Tuesday

Jan. 5, 1999

Memenotos I

by W. D. Snodgrass

TUESDAY 1/5

Poem: "Mementos, 1," by W. D. Snodgrass, from AFTER EXPERIENCE: POEMS & TRANSLATIONS (Alfred A. Knopf, 1967).

It's the birthday of the Italian novelist UMBERTO ECO, born in Alessandria, 1932, and author of the novel The Name of the Rose, a murder mystery set in a 14th-century Italian monastery.

It's the birthday of poet WILLIAM DEWITT SNODGRASS, born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1926, for years a teacher at the University of Syracuse. His first volume of poetry, Heart's Needle, won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize.

It was on this day in 1919 that a little political organization based in Munich called the German Workers' Party renamed itself the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or NAZIS for short. Its leader was the 30-year-old Adolf Hitler.

It's the birthday in London, 1902, of writer STELLA GIBBONS, author of the comic novel Cold Comfort Farm, which came out in 1932 when she was 30 years old.

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

 

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