston. He only lasted at his post for three years; he resigned because of his religious doubts and because he disliked the idea of teaching religious orthodoxy. He sailed to England, where he met Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. On his return to America, he moved to Concord, Massachusetts, and took up a literary career.

SATURDAY, 26 MAY 2001
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Poem: "There are Poems," by Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening (W.W. Norton).

There are Poems

There are poems
that are never written,
that simply move across
the mind
like skywriting
on a still day:
slowly the first word
drifts west,
the last letters dissolve
on the tongue,
and what is left
is the pure blue
of insight, without cloud
or comfort.

It's the birthday of poet Michael Benedikt, born in New York City (1935). He's the author of many collections of poetry, including The Badminton at Great Barrington; or, Gustav Mahler and the Chattanooga Choo-Choo (1980).

It's the birthday of Swedish novelist Sven Delblanc, born in Manitoba, Canada (1931). Failing to find success in Canada, his family returned to Sweden. Delblanc became a teacher, then a full-time author. He's known for his stories in which the narrator frequently breaks in to comment on the art of storytelling. His most popular books in Sweden were his 4 Hedeby novels (1970-76), describing the way rural Sweden changed to become a modern socialist state.

It's the birthday of actor and author Robert Morley, born in Wiltshire, England (1908). He acted in movies, including Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), but he was also successful as a playwright: his three-act play Short Story (1935) had long runs both in London and New York. He declined a knighthood in 1970, saying comic actors should not receive such a high honor.

It's the birthday of actor John Wayne born in Winterset, Iowa (1907), who acted in more than 200 movies in 50 years. While a college student at USC on a football scholarship, he got a job as a prop boy for John Ford. Years later, Ford would make Wayne a star in the classic western Stagecoach (1939).

Dracula, the gothic novel by Bram Stoker, first appeared in London bookshops on this day in 1897. The most famous tale of vampirism ever, its story is told through the diaries of young solicitor Jonathan Harker, his fiancée Mina, and her friend Lucy. Lucy becomes a vampire herself, and, in order for her soul to be saved, must have a stake driven through her heart.

It's the birthday of photographer Dorothea Lange, born in Hoboken, New Jersey (1895). She left New York at 23, deciding she would earn her way around the world by taking pictures. She made it as far as San Francisco, where she married and started a portrait business. But as the Great Depression worsened, the sight of the poor and unemployed in the streets drew her out of her studio. Two of her most famous shots are "White Angel Breadline," which shows a crowd of well dressed men in line for food, and "Migrant Mother" an anxious mother, prematurely aged, in a tattered tent with her three children.

It's the birthday of Maxwell Bodenheim, born in Hermanville, Mississippi (1892). He moved to New York City and became the most famous bohemian in Greenwich Village His early novels earned him some money, but unfortunately he squandered it, so that by the late '30s he was sleeping on the streets, begging for meals.

SUNDAY, 27 MAY 2001
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Poem: "I Knew A Woman," by Theodore Roethke, from The Collected Poems (Anchor).

I Knew A Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one;
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly, from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).

It's the birthday of biographer Edmund Morris, born in Nairobi, Kenya (1940), the son of an airline pilot. His biography of Teddy Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, won a Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1979. His biography of Ronald Reagan came out two years ago: Dutch was a controversial book because of its odd, shifting points of view.

It's the birthday of poet Linda Pastan, born in New York City (1932). Her first collection was A Perfect Circle of Sun (1971).

It's the birthday of postmodern novelist John Barth, born in Cambridge, Maryland (1930). He's the author of The Floating Opera (1956), The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), Giles Goat-Boy, or The Revised Syllabus (1966), and other books.

It's the birthday of crime writer Tony Hillerman, born in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma (1925). He's the author of many books, including mysteries featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, a Navajo tribal policeman.

It's the birthday of novelist Herman Wouk, born in New York City (1915), author of The Caine Mutiny (1951), and Marjorie Morningstar (1955).

It's the birthday of writer John Cheever, born in Quincy, Massachusetts (1912). He's famous for his short stories portraying the lives, manners and morals of suburban, middle-class America. One of his best known stories is "The Swimmer," in which a middle-aged Connecticut man makes his way home one afternoon by swimming from pool to pool, in the back yards of his neighbors. He also wrote 4 novels, including The Wapshot Chronicle (1957) and Falconer (1977). He died in 1982.

It's the birthday of marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, born in Springdale, Pennsylvania (1907). Her book Silent Spring (1962), an indictment of the wanton use of pesticides, introduced the concept of ecology to the general population.

It's the birthday of novelist Dashiell Hammett, born in St. Mary's County, Maryland (1894). He's the author of many famous hard-boiled detective novels, including Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930), and The Thin Man (1934).

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