Monday

May 24, 1999

Midwest

by Stephen Dunn

Broadcast Date: MONDAY: May 24, 1999

Poem: "Midwest," by Stephen Dunn, from Landscape at the End of the Century (W.W. Norton).

It's the birthday of poet JOSEPH BRODSKY, born in Leningrad, 1940, and our nation's first foreign-born poet laureate and winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature.

It's the birthday of BOB DYLAN, born Robert Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota.

It's the birthday in Toronto, 1933, of novelist and short story writer MARIAN ENGEL.

It's the birthday in 1928, County Cork, of Irish writer WILLIAM TREVOR, known for his dark and funny stories that appear in the New Yorker, and novels like The Old Boys, Elizabeth Alone, and The Silence in the Garden.

The BROOKLYN BRIDGE opened on this day in 1883, linking the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan across the East River in New York.

The METHODIST CHURCH was founded on this day in 1738 in England. The Wesley brothers, John and Charles, with their friend George Whitefield began the church as a series of small "societies" inside the Church of England. They took Methodism all across England and into Ireland, stopping in working-class towns to preach and teach.

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

 

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