Wednesday

Apr. 29, 1998

The Feast

by Robert Hass

WEDNESDAY 4/29

Today's Reading: "The Feast" by Robert Hass from PRAISE, published by Ecco Press.

It's the Feast Day of SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA, the patron saint of Italy. It was Catherine who in 1376 left her home in Sienna, Italy and traveled to Avignon, France to tell Gregory XI, the French-born pope, that he belonged in Rome.

The Nazi concentration camp, DACHAU, was liberated by the U.S. Seventh Army on this day in 1945, and nearly 32,000 prisoners went free. Dachau was one of the first camps Hitler set up after coming to power in the early 1930s. It was located in an abandoned WWI munitions factory in the little town of Dachau about 10 miles northwest of Munich.

The anti-war film, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, was premiered on this day in 1929, New York. The movie was made in America, but told the story of a young WWI German soldier who gets sent to the front to defend the Fatherland and has all of his illusions about the glory of battle shattered. Universal Pictures spent over a million dollars on the production, hired 2,000 former doughboys to act as extras, and turned 20 acres of a California ranch into a battlefield.

It's the birthday in Berlin, 1913, of journalist TANIA LONG, who wrote for the New York Herald Tribune from London and broke some of the biggest stories of the war: a British liner that was sunk transporting refugee children, the conditions of London's poor during the war, and what it was like to be caught in the middle a bombing raid. She was staying at the Hotel Savoy in 1941 when bombs struck the front and back of the building; and she won all the newspaper awards that year for her report that said, in part, "When one hears bombs hit that close there is no time to do anything. One hasn't time even to be afraid, that comes later."

It's the birth in Tokyo, 1901, of HIROHITO, the longest-ruling monarch in 2,500 years of recorded Japanese history. In 1926 he ascended the throne of Emperor, where he remained 63 years until his death in 1989. By Japanese law, the Emperor was divine; when Hirohito went on the air, August 15, 1945, and told his people to surrender to the Allies, it was the first time an emperor's voice had ever been heard outside the imperial house or the inner circles of government.

It's the birthday in Washington, DC, 1899, of EDWARD KENNEDY ELLINGTON, "Duke" Ellington. His father was a butler at the White House and didn't want that life for his son, so got Edward playing piano at the age of seven. Ellington made his professional debut at 17 and moved to New York not long after, where he played at the Kentucky Club on Broadway in a little five-man band called the Washingtonians. Eventually Ellington even got tired of using the word 'jazz.' "There are only two kinds of music," he said, "good and bad."

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

 

«

»

  • “Writers end up writing stories—or rather, stories' shadows—and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” —Joy Williams
  • “I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler
  • “Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig” —Stephen Greenblatt
  • “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • “Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” —John Edgar Wideman
  • “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” —Denise Levertov
  • “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Let's face it, writing is hell.” —William Styron
  • “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” —Thomas Mann
  • “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.” —Paul Rudnick
  • “Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it's spoiled paper.” —Padget Powell
  • “Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.” —Shelby Foote
  • “I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.” —William Carlos Williams
  • “Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.” —Iris Murdoch
  • “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao
  • “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.” —Anthony Powell
  • “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” —Michael Cunningham
Current Faves - Learn more about poets featured frequently on the show