MONDAY, 21 APRIL 2003
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Poem: "The Skylight," by Seamus Heaney from Opened Ground (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux).

The Skylight

You were the one for skylights. I opposed
Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove
Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed,
Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof
Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling,
The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling.
Under there, it was all hutch and hatch.
The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.

But when the slates came off, extravagant
Sky entered and held surprise wide open.
For days I felt like an inhabitant
Of that house where the man sick of the palsy
Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven,
Was healed, took up his bed and walked away.

Literary Notes:

It's the birthday of the writer who created Rumpole of the Bailey, John (Clifford) Mortimer, born in London in 1923. In addition to writing over fifteen Rumpole novels and adapting many of them for television, he has worked as a lawyer for over 50 years. First he was a divorce lawyer, but then he switched to criminal law, saying murderers were nicer to work with than divorcing spouses.

It's the birthday of American humorist Josh Billings, born Henry Wheeler Shaw in Lanesboro, Massachusettes in 1818. The son of a congressman, he wrote articles for New York newspapers. He also wrote funny and instructive books, including Josh Billings on Ice (1868) and Josh Billings' Farmers' Allminax (1870), a parody of the Old Farmers' Almanac. Billings said: "Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to."

It's the birthday of the woman who wrote Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, born on the rolling, windy moors of Thornton, Yorkshire, England in 1816. Her mother and two older siblings died when Charlotte was young, and she was brought up by her father, an Anglican clergyman. When she was ten years old, her father brought home a box of wooden soldiers for her brother Branwell. But she and her two sisters, Emily and Ann, used the soldiers to invent an imaginary world that they called Angria, and soon they began to write stories about the place. One day, Charlotte discovered Emily's poems, and decided to gather the poetry of the three sisters together for publication under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their Poems (1846) were not a success, but they were hooked by the literary life and began writing regularly. Within a year, Ann had published Agnes Grey (1847) and Emily had published Wuthering Heights (1847). Charlotte had written two novels: The Professor was rejected for publication, but Jane Eyre (1847) was published to immediate success. The novel is about a poor orphan who finds a job as a governess and eventually falls in love with her mysterious employer; it makes fun of people who think that women "ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing the piano and embroidering bags." Bronte was obsessed with her own ugliness -- George Lewes described her as "A little, plain, provincial, sickly-looking old maid." Bronte said, "I am neither a man nor a woman but an author."

It's the birthday of the "Father of our National Parks," John Muir, born in Dunbar, Scotland in 1838. He immigrated with his family to Hickory Hill Farm in Wisconsin when he was eleven. He left college after three years to travel through the northern United States and Canada, working at odd jobs to earn a living. He walked for a thousand miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico, and later sailed to Cuba, Panama, and California, the state he would eventually call home. He traveled his entire life, visiting Alaska, Australia, South America, Africa, Europe, China, and Japan. He was largely responsible for the creation of Yosemite National Park in 1890, as well as many other national parks. In 1892, he helped found the Sierra Club, to "make the mountains glad." He was the Club's first president until he died, in 1914. When he was older he began a strict program of writing, eventually publishing over 300 articles and 10 books, including The Mountains of California (1894). He encouraged people to "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings," and inspired many city-dwellers to take a break from work and spend some time in the country. He said, "This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls."

TUESDAY, 22 APRIL 2003
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Poem: "Widows," by Louise Gluck from Ararat (Ecco Press).

Widows

My mother's playing cards with my aunt,
Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game
my grandmother taught all her daughters.

Midsummer: too hot to go out.
Today, my aunt's ahead; she's getting the good cards.
My mother's dragging, having trouble with her concentration.
She can't get used to her own bed this summer.
She had no trouble last summer,
getting used to the floor. She learned to sleep there
to be near my father.
He was dying; he got a special bed.

My aunt doesn't give an inch, doesn't make
allowance for my mother's weariness.
It's how they were raised: you show respect by fighting.
To let up insults the opponent.

Each player has one pile to the left, five cards in the hand.
It's good to stay inside on days like this,
to stay where it's cool.
And this is better than other games, better than solitaire.

My grandmother thought ahead; she prepared her daughters.
They have cards; they have each other.
They don't need any more companionship.

All afternoon the game goes on but the sun doesn't move.
It just keeps beating down, turning the grass yellow.
That's how it must seem to my mother.
And then, suddenly, something is over.

My aunt's been at it longer; maybe that's why she's playing better.
Her cards evaporate: that's what you want, that's the object: in the end,
the one who has nothing wins.

Literary Notes:

It's the birthday of poet Louise Gluck, born in New York City in 1943. She's the author of many collections of poetry, including The Seven Ages (2001), The Wild Iris (1992), and Firstborn (1968).

It's the birthday of Norwegian-American novelist O(le) E(dvart) Rolvaag, born in Helgeland, Norway in 1876. He grew up on Donna Island, a tiny treeless island just south of the Arctic Circle. When he was fifteen he dropped out of school and began to go on daylong fishing expeditions. Five years later, he quit his life as a fisherman and sailed to the United States. He landed in New York with almost no money and no prospects, and ended up walking the entire night to find a farm where the family could speak Norwegian. Eventually, he made his way to South Dakota, where he worked on his uncle's farm for three years. He got a degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota and went on to write novels chronicling the experiences of Norwegian immigrants in the American midwest, including his most famous book, Giants in the Earth (1927).

It's the birthday of the Henry Fielding, born in Sharpham Park, Somerset, England in 1707. As a young man he went to London and made a living writing satirical and farcical plays, most famously The Tragedy of Tom Thumb (1730), which was said to have made Jonathan Swift laugh for the second time in his life. But his dramatic career was cut short in 1737 when the prime minister banned most satire with the Theatrical Licensing Act, mainly in response to Fielding's plays. He became a lawyer and in 1742 wrote his first novel Joseph Andrews (1742). Seven years later he came out with his most celebrated work, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), which tells the life story of a man who as a baby was left on the bed of an aristocrat. He wrote, "What is commonly called love is merely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh."

It's the birthday of French writer Madame de Stael, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker in Paris in 1766. She wrote essays on literature during the time of the French revolution, and later turned to novels, including Delphine (1802) and Corinne (1807). Napoleon exiled her from France because he was so disgusted with her high praise of German culture in her study on German Romanticism published in 1810. She said, "The more I see of men the more I like dogs." And, "I am glad I am not a man, for if I were I should be obliged to marry a woman."

WEDNESDAY, 23 APRIL 2003
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Poem: Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare.

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
    Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
    And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
    And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
    By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
    Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
    When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Literary Notes:

It's the birthday of Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1899 to wealthy and prominent parents. He's the author of Lolita (1955). He described himself as "a perfectly normal trilingual child in a family with a large library." He learned to read and write English before he could do so in Russian, and his family spoke in a mixture of English, French, and Russian. He had a happy childhood, complementing his studies with tennis, soccer, butterfly collecting, and art. Nabokov's family was forced to leave Russia because of the revolution in 1917, traveling first to Eastern Europe and then to England. He got a degree in literature from Cambridge University and moved to Berlin, where he earned money by giving English and tennis lessons; translating; acting as an extra in films; and composing chess problems and some of the first Russian crossword puzzles. He also began writing novels in Russian. He was a lifelong insomniac who wrote mostly at night. He wrote all of his novels on index cards so he could compose passages in whatever order he preferred, before rearranging them into the final puzzle. As World War II began, he moved with his wife and kids first to Paris and then to America, where he worked at the Museum of Natural History in New York, classifying butterflies. He was one of the greatest novelists and one of the greatest lepidopterists of his time, and spent just as much energy writing as he did collecting butterflies. A year after he moved to America, Nabokov began a series of teaching positions at universities across the country, eventually ending up at Cornell. He wrote Pnin (1957); Pale Fire (1962); and his best-known novel, Lolita (1955), about a middle-aged man's obsession with a thirteen year-old girl. It was rejected by all of the American publishers he contacted, each of which recognized its literary merit but denounced its vulgar subject matter. The book became a bestseller, spawned a Stanley Kubrick movie, and allowed Nabokov to retire from teaching and move to Montreux, Switzerland, where he spent the last sixteen years of his life.

It's the birthday of William Shakespeare, born in 1564. He wrote over thirty plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1594), Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595), Twelfth Night (c. 1600), Hamlet (c. 1601), Othello (c. 1604), King Lear (c. 1605), Macbeth (c. 1605), and The Tempest (c. 1611). Only a few scattered facts are known about his life. He was born and raised in the picturesque market town of Stratford-on Avon, surrounded by woodlands. His father was a glover and a leather merchant; he and his wife had eight children including William, but three of them died in childbirth. William probably left grammar school when he was thirteen years old, but continued to study on his own. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, who was already several months pregnant. Within two years he was the father of three children. He went to London around 1588 to pursue his career in drama, and by 1592 he was a well-known actor. Shakespeare joined the acting troupe the Lord Chamberlain's Men in 1594, and wrote many plays for the group while continuing to act. The group performed often for Queen Elizabeth, and in 1598 Shakespeare helped to buy the Globe Theatre just south of London, which became the group's new home. Shakespeare was very popular late in life, becoming one of the first playwrights to sell editions of his plays to the public. He went into semi-retirement in 1611 after finishing The Tempest, and returned to Stratford to be with his family. He died on his birthday five years later. He wrote in The Tempest:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors
As I foretold you were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
IV,i,148-158

THURSDAY, 24 APRIL 2003
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Poem: Sonnet 138 by William Shakespeare.

Sonnet 138

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I take her word, though I do know she lies,
That she might think me some green youth,
Not taught in how the world's false facts are sly.
Thus with the vain thought that she thinks me young,
Though she knows my days are past the best,
I just take the word from her false-spoke tongue:
On both sides thus is plain truth all down pressed.
But why is it she says not she's not just?
And why is it I say not that I'm old?
Oh, love's best guise is when we seem to trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
    And so I lie with her and she with me,
    And in our faults by lies we more vain be.

Literary Notes:

On this day in 1916, the Easter rebellion began on the streets of Dublin. The British police extinguished the rebellion a few days later. Called "the poet's rebellion," it was led by six patriotic poets and men of letters including Patrick Pearse and James Connolly. They organized a group of about 400 dissidents, dressed in makeshift uniforms and carrying antiquated rifles, to march through Dublin's main streets to the imposing General Post Office at the center of the city. They barged inside and read their "Proclamation of Independence" to a baffled crowd. The rebellion seemed hopelessly unsuccessful until the British government valorized many of the rebels by executing them a few weeks later. The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, "It is absolutely impossible to slaughter a man in this position without making him a martyr and a hero, even though the day before he may have been only a minor poet." The executions set in motion a movement for Irish nationalism, and in 1921 Ireland finally achieved independence from Great Britain -- except for the six northernmost counties of the island, which comprise Northern Ireland. William Butler Yeats wrote a poem called "Easter 1916" where he said,

"All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born."

It's the birthday of English novelist Anthony Trollope, born in London in 1815. He spent much of his childhood in poverty, and his family often moved from house to house and country to country. His mother even spent a year in America, where she tried unsuccessfully to help in the founding of a city called New Harmony. Many of Trollope's novels originated from daydreams that he had as a child. He invented stories that he would carry on in his mind for months at a time. When Trollope was nineteen, he began working as a clerk for the post office, eventually being placed in Ireland as a postal surveyor. It was in Ireland that he began writing novels, churning them out regularly at a rate of three books every two years. He would write 1,000 words an hour before breakfast. He wrote realistic novels about the daily life of ordinary people, including The Warden (1855), Barchester Towers (1857), and Framley Parsonage (1861). Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in a letter to his publisher: "Have you ever read the novels of Anthony Trollope? They precisely suit my taste; solid, substantial, written on strength of beef and through inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were made a show of." Anthony Trollope said: "Of the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable."

FRIDAY, 25 APRIL 2003
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Poem: "I Love You Sweatheart," by Thomas Lux from New and Selected Poems: 1975-1995 (Houghton Mifflin Co.).

I Love You Sweatheart

A man risked his life to write the words.
A man hung upside down (an idiot friend
holding his legs?) with spray paint
to write the words on a girder fifty feet above
a highway. And his beloved,
the next morning driving to work…?
His words are not (meant to be) so unique.
Does she recognize his handwriting?
Did he hint to her at her doorstep the night before
of "something special, darling, tomorrow"?
And did he call her at work
expecting her to faint with delight
at his celebration of her, his passion, his risk?
She will know I love her now,
the world will know my love for her!
A man risked his life to write the words.
Love is like this at the bone, we hope, love
is like this, Sweetheart, all sore and dumb
and dangerous, ignited, blessed - always,
regardless, no exceptions,
always in blazing matters like these: blessed.

Literary Notes:

On this day in 1953, American scientist James Watson and British geneticist Francis Crick proposed the double helix chemical structure for deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. Their finding revolutionized the study of genetics by mapping out the basic biological building blocks of human beings. The two strands of the DNA double helix separate during cell division and reproduce identical counterparts, allowing the basic DNA sequence to remain the same. In the mid 1980s, the government started the Human Genome Project, an ambitious effort to map out the basic DNA sequence of the human genome. Scientists have discovered the genetic causes of many medical problems, including cancer and heart disease; anthropologists have traced the migrations of the human species around the globe using DNA; and since each person has a different DNA sequence, "DNA fingerprinting" can be used to identify people and has often been used in criminal court cases.

It's the birthday of Oliver Cromwell, born in Hutingdonshire, England in 1599. He was a devout Puritan and lived a relatively quiet life for his first forty years, taking part only in local politics. But in 1642, he became a lieutenant-general for the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War, despite having no previous military experience. He was a shrewd officer and a natural leader, and soon held a lot of clout among his peers in the war. He earned the nickname "Ironsides." He played an important role in the execution of Charles I in 1649, and then left for Ireland to quell a Catholic revolt. He massacred thousands of peasants and forced thousands more from their homes to the barren west coast, calling the invasion "a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches." In 1653, he became lord protector of the Commonwealth, becoming the only person to ever have been the head of state of a republican Great Britain. Under his five-year rule, England saw unprecedented religious toleration, military success, and foreign diplomacy.

It's the birthday of Howard Garis, born in Binghamton, New York in 1873, creator of the pink-nosed elderly gentleman rabbit character named Uncle Wiggily. He published an Uncle Wiggily story in the Newark News six days a week for 37 years. In addition to the Uncle Wiggily series, he wrote about 500 books for young adults.

It's the birthday of American novelist Padgett Powell, born in Gainesville, Florida in 1952. He's the author of several short stories and five novels, including Edisto (1984) and Aliens of Affection (1998).

It's the birthday of the "First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald, born in Newport News, Virginia in 1918. She is widely considered to be the greatest jazz singer ever, and one of the best singers in all of twentieth century music. Ella Fitzgerald loved to sing and dance as a child and when she was sixteen she entered a contest at the Apollo Theater, at that time no more than a hip local club in Harlem. She had a dance routine worked out and walked on stage wearing ragged clothes and men's boots, but she froze up. The director said, "Well, you're out here, do something!" So she tried to sing. She won the contest and soon became a celebrity across all of New York. She had to deal with racial prejudice her entire career, especially in the South. Marilyn Monroe was one of Ella's biggest fans. She said, "I owe Marilyn a real debt. It was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular nightclub in the '50s. Marilyn personally called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again."

SATURDAY, 26 APRIL 2003
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Poem: "Braided Rugs," by Nancy Frederiksen from Coming up for Air (Paper Jack Creek Press).

Braided Rugs

She saved wool rags.
Kept them in brown paper bags
in the upstairs attic. When
the walls of the bags tore
and remnants spilled onto
slats of the grey painted floor
she brought them

downstairs
cut them into inch-and-a-half
wide strips, enlisted our help
(every girl ought to know
how to sew)
braided the strips
then sewed the braids
by hand.

Years later
one braided rug remains.
Woven and twisted
wool suit pants
flannel pajamas
red hunting shirts
sewn together in
soft and scratchy mixtures

remnants of generations
millions of
invisible threads.

Literary Notes:

It's the birthday of architect and writer Frederick Law Olmsted, born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1822. He is known as the founder of American landscape architecture and designed New York's Central Park, Boston's Emerald Necklace, and Montreal's Mont Royal Park. He also wrote books based on his travels in Europe and the southern United States, including A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856) and The Cotton Kingdom (1861), and was one of the era's most outspoken opponents of slavery. Olmsted was intent on pursuing a literary career but the publishing house he had joined folded. So he embarked on a new career as superintendent of New York City's budding Central Park. He teamed up with architect Calvert Vaux and the two won the design competition for the park. They called it the Greensward Plan and wanted it to give New Yorkers the chance to experience a day in the country without leaving the city. They wrote, "It shall be to them, inexpensively, what a month or two in the White Mountains or the Adirondacks is." To transform the 750-acre site into a pastoral setting, they shifted almost 5 million cubic yards of dirt, blasted rock with 260 tons of gunpowder, and planted 270,000 trees and shrubs. The project was complete in 1864.

It's the birthday of blues singer Gertrude Pridgett, better known as Ma Rainey, born in Columbus, Georgia in 1886. She helped popularize the blues among a wide, racially mixed audience in the U.S. In 1904, she married the traveling entertainer Will "Pa" Rainey, and the couple toured together as "Ma and Pa Rainey and Assassinators of the Blues." Ma Rainey dressed in ostentatious outfits covered with sequins and diamonds, and always wore her trademark necklace made of gold coins. She said, "My audience wants to see me beautifully gowned, and I have spared no expense or pains, for I feel that the best is none too good for the public that pays to hear a singer." The popularity of women blues singers declined dramatically in the 1930s, and Ma Rainey returned to her hometown of Columbus, Georgia where she managed two theaters and became active in the local Baptist church. When she died from heart disease in 1939, the obituary in the local paper listed her profession as "housekeeper."

It's the birthday of novelist and screenwriter Anita Loos, born in Mount Shasta, California in 1893. Her father managed a local theater and Loos began acting there as a child. She later turned to writing, and wrote the script for D.W. Griffith's film The New York Hat (1912). She met blonde actress Mae Clarke and was inspired to write her most celebrated novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1926). The book spawned a 1928 silent film, a 1949 Broadway musical, and a 1952 adaptation of the musical starring Marilyn Monroe. Late in her career, Loos translated much of Colette's work from the French, including Gigi in 1951. She said, "I've had my best times when trailing a Mainbocher evening gown across a sawdust floor. I've always loved high style in low company."

It's the birthday of novelist Bernard Malamud, born in Brooklyn, New York in 1914. He's the author of The Natural (1952), The Assistant (1957), and The Fixer (1966), among many other books, and has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. When he was 25 years old and fresh from graduate school, he got a job working as a clerk for the United States Census Bureau. The job was unsupervised and required little actual work, so he spent most of his day crouched over his desk writing short stories on company time. He said, "The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly. Once you've got some words looking back at you, you can take two or three -- or throw them away and look for others."

SUNDAY, 27 APRIL 2003
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Poem: "Filling in the New Address Book," by B. J. Ward from Gravedigger's Birthday (North Atlanta Books).

Filling in the New Address Book

But rifling through the old one,
choosing whom to preserve
in your encyclopedia of associates,
whom to let become obsolete-
no room for them in your entire world.
You little god, you,
you puny pocket of omnipotence-
how you throw people off the side
of your dinghy-book,
a tiny captain thinking, "This is dead weight."
Old girlfriends-doubly gone now.
Old drinking buddies, married and laden
with responsibility, that grand soberer.
So you continue, you infinitesimal infinite one,
scratching out the names of the dead,
people you are coming from and never toward,
tearing down street signs, phone lines,
upheaving entire highways between you
as you leave them out,
their new and unfamiliar lives
not any less full than if you included them.
They are manning their own ships and,
sorry little god,
no room for you on their voyage either.
It's understood, no? You've been heroes together
in the past lives within this life-
Ulysseses now full of uselessnesses-
and why threaten any miraculous history,
any great testament, with knowledge
of how empty your current book of stories is?

Literary Notes:

It's the birthday of American playwright August Wilson, born Frederick August Kittel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1945. He grew up in a poor African-American family in Pittsburgh, and dropped out of school when he was fifteen. He spent months working on a twenty-page paper on Napoleon for a history class. He turned it in, and it was so good that his teacher didn't believe he had written it. He left school and never came back. When he was twenty, his sister paid him twenty dollars to write two papers for her university English class. He used the money to buy a typewriter and said to himself, "Now I'm a writer. I'd better be; I just spent twenty dollars on this typewriter." He wrote poetry at first, moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and then wrote plays which realistically depicted black urban speech and life. He wrote Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984), which drew national attention. He wrote a series of ten plays, each focusing on a different decade of the black experience in America, and has gone on to write two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990).

It's the birthday of writer Ludwig Bemelmans, born in Merans, Tyrol, Austria in 1898. He was a rambunctious child who made a habit out of failing out of schools. While working for one of his uncle's hotels, he shot and almost killed a waiter. His uncle gave him a choice between reform school and America; he chose to emigrate and arrived in New York when he was sixteen years old. He worked at various hotels and restaurants and didn't start writing until he was 36, when a friend in publishing saw the childlike drawings that covered the walls of his apartments and encouraged him to write and illustrate a children's book. He's best known for his five "Madeline" books. Bemelmans wrote the familiar lines, "In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. In two straight lines they broke their bread, and brushed their teeth, and went to bed. They smiled at the good, and frowned at the bad, and sometimes they were very sad. They left the house at half past nine, in two straight lines, in rain or shine...the smallest one was Madeline!"