Sunday

Jan. 17, 1999

Our Lady of the Snow

by Robert Hass

SUNDAY 1/17

Poem: Robert Hass, "Our Lady of the Snows," from Sun Under Wood (Ecco Press).

The HOUSTON MARATHON is today, 26.2 miles in a loop from the George R. Brown Convention Center through downtown Houston, Hermann Park, Rice University, Memorial Park, and back to the Convention Center.

It's the feast day for SAINT ANTHONY THE ABBOT, the patron saint of domestic animals, observed especially in Mexico, where people will bring their pet dogs, cats, chickens, cows and other animals to the local church to be blessed.

It's the birthday of British poet and novelist ANNE BRONTË, born in 1820, Yorkshire, the youngest of six children, and the sister of Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Her novel, Agnes Grey, was published together with Emily's Wuthering Heights. Charlotte's novel, Jane Eyre, came out around the same time, and Anne quickly wrote her second book, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, though both of her books are pretty much overshadowed by her sisters' novels.

It was on this day in 1773 that JAMES COOK, aboard his ship Resolution, became the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle. The trip made him famous not just for discovering new territory, but for being one of the very first on which no sailor died from scurvy. Cook had learned that if citrus fruits were served to the men they didn't get scurvy, and when he returned to England in 1775 he was promoted to captain and awarded a prize for his work against the disease.

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