Poem: "Brahms" by Robert Bly from My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy. © Harper Collins Publishers. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Brahms

It must be that my early friendship with defeat
Has given me affection for the month of August.
The potato fields belong to early night.

So many times as a boy I sat in the dirt
Among dry cornstalks that gave assurances
Every hour that Francis has his ear to the night.

Columbus's letters tell us that we will receive
The gifts that mariners all receive at the end—
Memories of gold and a grave in the sand.

The shadow of a friend's hand gives us
Promises similar to those we received from
The light under the door as our mother came near.

Each of us is a Jacob weeping for Joseph.
We are the sparrow that flies through the warrior's
Hall and back out into the falling snow.

I don't know why these images should please me
So much; an angel said: "In the last moment before night
Brahms will show you how loyal the notes are.

Literary and Historical Notes:

It's the birthday of Davy Crockett (books by this author) (1786), U. S. frontiersman, soldier, and backwoods statesman, born in a small cabin on the banks of the Nolichucky River near the mouth of Limestone Creek near Limestone, Tennessee. His father built and operated a log cabin tavern, where young Crockett grew up listening to the stories of westbound travelers. He had spent only four days in school when he got into a fight with a boy there. To escape punishment from his father, he left home and got a job driving cattle to Virginia. After two and a half years, when he was fifteen, he returned home where he went to work to pay off a debt his father owed.

Crockett returned to school for six months more and bought himself a horse and a rifle with the money he'd earned working. He became an expert marksman and named his rifle "Betsy." He was commander of a battalion in the Creek Indian War of 1813. He went on to serve in the Tennessee legislature and three terms in the U. S. Congress. His motto was, "Be always sure you are right, then go ahead." In March of 1836, Davy Crockett was killed at the Alamo, helping Texas win independence from Mexico.

It's the birthday of actress and playwright Mae West, (books by this author) born in Brooklyn, New York (1892).

She appeared on the vaudeville stage when she was five, then went on to burlesque, and later became an American stage and movie comedienne. In 1926, she wrote and directed the Broadway show Sex. She was arrested for obscenity. She signed with Paramount six years later and broke box office records with She Done Him Wrong (1933). Her autobiography is titled Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It (1959).

Mae West said, "It's better to be looked over than overlooked."

It's the birthday of novelist Jonathan Franzen, (books by this author) born in Western Springs, Illinois (1959). He spent years working on a novel while his marriage ended, his father died, and he quit smoking. After five years he had written hundreds of pages, but he still didn't know what story he was telling. Then a good friend, David Foster Wallace, published a book (Infinite Jest) to great acclaim. It was the jolt Franzen needed. He threw away everything but a chapter about a cruise ship and started over. He wrote the rest of the book in less than a year.

The Corrections was published in 2001. It's about a family falling apart and was a big success. His most recent book is a collection of essays: How to Be Alone (2002).

It's the birthday of novelist and photographer Gene Stratton-Porter (1863), (books by this author) born the twelfth of twelve children on a farm in Wabash County, Indiana. Her first successful novel was Freckles (1904), about an orphan with one hand who gets a job as a timber guard in Limberlost. The book was made into a film thirty-one years later. During World War I, she moved to California where she founded the Gene Stratton Porter film company. She died in 1924 on a December day in Los Angeles. Her limo had been hit by a trolley car, and she was buried in Hollywood Cemetery.

Gene Stratton Porter said, "Nature can be trusted to work her own miracle in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone among her sights, sounds, and silences."

It's the birthday of poet Ted Hughes, (books by this author) born in West Yorkshire, England (1930). He grew up in the country, surrounded by empty, desolate moors under the shadow of a cliff called "Scout Rock." He said, "All that I imagined happening elsewhere, out in the world, the rock sealed from me."

He started out studying literature in college, but switched to anthropology and archaeology, and the folklore he read influenced the poetry he would write for the rest of his life. When other poets were writing about domestic life and politics, he was writing violent poems based on ancient mythology. He would later translate twenty-four stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses, published as Tales from Ovid (1997).

At forty, he wrote perhaps his most famous work, Crow (1970). It's a series of story poems about a mythical bird-human who survives great pain and hardship. For his many books of poetry, drama, literary criticism, and plays and short stories for children, he received all the major literary awards in Europe, but not the Nobel Prize.

FRIDAY, 18 AUGUST, 2006
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Poem: "about competition" by Charles Bukowski from the Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line the Way. © Ecco. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

about competition

the higher you climb
the greater the pressure.

those who manage to
endure
learn
that the distance
between the
top and the
bottom
is
obscenely
great.

and those who
succeed
know
this secret:
there isn't
one.

Literary and Historical Notes:

It's the birthday of science fiction writer Brian Aldiss, (books by this author) born in Norfolk, England (1925). He's the author of many science fiction novels and collections of short stories, including Supertoys Last All Summer Long (2001), which was the basis for the Steven Spielberg movie A.I. His most recent novel is Super-State: A Novel of a Future Europe (2002).

It's the birthday of filmmaker Roman Polanski, born in Paris (1933). He has directed many films, including Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974). He was a child in Krakow when Nazis invaded, and his parents were sent to a concentration camp, where his mother died. Nine years old, he escaped alone from the Krakow ghetto just before it was destroyed by Nazi tanks.

His 2002 movie The Pianist won him an Academy Award for Best Director.

It's the birthday of explorer Meriwether Lewis, (books by this author) born just outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, (1774). He was the man that Thomas Jefferson chose to explore the new Louisiana Territory in 1804, and he in turn asked William Clark to be his partner on the journey.

Lewis was the younger man of the two. Clark was easy-going and friendly, where Lewis was quiet and intellectual. A month before the expedition he began studying with some of the most renowned scientists in the United States. Mathematicians taught him navigational techniques, physicians taught him medical skills, and paleontologists told him to look for mastodons and giant sloths, which they believed might still exist.

On Lewis' birthday in 1804, Clark wrote in his diary, "Captain Lewis' birthday: the evening was closed with an extra gill of whiskey and a Dance until 11 o'clock." On his birthday the following year, Lewis wrote in his own diary: "This day I completed my thirty-first year, and ... I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought, and resolved in future to redouble my exertions to ... live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself."

Lewis did, in fact, work very hard throughout the expedition, and even survived getting shot in the backside. When the account of the expedition was collected and published, most of the words were Lewis's.

It was on this day in 1955 that Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita was first published (books by this author). It's the story of Humbert Humbert, a European who falls in love with a twelve-year-old American girl.

Nabokov started thinking about the novel when he was still a new immigrant to the United States, struggling to support his wife and son as a professor of Russian and English literature. He began working seriously in the summer of 1951, while he and his wife drove to Colorado in their Oldsmobile station wagon. He said he loved writing in the car because it was the quietest place in America. The following winter, he began doing research on young girls, traveling on city buses to learn current slang, writing down popular song titles and phrases from teen magazines and Girl Scout manuals. As he grew more and more excited about the book, he was miserable that he had to do anything else. He wrote to his friend, Edmund Wilson, "I am sick of teaching, I am sick of teaching, I am sick of teaching."

He finished the novel in 1953, but when he sent the draft to friends, most of them were horrified, and told him that he could never publish it. It was rejected by all the major publishing houses in the United States, so he finally had it brought out anonymously in France by a publisher who specialized in pornography. He played around with different titles, including "The Kingdom by the Sea," but in the end the novel was called Lolita (1955). He later said that the novel was, in part, about his love affair with the English language.

After a few years of controversy, it was published in the United States in 1958, and went on to become a best-seller and a movie. Nabokov had put off writing it for so many years partly because he was afraid that it wouldn't make any money, but in the end it was the success of Lolita that allowed him to retire from teaching. He moved with his wife to Switzerland and spent the rest of his life writing novels in the top floor of a luxurious hotel.

SATURDAY, 19 AUGUST, 2006
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Poem: "Future Talk" by Marvin Bell, from Rampant. © Copper Canyon Press, 2004. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Future Talk

Germs, viruses and parasite
gathered in the classroom
to discuss the beginnings of
intelligent life. They discussed
the stupid dinosaurs, who,
they agreed, were dumber than
dirt and deserved to die out.
They recalled the passenger pigeon,
the whale, the owl, the wolf,
and, while they admired each
for something, none of these
apparently had the right stuff.
Then the talk turned to mankind,
and there was some disagreement
as to the meaning of "human."
There was the usual shaking
of heads, up and down, over
how easy it had been to overcome
the kind of man that mankind
had been, since it was
merely necessary to penetrate him
and then to mutate before
each new weapon: biological,
chemical or radiological. Of course,
these were the ultimate
biological weapons, and now they
smiled at the utter simplicity—
the naturalness—of it all.
Everyone said that mankind,
whatever it was, was certainly
unfit for lengthy survival,
and of course to say so was so
so obvious that the teacher
warned them against pride,
which they did not have or need.

Literary and Historical Notes:

It's the birthday of Ogden Nash, (books by this author) born in Rye, New York (1902). He wrote humorous poems, and he wasn't above mispronouncing, misspelling, and making up words for a rhyme, in books that include The Bad Parents' Garden of Verse (1936), There's Always Another Windmill (1968), and The Old Dog Barks Backwards (1972).

Ogden Nash wrote, "Candy / is dandy / But liquor / is quicker."

He wrote, "I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, / Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.

And "Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave/ When they think that their children are naive."

It's the birthday of writer and producer Gene Roddenberry, (books by this author) born in El Paso, Texas (1921). In the early 1960s, he saw there were no quality science fiction series on TV, so he created Star Trek. The first episode debuted on September 8, 1966 on NBC. Though it didn't get great ratings and was nearly canceled, the show's supporters—now called "Trekkies"—helped keep the series going until 1969. Roddenberry said, "The funny thing is that everything is science fiction at one time or another."

It's the birthday of fashion designer (Gabrielle) Coco Chanel, born in Saumur, France (1883). Along with the perfume Chanel No. 5, which came out in 1922, she introduced turtleneck sweaters, trench coats, costume jewelry, bell-bottom trousers, bobbed hair, and the "little black dress." Chanel said, "Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable."

It's the birthday of poet Li-Young Lee, (books by this author) born in Jakarta, Indonesia (1957), to Chinese parents. His father was a personal physician to Mao Zedong in China until the family was exiled to Indonesia, where his father was jailed for a year. The family wandered around Asia, through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, finally arriving in the United States, where Lee has written his books of poetry: Rose (1986), The City in Which I Love You (1990), and Book of My Nights (2001); and a memoir, The Winged Seed (1995). Lee said, "Sad is the man who is asked for a story and can't come up with one."

It was on this day in 1936—or it may have been August 18th, no one is quite sure—that Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca (books by this author) was executed in the hills northeast of the city of Granada.

With the publication of his most famous collection, Gypsy Ballads (1928), he was the best known of all the Spanish poets and a leading member of the group known as the "Generation of '27." He had written plays, too, like Blood Wedding (1933) and Yerma (1934), which brought him great success outside of Spain.

It's the birthday of former president Bill Clinton, (books by this author) born in Hope, Arkansas (1946). He recently published his autobiography titled My Life (2004). The book is 957 pages long.

To write his book, Clinton converted a hundred-year-old barn on his property into an office. He filled it with Native American pottery and photo albums from the White House and other people's memoirs. He gathered up his grade school band programs and all the letters he and his mother exchanged while he was in college. He had free days he called "book days" and sat out there at a glass table where he made an outline and wrote in a notebook.

SUNDAY, 20 AUGUST, 2006
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Poem: "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph" by Anne Sexton from The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton. © First Mariner Books. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well.
Larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

Literary and Historical Notes:

It's the birthday of poet Heather McHugh, (books by this author) born in San Diego, California (1948). She's the author of many collections of poetry, including To the Quick (1987) and Eyeshot (2003).

She said, "I write poems to wake myself up, or to preserve a suddenly lit, awakened state. Of dreams, as of taste, too many sweets spoil the sense. It's not nice dreams I'm yearning for; it's true dreams."

It's the birthday of poet Edgar Guest, (books by this author) born in Birmingham, England (1881). He was one of the last poets who wrote primarily for newspapers. He started out as an editorial office boy, and worked his way up to reporter, and he eventually got a column contributing poems called "Edgar A. Guest's Breakfast Table Chat."

He published a poem a day, almost every day of his adult life, totaling more than eleven thousand poems. Many of those poems are collected in such books as When Day Is Done (1921), Harbor Lights of Home (1928), and Today and Tomorrow (1942). His Collected Verse appeared in 1934 and went into at least eleven editions.

It was on this day in 1977 that Voyager 2 was launched by NASA to explore the planets of our solar system. It was the first of two spacecraft to serve that purpose, though it's a mystery why Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1. Both Voyagers went on to take the first up-close photographs of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Just before the Voyagers took off, a committee of scientists, led by Carl Sagan, decided to include a message from Earth on each Voyager in case extraterrestrials ever found them. At the time, the Cold War was at its height, and some members of the committee considered that these spacecraft and their contents might be the last traces of the human race left in the universe after a nuclear war.

So the Voyagers were each equipped with a gold-plated phonograph containing a variety of earthly sounds, including a heartbeat, a mother's kiss, wind, rain, surf, a chimpanzee, footsteps, laughter, the music of Bach, Mozart, and the Chuck Berry song "Johnny B. Goode." There were also images of humans, the sun, the planets, the Taj Mahal, the Sydney Opera House, and greetings in fifty-five languages, including ancient Sumerian. Carl Sagan said, "The launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

Today, the Voyagers have traveled farther from earth than any other human-made objects in history. Both have gone well beyond Pluto, the farthest planet from the sun. Voyager 2, which launched on this day in 1977, is currently headed toward Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.

It's the birthday of Jacqueline Susann, (books by this author) born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1918). She was forty-four years old and a failed Broadway actress when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1962. She wrote in her diary on Christmas Day of that year, "I can't die without leaving something. Something big." She went to a wishing hill in Central Park and made a deal with God. If he gave her ten more years, she would become a success.

Four years later, Susann published her novel Valley of the Dolls (1966). It's the story of a woman struggling to become an actress, and it describes the sex lives, drug abuse, and catfights of starlets.

Susann became the first modern celebrity author, promoting her books on talk shows and in bookstores. At each stop along her cross-country book tours, she signed every copy of the book that was available. She wrote down the name and address of every person she met and sent them all thank you cards. When her second novel, The Love Machine (1969), came out, she had the title of the book printed on the side of her chartered plane, and she personally delivered pastries to the bookstore workers who shipped and shelved her books.

She died in 1974, twelve years after she asked God for another decade.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch^®.

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