MONDAY, 29 AUGUST, 2005
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Poem: "Dostoevsky," by Charles Bukowski, from Bone Palace Ballet © Black Sparrow Press. Reprinted with permission.
Dostoevsky
against the wall, the firing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
suppose they had shot Dostoevsky?
before he wrote all that?
I suppose it wouldn't have
mattered
not directly.
there are billions of people who have
never read him and never
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the factories,
past the whores,
lifted me high through the night
and put me down
in a better
place.
even while in the bar
drinking with the other
derelicts,
I was glad they gave Dostoevsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look directly at those
rancid faces
in my world,
death pointing its finger,
I held fast,
an immaculate drunk
sharing the stinking dark with
my
brothers.
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of choreographer Mark Morris, born in Seattle (1956). Early in his career he performed with many American dance companies, then at 24 formed the Mark Morris Dance Group (1980).
It's the birthday of children's writer Karen Hesse, born in Baltimore (1952). She is admired, in her historical novels, for her strong sense of place. Letters from Rifka (1992) takes young readers to Russia, Belgium, and the United States in the early 1900s; A Time of Angels (1995) is set in Boston and Vermont during the influenza epidemic of 1918; Out of the Dust (1997—Newbery Medal Award), told entirely in free verse, takes place in the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
On this day in 1930, the Marx Brothers' movie Animal Crackers opened in New York City. The farce, the brothers' second film, was directed by Victor Heerman and starred Harpo, Chico, Zeppo—and Groucho, this time playing an African explorer who manages, among other feats, to shoot an elephant while wearing pajamas. He also performs the comic aria "Hooray for Captain Spaulding," in honor of himself. Margaret Dumont plays her familiar role as the long-suffering socialite, this time called Mrs. Rittenhouse.
It's the birthday of Anglo-American poet Thom Gunn, born in Gravesend, England (1929). Both his parents were journalists. Shortly after graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge (1953), he brought out his first book of poems, Fighting Terms (1954). That same year he went to Stanford on a fellowship and has lived in San Francisco ever since. His many collections of poetry combine early work, all written in iambic pentameter, and later poems in a variety of forms, including free verse. He was always interested in pop-culture topics, such as the Hell's Angels and LSD—and in all aspects of being homosexual. His collection The Man with Night Sweats (1992) deals with AIDS.
It's the birthday of alto sax player Charlie Parker (Charles Christopher Parker Jr.), born in Kansas City, Kansas (1920). The founder of bebop, he was known as "Yardbird" or "Bird," and was thought by many to be the greatest instrumental soloist in the history of jazz.
It's the birthday of psychoanalyst Dr. William Niederland, born in a village in East Prussia (1904), the son of a rabbi. After the war, he studied former death-camp inmates and in 1961 described the "survivor syndrome," based not only on Holocaust survivors but on others who had lived through natural disasters and car accidents. The symptoms of this "survivor syndrome," he said, were insomnia, nightmares, personality changes, chronic depressive states, disturbed memory, and psychosomatic ailments.
It's the birthday of filmmaker Preston Sturges (Edmond Preston Biden), born in Chicago (1898) to wealthy socialites. He was educated in France, Germany, and Switzerland, and in American prep schools. After serving in the Air Corps in WWI, he returned to work in the family business. In his late 20s he had his appendix removed; complications led to a long hospital stay, during which he wrote plays. His second one, Strictly Dishonorable, was not only produced—it was the biggest comedy hit of the 1929 Broadway season. He moved to Hollywood to try screenwriting, resulting in The Great McGinty (1940), which he wrote, and then talked Paramount into letting him direct. An unexpected hit, the movie propelled Sturges into one of the most meteoric careers—flashing, brilliant, but brief—in the history of Hollywood directors. His screwball comedies include The Lady Eve (1941), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), and Unfaithfully Yours (1948).
TUESDAY, 30 AUGUST, 2005
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Poem: "And the Word," by Richard Jones, from The Blessing © Copper Canyon Press. Reprinted with permission.
And the Word
I find things inside books
borrowed from the library—
foreign postcards, rose petals,
opera tickets, laundry lists,
and, once, a bloody piece of cloth.
Today, inside a volume
of Cid Corman's elegant poetry,
a snapshot—
a man in a dark nightclub
embracing a red-haired stripper.
The man grabs the woman
brashly about her waist,
displaying her nakedness
to the camera. The flash
illumines the man's flushed face,
his single-minded lust
as he bends to touch
his tongue to her nipple,
while she, arching her back,
coolly turns to the camera,
her face flooded with light,
as if asking, "So,
what do you think
about the book you're reading
now?"
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of the cartoonist R. Crumb, born in Philadelphia (1943). In 1966, at age 23, he settled in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, the center of America's "hippie" culture. By the early 1970s, his "Snatch" series, often sexually explicit and graphic in its violence, was tried for obscenity and removed from circulation on both the East and West coasts. He was the creator of many characters, including Fritz the Cat, Angelfood McSpade (a super sex symbol who represented the hidden desires of white civilization), Whiteman, Mr. Natural, and Flakey Foont, who innocently sought easy solutions to the world's most complex problems.
It's the birthday of the children's writer and illustrator Laurent de Brunhoff, born in Paris (1925), the son of the originator of the French Babar the Elephant King books for children. At his father's death, Laurent took over. His father created seven Babar books, and his son created over 40 sequels.
It's the birthday of baseball player Ted Williams, born in San Diego (1918). Williams batted .406 in 1941, and in 1960, at his last at bat for the Boston Red Soxs, hit a home run, recorded by John Updike in a famous piece, "Hub Fans Bid Adieu."
It's the birthday of physicist Ernest Rutherford, born near Nelson, New Zealand (1871), the "pioneer of modern atomic science." He studied and named alpha and beta rays, helped to formulate the transformation theory of radioactivity, identified the alpha particle as a helium nucleus, and proposed the nuclear structure of the atom.
It's the birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born in London (1797), the only daughter of philosopher William Goodwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. She was not quite 17 years old when she eloped with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is perhaps best known for her gothic novel, written at age 21, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).
It was on this day in 30 BC that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt killed herself with a snake she had smuggled into her chamber where she was held captive by Octavian, formerly the political rival of her lover Mark Antony. Octavian had defeated Cleopatra and Antony at the Battle of Actium and had taken Cleopatra prisoner. When Cleopatra learned that Octavian planned to parade her as part of his triumphant return to Rome, she planned her own suicide. For centuries, it was assumed that the snake she used was an asp, but it is now thought that the snake was an Egyptian cobra.
WEDNESDAY, 31 AUGUST, 2005
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Poem: "At the Algonquin," by Howard Moss, from New Selected Poems © Atheneum. Reprinted with permission.
At the Algonquin
He sat at the Algonquin, smoking a cigar.
A coffin of a clock bonged out the time.
She was ten minutes late. But in that time,
He puffed the blue eternity of his cigar.
Did she love him still? His youth was gone.
Humiliation's toad, with its blank stares
Squatted on his conscience. When they went upstairs,
Some version of them both would soon be gone.
Before that, though, drinks, dinner, and a play—
The whole demanding, dull expense account
You paid these days for things of no account.
Whatever love may be, it's not child's play.
Slowly she walked toward him. God, we are
Unnatural animals! The scent of roses
Filled the room above the carpet's roses,
And, getting up, he said, "Ah, there you are!"
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of writer William Saroyan, born 1908 in Fresno, California, best known for his work that came out during the Depression—humorous short stories about the joys of life in the midst of poverty and hardship. His first collection was published in 1931, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, and in the preface he offered this advice to young writers: "Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough." In the '30s and '40s he published several more collections and novels, such as The Human Comedy and My Name is Aram, most of them autobiographical and set in small-town California. Saroyan's parents had fled Armenia and settled in Fresno around the turn of the century, and when Saroyan died in 1981 a portion of his ashes were sent to Armenia. The rest are in Fresno. Shortly before, Saroyan wrote this about the Armenians: "I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia."
It's the birthday of William Shawn, 1907, Chicago, The New Yorker's editor from 1952 to 1987. The last of the great line editors who oversaw the editing, line by line, of every piece he published, even those by famous writers. He published J. D. Salinger, Truman Capote, Pauline Kael, E.B. White, Milan Kundera, Elizabeth Bishop, Joseph Brodsky, Philip Roth, Jamaica Kincaid, and dozens of others. He was an anonymous man, and rarely gave interviews or let himself be photographed; people who worked with him for decades knew little more about him than that he was born in Chicago.
THURSDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER, 2005
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Poem: "Apartment House At Evening," by Gregory Djanikian, from Years Later © Carnegie Mellon University Press. Reprinted with permission.
Apartment House At Evening
Something about a hundred windows
lit up like a ship's upper decks, something
about the weed trees
tossing like water below
and the cumulus steam
from the boiler stacks billowing away
and something, too, about a woman
taking off her heels and leaning
dreamily on the balcony railing
as if there's an ocean about her
and something about the laundry
strung up between apartments
like flags signalling the future
and about the samba now
wafting in the cool breeze
and moonlight falling from everywhere
and Nevrig dancing on the rooftop with Aram
and the city blazing with lights
like a harbor about to be left behind
with its customs house and identity cards,
the lines untied, the deep
horizonless night rolling in.
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the anniversary of the attack that began WWII in 1939. At 11 minutes after five in the morning, Hitler issued a proclamation for his army to invade Poland. He claimed it was a counterattack, that the Poles had started the whole thing, but in reality, German troops had been moving to the eastern border for weeks; Polish troops had simply moved up to their own border to defend it. Hitler had recently signed a pact with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, surprising everyone, because the two men had been sworn enemies. Their intention was to carve up Poland, giving the western third to Germany while the Soviets took the rest. American journalist William Shirer, stationed in Berlin, wrote in his journal on the morning of September 1: "A gray morning with overhanging clouds. At dawn this morning Hitler moved against Poland. It's a flagrant, inexcusable, unprovoked act of aggression. The Luftwaffe was mounting anti-aircraft guns to protect Hitler when he addressed the German Parliament at ten this morning. Throughout the speech, I thought, as I listened, ran a curious strain—as though Hitler himself were dazed at the fix he had gotten himself into, and felt a little desperate about it. There was much less cheering in the Parliament than on previous, less important occasions... Tomorrow Britain and France probably will come in, and you will have your second World War."
Britain and France, allied with Poland, entered the war two days later. But by then it was too late to save Poland. The German army unleashed the new form of warfare they called Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war," and within six days had taken Krakow. Within 10 they were outside Warsaw. By early October, Poland had fallen.
It's the birthday of conductor Seiji Ozawa, born in Hoten Manchuko, China (1935), but Japanese—the first Japanese conductor to achieve prominence in the Western world.
It's the birthday of one of the greatest jazz alto sax players, Art Pepper, born in Gardena, California (1925).
It's the birthday of poet Blaise Cendrars born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland (1887).
It's the birthday of American novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs, born in Chicago (1875). His first Tarzan story appeared in 1912, and Burroughs followed it with the novel Tarzan of the Apes (1914), the story of an English nobleman who was abandoned in the African jungle during infancy and brought up by apes.
FRIDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER, 2005
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Poem: "Another Postponement of Destruction," by Henry Taylor, from Understanding Fiction © Louisiana State University Press. Reprinted with permission.
Another Postponement of Destruction
Banging out the kitchen door, I kicked
before I saw it a thick glass baking dish
I'd set outside for dogs the night before.
It skidded to the top step, teetered, tipped
into an undulating slide from step
to step, almost stopped halfway down, then lunged
on toward concrete, and I froze to watch it
splinter when it hit. Instead, it kissed
the concrete like a skipping stone, and rang
to rest in frost-stiffened grass. Retrieving it,
I suddenly felt my neck-cords letting go
of something like a mask of tragedy.
I washed the dish and put it in its place,
then launched myself into a rescued day.
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the anniversary of the independence of Vietnam in 1945. The region had been a French colony for decades, but during WWII, Japan conquered the French forces there and took control. In August, 1945, though, when the Allies defeated Japan, there was a sudden power vacuum in Vietnam, and the Communist Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh moved to fill it. He'd fought alongside the US during the war, and on September 2, the day WWII officially ended, he appeared in front of a crowd in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square and used lines lifted from the American Declaration of Independence—and proclaimed Vietnam a free state: He said, "All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights of life, liberty, and happiness..." But the French weren't willing to let Vietnam go that easily. They moved back into the southern part of the country, and war broke out the next year between the French and Ho Chi Minh's Communist army. It ended eight years later, in 1954, with a French defeat and the country's division along the 17th Parallel into South, and Communist North, Vietnam, and then began the American chapter.
George Gershwin finished his opera Porgy and Bess on this day in 1935. The opera was based on a true story about a handicapped black man named Goatcart Sammy who'd been arrested in Charleston, South Carolina, for attempted murder.
It was on this day in 1901, that Vice-President Teddy Roosevelt came to the Minnesota State Fair and, in a speech before several thousand people, outlined his view of America's new role in world affairs: He used an old African proverb and said that "America must speak softly but carry a big stick."
It's the birthday in St. Louis, 1850, of the journalist and poet Eugene Field, best known for his children's poems, "Little Boy Blue" and "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod."
It's the anniversary of the Great Fire of London in 1666, which began around 1 a.m. in the King's bakery, on Pudding Lane. The buildings in medieval London were nearly all wooden and the fire quickly spread to the wharves on the Thames River, where oil and hemp, hay, and timber were stored. There the fire exploded, and over the next three days destroyed an area nearly two miles square in central London, though only six persons died. A man named John Evelyn wrote in his diary the next night: "Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle! The sky was like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen 40 miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like a hideous storm. London was, but is no more!
SATURDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER, 2005
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Poem: "Perfect," by R.T. Smith, inscribed "For Jerome Ward," from Trespasser © Louisiana State University Press. Reprinted with permission.
Perfect
Preparing the salad,
you said the word
perfect in botany
denotes a species
bisexual and self-sufficient,
while we cut carrot
roots, inflorescence
of broccoli, the ripened
ovaries of olive
and the bulb of the red
onion. Every seed,
you said, holds
an embryo inside. It's
all so simple, and we call
plants primal because
they survive without
devouring one another
and often work their
increase alone. Still, we
never envy the spiral
of cabbage leaves or
a potato's albino eye,
as perfect comes from
the Latin for complete,
and we prefer this
process of emerging,
two imperfect men
happily whittling dinner
for their loved ones,
as windblown pollen
dusts the windows, our
bright knives clicking
on the board.
Literary and Historical Notes:
It was on this day in 1967 that Swedish drivers switched lanes and began driving on the right side of the road instead of the left. Sweden was the only other European country to drive on the left besides England, and accidents were commonplace when Swedes crossed the border into Norway, and vice-versa.
It was on this day in 1939 that Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, at 11:00 AM and at 5:00 PM respectively, and what had begun as a German invasion of Poland two days earlier officially became World War II. American journalist William Shirer was covering the war for CBS Radio and wrote: "It has been a lovely September day, the sun shining, the air balmy, the sort of day the Berliner loves to spend in the woods or on the lakes nearby. I walked the streets. On the faces of the people astonishment, depression. Stunned. In Mein Kampf, Hitler says the greatest mistake the Kaiser made was to fight England, and Germany must never repeat that mistake. In 1914, I believe, the excitement in Berlin on the first day of the World War was tremendous. Today, no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing of flowers, no war fever. There is not even any hate for the French and British. Germans cannot realize yet that Hitler has led them into a world war."
It's the birthday of the American architect Louis Henry Sullivan, 1856, Boston. His heyday was in Chicago in the 1880s and 1890s when the city was booming with new immigrants, grain trading, and railroads. Sullivan designed over 100 buildings for the city, including its early skyscrapers—innovations in their day for using a kind of experimental skeleton construction on the inside, and intricate, subtle ornamentation outside.
It's the birthday of writer Sarah Orne Jewett, born 1849 in South Berwick, Maine, best known for her short novel, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896).
The U.S. War of Independence officially ended on this day in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The war, which began at Lexington and Concord in the spring of 1775, had more or less been over for two years (after Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown), but the American navy continued harassing the British, and by the time the treaty was signed the American fleet had captured dozens of British ships. The treaty required Britain to recognize the independence of the United States and to cede all lands east of the Mississippi to former colonies.
SUNDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER, 2005
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Poem: "I Stop Writing the Poem," by Tess Gallagher, from They Say This © Poetry East #47, 48, De Paul University. Reprinted with permission.
I Stop Writing the Poem
to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.
Literary and Historical Notes:
It was on this day in 1957 that Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to bar nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to make sure they could enroll. A few days later, Eisenhower made a prime-time, live televised speech to the nation in which he said, "Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts."
It's the birthday of the historical novelist Mary Challans, born in 1905, London, who wrote under the pen name Mary Renault. She's best known for The King Must Die (1958), set in ancient Greece.
It's the birthday outside of Natchez, Mississippi, 1904, of novelist, poet, and essayist Richard Wright. His family moved around the South a lot when he was a boy, and Wright was largely self-taught and never attended any school after 15. He spent his free time at libraries, particularly in Memphis, where he began reading H. L. Mencken. Since in the library there was a "whites only" library, he forged a note from a white patron that said: "Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy have some books by H. L. Mencken?" Wright made his way up to Chicago, became an activist in the Communist Party in the '30s, and started writing short stories as a part of the Depression-era Federal Writer's Project. His best-known work is Native Son, the story of Bigger Thomas, a petty thief who is hired as a chauffeur by a rich white man. He kills the man's daughter, then his own girlfriend, then is finally arrested, tried, and condemned. The novel was controversial because, in the book, Bigger's lawyer argues that Bigger can't be held responsible for his crimes, that the real guilt lies with a society that won't accept him as a full human being, which drove him to kill. Wright left America, not long after Native Son came out, and settled in Paris where he published novels, short stories, plays, essays, poems, and memoirs before his death in 1960.
It was on this day in 1888, in Rochester, New York, that George Eastman received a patent for his new, easy-to-use camera, the Kodak.
It's the birthday of architect and city planner Daniel H. Burnham, born in Henderson, New York, in 1846, founder of the influential "White City" style of architecture around the turn of the century. He was just 27 when he and architect John Wellborn Root went to work together to find new ways to build taller fireproof buildings. Theirs were the first skyscrapers, and Burnham went on to design the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. From there he turned to urban planning. He was the chief architect of Chicago's 1893 World's Colombian Exposition, and he built an elaborate fairground of grand boulevards, classical building façades, and lush gardens. This was the "White City" model, and the style spread around the nation. His greatest claim to fame, though, was the city of Chicago itself, for which he laid a plan out in 1909.
