MONDAY, 23 DECEMBER 2002
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Poem: "So Be It. Amen." by Robert Bly from The Night Abraham Called to the Stars (Harper Collins).
So Be It. Amen.
There are people who don't want Kierkegaard to be
A humpback, and they're looking for a wife for Cézanne.
It's hard for them to say, "So be it. Amen."
When a dead dog turned up on the road, the disciples
Held their noses. Jesus walked over and said:
"What beautiful teeth!" It's a way to say "Amen."
If a young boy leaps over seven hurdles in a row,
And an instant later is an old man reaching for his cane,
To the swiftness of it all we have to say "Amen."
We always want to intervene when we hear
That the badger is marrying the wrong person,
But the best thing to say at a wedding is "Amen."
The grapes of our ruin were planted centuries
Before Caedmon ever praised the Milky Way.
"Praise God," "Damn God" are all synonyms for "Amen."
Women in Crete loved the young men, but when
"The Son of the Deep Waters" dies in the bath,
And they show the rose-colored water, Mary says "Amen."
On this day in 1823, an anonymous poem entitled "A Visit From St. Nicholas" was printed in the Troy (New York) Sentinel. It is known better by its first line: "Twas the night before Christmas…" Though attributed to Clement C. Moore, the original poem was actually likely written by Major Henry Livingston.
It's the birthday of poet and editor Harriet Monroe, born in Chicago, Illinois (1860). She founded Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in Chicago in 1912.
It's the birthday of Jean Francois Champollion, the founder of scientific Egyptology, born in Figeac, France (1790). He is credited with unlocking the code of the Rosetta Stone, an ancient language key discovered near Alexandria in 1799. By determining that hieroglyphic symbols represented sounds as well as concepts, depending on their context, he resurrected the ancient Egyptian language that had been dead for thousands of years.
It's the birthday of poet, translator and editor Robert
Bly, born in Madison, Minnesota (1926). He has written over thirty books
of poetry, including Loving a Woman in Two Worlds (1987), The Light
Around the Body (1967), and an accidental best-seller, Iron John: A Book
for Men (1990), about a Grimm brother's fable. He served in the Navy during
WWII, and then entered Harvard University, where, he later said, "I learned
to trust my obsessions…One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to
write poetry the rest of my life." He said, "I think a poem (also)
is a dream, a dream which you are willing to share with the community. It happens
a writer often doesn't understand a poem until some months after he's written
it -- just as a dreamer doesn't understand a dream. Being a poet in the United
States has meant for me years of confusion, blundering, and self-doubt. The
confusion lies in not knowing whether I am writing in the American language
or the English or, more exactly, how much of the musical power of Chaucer, Marvell,
and Keats can be kept in free verse. Not knowing how to live, or even how to
make a living, results in blunders. And the self-doubt comes from living in
small towns."
TUESDAY, 24
DECEMBER 2002
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Poem: "Dear Superman," by Ron Koertge from Geography of the Forehead (University of Arkansas Press).
Dear Superman
I know you think that things
will always be the same: I'll rinse
out your tights, kiss you good-bye
at the window, and every few weeks
get kidnapped by some stellar goons.
But I'm not getting any younger,
and you're not getting any older.
Pretty soon I'll be too frail
to take aloft, and with all those
nick-of-time rescues, you're bound
to pick up somebody more tender
and just as ga-ga as I used to be.
I'd hate her for being 17 and you
for being… what, 700?
I can see your sweet face as you read
this, and I know you'd like to siphon
off some strength for me, even if it
meant you could only leap small buildings
at a single bound. But you can't,
and, anyway, would I want to
just stand there while everything
else rushed past?
Take care of yourself and of the world
which is your own true love. One day
soon, as you patrol the curved earth,
that'll be me down there tucked in
for good, being what you'll never be
but still
Your friend,
Lois Lane
It was on this day in 1914, in the midst of World War I,
that thousands of British and German troops set aside the war for a few hours
and came out of their trenches to sing Christmas carols in their two languages
about one hundred yards apart.
On this day in 1906, Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian physicist, made the first radio broadcast of the human voice in history, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Radio operators on ships in the Atlantic expecting Morse code were surprised when they heard him give a short speech, play a record, and give a rendition of "O Holy Night" on his violin.
It's the birthday of poet and critic Matthew Arnold, born in Laleham-on-Thames, England (1822). He was considered by many to be the most important literary critic of his time, and is considered one of the "big three" of Victorian poets, along with Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. He is probably best known for his 1853 book called Poems, which included some poetry -- most notably "Dover Beach." His first book of poems, The Strayed Traveller and Other Poems (1849), attracted little notice. He was also a fierce critic and when he died, Robert Louis Stevenson said, "Poor Matt. He's gone to Heaven, no doubt -- but he won't like God." He said that good poetry must possess "clearness of arrangement, rigor of development, [and] simplicity of style." Great poetry should be about great events, like conquering Rome, and great poets should be cheerful, calm, and invisible.
WEDNESDAY, 25 DECEMBER 2002
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Poem: "Christmas-Day,"
by George Herbert.
Christmas-Day
ALL after pleasures as I rid one day,
My horse and I, both tir'd, bodie and minde,
With full crie of affections, quite astray ;
I took up in the next inne I could finde.
There when I came, whom found I but my deare,
My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief
Of pleasures brought me to him, readie there
To be all passengers most sweet relief?
O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,
Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger ;
Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right,
To Man of all beasts be not thou a stranger :
Furnish and deck my soul, that thou mayst have
A better lodging, than a rack, or grave.
The shepherds sing ; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymne for thee?
My soul 's a shepherd too: a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is thy word; the streams, thy grace
Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Out-sing the day-light houres.
Then we will chide the sunne for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.
I will go searching, till I finde a sunne
Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipt sunnes look sadly.
Then we will sing, and shine all our own day,
And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev'n his beams sing, and my musick shine.
Today is Christmas
Day, the celebration in the Christian church of the birth of Jesus Christ.
The first celebration of Christmas probably took place in Rome in 336 A.D. There
had already been a number of winter festivals in place; the ancient Romans held
year-end celebrations to honor Saturn, their harvest god; and Mithras, the god
of light. Some people in northern Europe held festivals in mid-December to celebrate
the end of the harvest season. So when the Roman Empire became Christian, they
incorporated these celebrations into the new holiday. Christmas took on its
secular, commercial identity in American cities in about 1880. The popular image
of Santa Claus was drawn in 1862 by Thomas Nast, who also created the face of
Uncle Sam and the political elephant and donkey images. Nast's picture appeared
on the cover of the Christmas season Harper's Weekly issue, meant as
a holiday comfort to the faltering Union army and the families of its soldiers.
The image was based somewhat upon the Dutch figure of Santa Clause, although
the Dutch figure was a bringer of justice and would sometimes put cinders, stones
and sticks into the stockings of children. St. Francis of Assisi assembled one
of the first nativity scenes on this day in 1223, in Greccio, Italy. In Germany
and the surrounding countries, the tradition of a Christmas tree was born. The
families would set up a tree in a prominent location of their home and decorate
it with colored paper, small toys, food, and sometimes candles. As these people
moved or immigrated to other countries, they brought this tradition with them.
THURSDAY,
26 DECEMBER 2002
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Poem: "The Meeting,"
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The Meeting
After so long an absence
At last we meet again:
Does the meeting give us pleasure,
Or does it give us pain?
The tree of life has been shaken,
And but few of us linger now,
Like the Prophet's two or three berries
In the top of the uttermost bough.
We cordially greet each other
In the old, familiar tone;
And we think, though we do not say it,
How old and gray he is grown!
We speak of a Merry Christmas
And many a Happy New Year
But each in his heart is thinking
Of those that are not here.
We speak of friends and their fortunes,
And of what they did and said,
Till the dead alone seem living,
And the living alone seem dead.
And at last we hardly distinguish
Between the ghosts and the guests;
And a mist and shadow of sadness
Steals over our merriest jests.
Today is Boxing Day and St. Stephen's Day in England, Canada, and several other countries. The origins of this national holiday are not certain, but the holiday might have started from an old custom of wealthy estate-owners giving small gifts or money, wrapped in boxes, to their servants and those who worked for them. Servants were needed on Christmas to help with their masters' holiday events, so they often were given a rest the next day. St. Stephen is honored today for being the first Christian martyr, having been stoned to death for blasphemy.
It's the birthday of Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first calculating machine, born in London, England (1792). He was obsessed with the notion of mathematical accuracy in his work and surroundings. He was fed up with what he called the "intolerable labor and fatiguing monotony" of the hand-calculating of scientific tables, so he invented and built the Difference Engine, which could perform large calculations with the turn of a crank. He then set out to build the steam-powered Analytical Engine, which would have been the size of a locomotive, but he never found a way to make it work. He is also known for inventing the speedometer and the locomotive cowcatcher.
It's the birthday of poet and scholar Thomas Gray, born in London (1716). He gave us the phrase, "Where ignorance is bliss -- Tis folly to be wise." All of Thomas's early poems were written in Latin, of which he had remarkable control, but we know him for his masterful poem, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," which is considered one of the greatest poems of the English language. "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,/The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,/The plowman homeward plods his weary way,/And leaves the world to darkness and to me."
It's the birthday of author Henry
Miller, born in New York City (1891). He was rebellious by nature. He
said, "From five to ten were the most important years of my life; I lived
in the street and acquired the typical American gangster spirit." With
money his father gave him intended to finance him through Cornell, he went on
a trip through the southwest and Alaska. When he returned he went to work in
his father's tailor shop, but left after trying to unionize the workforce. After
that, he ran a speakeasy in Greenwich Village, but eventually moved to France
for nine years. While there, Henry wrote about his bohemian experiences in Tropic
of Cancer (1934), of which he said, "This is not a book, in the ordinary
sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face
of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty ... what
you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing."
The book was immediately banned in the U.S. for its obscenities and graphically
sexual content. In 1964, the Supreme Court finally ruled that Tropic of Cancer
could not be suppressed. He had already sold two million copies of it by this
time.
FRIDAY,
27 DECEMBER 2002
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Poem:
"1989," by Ron
Koertge from Geography of the Forehead (University of Arkansas Press).
1989
Because AIDS was slaughtering people left and right,
I went to a lot of memorial services that year.
There were so many, I'd pencil them in between
a movie or a sale at Macy's. The other thing that
made them tolerable was the funny stories people
got up and told about the deceased: the time he
hurled a mushroom fritata across a crowded room,
those green huraches he refused to throw away,
the joke about the flight attendant and the banana
that cracked him up every time.
But this funeral was for a blind friend of my wife's
who'd merely died. And the interesting thing
about it was the guide dogs; with all the harness
and the sniffing around, the vestibule of the church
looked like the starting line of the Iditarod. But
nobody got up to talk. We just sat there,
and the pastor read the King James version. Then he
said someday we would see Robert and he us.
Throughout the service, the dogs slumped beside their
masters. But when the soloist stood and launched
into a screechy rendition of "Abide With Me," they sank
into the carpet. A few put their paws over their ears.
Someone whispered to one of the blind guys; he told
another, and the laughter started to spread. People
in the back looked around, startled and embarrassed,
until they spotted all those chunky Labradors
flattened out like animals in a cartoon about
steamrollers. Then they started, too.
That was more like it. That was what I was used to-
a roomful of people laughing and crying, taking off
their sunglasses to blot their inconsolable eyes.
It's the birthday of novelist Wilfrid Sheed, born in London, England (1930). His books include The Hack (1963), Office Politics (1966), and The Boys of Winter (1987).
It's the birthday of author Louis Bromfield, born in Mansfield, Ohio (1896). He wrote Early Autumn (1926), Out of the Earth (1950) and From My Experience: The Pleasures and Miseries of Life on a Farm (1955).
It's the birthday of novelist and playwright Zona Gale, born in Portage, Wisconsin (1874). She wrote over thirty novels, plays, and collections in her lifetime, but she is probably best known for the novel-turned-play Miss Lulu Bett, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1921. She was fixated upon her small hometown of Portage, Wisconsin. Many of her stories depict small-town life, and they all are based on that town, or at least her transformed perception of that town. She said, "Life is something more than that which we believe it to be."
It's the birthday of poet and essayist Charles
Olson, born in Worcester, Massachusetts (1910). He developed a unique,
open-form poetic style that he called "projective verse," and he published
an influential manifesto of the same name in 1950. He began to write poetry
himself in the late 1940s, and produced his first collection, In Cold Hell,
in Thicket in 1953, which included his most famous poem, "The Kingfishers,"
all written in his striking projective verse. Charles stood at six feet eight
inches tall -- one of the tallest poets in American literature."But that
which matters, that which insists, that which will last, that! o my people,
where shall you find it, how, where, where shall you listen when all is become
billboards, when, all, even silence, is spray-gunned?"
SATURDAY, 28 DECEMBER 2002
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Poem: "Welcoming Angels,"
by Pat Schneider from Long
Way Home (Amherst Writers and Artists Press).
Welcoming Angels
Between the last war
and the next one,
waiting for the northbound train
that travels by the river,
I sit alone in the middle of the night
and welcome angels.
Welcome back old hymns, old songs,
all the music, the rhyme and rhythm,
welcome angels, archangels,
welcome early guesses
at the names of things,
welcome wings.
I have grown tired of disbelief.
What once was brave is boring.
Welcome back to my embrace stranger,
visitor beside the Jabbok.
Welcome wrestling until dawn,
until it is my hip thrown out of joint,
my pillow stone, my ladder
of antique assumptions.
Welcome what is not my own;
glory on the top rung, coming down.
It's the birthday of author and humorist Sam Levenson,
born in New York City (1911). He said, "Lead us not into temptation. Just
tell us where it is; we'll find it."
It's the birthday of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president, who was born in Staunton, Virginia and grew up in Augusta, Georgia (1856). His earliest memories were of the Civil War, seeing Union soldiers marching into town, and watching his mother care for wounded Confederates in the hospital. His Fourteen Points, incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles, laid the foundation for the League of Nations. He once said, "Never murder a man who is committing suicide." As President, Wilson maintained a neutral position in the first years of World War I but eventually brought the U.S. into the conflict after German submarine incidents.
It's the birthday of comic-book writer Stan Lee, born Stanley Lieber, in New York (1922). He started at Marvel Comics (then called Timely Comics) at age 16, and became the editor and chief writer by age 20.
It's the birthday of philosopher, educator, and author Mortimer J. Adler, born in New York City (1902). Throughout his life and career, he advocated the reading of classic and great books as the best way to educate oneself. As an instructor at Columbia University, he held seminars on great books, and eventually developed the idea for a 52-volume set, Great Books of the Western World, which was published in 1952 by the Encyclopedia Britannica Company.
It's the birthday of novelist Manuel Puig, born in Vallegas, Argentina (1932). Manuel's first novel was Betrayed by Rita Hayworth (translated in 1971). His best-known work was The Kiss of the Spider Woman (1979), which brought him international fame. The Kiss of the Spider Woman tells the story of two prisoners who have nothing in common but who eventually bond by retelling the plots of old classic films to one another. It was turned into a film itself, in 1985.
It's the birthday of novelist Simon
Raven, born in London (1927). He produced 25 novels in his lifetime,
most notably Alms for Oblivion (1959-1976), a 10-volume saga of English
upper-class life. He said, "I arrange words in pleasing patterns in order
to make money. I try to be neat, intelligent, and lucid; let others be 'creative'
or 'inspired.'" He was an outspoken atheist and hedonist. A peer of his
later said that he "trailed an odour of brimstone."
SUNDAY, 29 DECEMBER
2002
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Poem: "End of the Holidays," by Mark Perlberg from The Impossible Toystore (Louisiana State University Press).
The End of the Holidays
We drop you at O'Hare with your young husband,
two slim figures under paradoxical signs:
United and Departures. The season's perfect oxymoron.
Dawn is a rumor, the wind bites, but there are things
fathers still can do for daughters.
Off you go looking tired and New Wave
under the airport's aquarium lights,
with your Coleman cooler and new, long coat,
something to wear to the office and to parties
where down jackets are not de rigeur.
Last week winter bared its teeth.
I think of summer and how the veins in a leaf
come together and divide
come together and divide.
That's how it is with us now
as you fly west toward your thirties
I set my new cap at a nautical angle, shift
baggage I know I'll carry with me always
to a nether hatch where it can do only small harm,
haul up fresh sail and point my craft
toward the punctual sunrise.
On this day in 1849, a Christmas hymn called "It
Came Upon a Midnight Clear," written by Edmund Sears, was published in
The Christian Register. He hoped the song would emphasize the ideas
of "peace on earth, good will toward men."
It's the birthday of inventor Charles Goodyear, born in New Haven, CT (1800). When experimenting with ways to make rubber stronger, he accidentally dropped a mixture of rubber and sulphur on a hot stove. It became known as the process of vulcanization, which made the automobile possible, though it had not been invented yet.
It's the birthday of Andrew Johnson, the 17th president, born in Raleigh, NC in a two-room log cabin to nearly illiterate parents (1808). He didn't master the basics of reading or writing until he met his wife, Eliza, at the age of seventeen. Never a good speller, he said, "It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word." He was strongly opposed to secession, which made him the enemy of many southerners. Once on a train he was attacked by a mob who prepared to hang him. But an old man in the crowd shouted, "His neighbors at Greenville have made arrangements to hang the senator on his arrival. Virginians have no right to deprive them of that privilege." And he was let go. As president, he was impeached and was narrowly acquitted.
It's the birthday of science fiction writer Charles L. Harness, born in Colorado City, Texas (1915).
It's the birthday of novelist and essayist Robert Ruark, born in Wilmington, North Carolina (1915).
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch®.
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