Monday

Jun. 21, 1999

Interlude

by Anne Nicodemus Carpenter

Broadcast Date: MONDAY: June 21, 1999

Poem: "Interlude," by Anne Nicodemus Carpenter, from Ma's Ram and Other Poems (Saturday Press, 1985).

It's the FIRST DAY OF SUMMER. The sun has reached its northern-most spot in the sky and for the next few days sunrises and sunsets will only vary by a few seconds.

The BATTLE OF OKINAWA ended on this day in 1945, one of the bloodiest campaigns in the Pacific during World War II. Okinawa is a big 70-mile-long island in southwestern Japan, and U.S. troops intended to take it and make their way to Tokyo. The Americans landed on Okinawa in April, 1945, and over the next three months lost about 12,000 men; the Japanese, about 100,000. Japan surrendered the island at 10 p.m., June 21. The war would end less than two months later.

It's the birthday in 1942, in rural Loudoun County, Virginia of poet HENRY TAYLOR, winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Flying Change. Taylor said, "The Pulitzer has a funny way of changing people's opinions about it. If you haven't won one, you go around saying things like `Well, it's all political' or `It's a lottery' and stuff like that. I would like to go on record as saying that although I'm deeply grateful and feel very honored, I still believe that it's a lottery and that nobody deserves it."

It's the birthday in Boston, 1931 of poet PATRICIA GOEDICKE, whose work appears in the New Yorker, Nation, and Harper's. She teaches creative writing at the University of Montana, Missoula and her collections include Crossing the Same River, The Wind of Our Going, and her most recent, Invisible Horses (1996). Her next collection, As Earth Begins To End, is due out this fall.

It's the birthday of the prolific British writer MARGARET POTTER, born in London, 1926, author of more than fifty books. She used a variety of pseudonyms: Anne Betteridge for her romance books like A Portuguese Affair; Anne Melville for her books about the Lorimer family, including The Lorimer Line, and The Last of the Lorimers. She used her own name for the children's books. She died last August, still writing right up until the end, and advising younger writers to begin work early in the day, "rather than waiting until the housework was done."

It's the birthday in Seattle, 1912, of writer MARY MCCARTHY, author of the autobiographies, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), and How I Grew (1987). Her best-known novel, The Group, came out in 1963.

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