Friday

Jul. 28, 2000

Serious Doll, The

by John Ashbery

Broadcast date: FRIDAY, 28 July 2000

Poem: "The Serious Doll," by John Ashberry, from Three Books (Penguin Books).

It's the birthday of poet John Ashbery, born in Rochester, New York (1927)-known for the elegance, originality, and obscurity of his poems. His collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) won not only the National Book Award for poetry, but the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle prize. He said,

"It's important to try to write when you are in the wrong mood, or the weather is wrong. Even if you don't succeed, you'll be developing a muscle that may do it later on. And I think writing does get easier as you get older. It's a question of practice-and also of realizing you don't have the oceans of time to waste you had when you were young."

It's the birthday of radical artist Marcel Duchamp, born in Blainville, Normandy (1887). His father, the town 'notary,' negotiated contracts and arbitrated disputes. Four of the family's 6 children became artists. Marcel became famous in 1913 for a painting of his shown at New York's Armory Show: "Nude Descending a Staircase, #2." He's also known for his 'ready-made' sculptures, such as his bicycle wheel mounted upside-down on a kitchen stool (1913). After his death, friends were astounded to learn he had spent his final 20 years working secretly on a major piece now on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Its abbreviated title, étant donnés, means 'Being given.' The viewer approaches what seems to be an old wooden barn door, finds a peep-hole at eye level, peers through it and sees a strange diorama featuring a woman's reclining nude torso, legs splayed toward the peep-hole, her face out of viewing range, her raised hand holding a gas lamp. "In my time," he said, "we artists were pariahs. We knew it and we enjoyed it."

It's the birthday of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, born in Stratford, Essex (1844). He wrote a great deal of poetry in his youth, and then, after converting to Catholicism and becoming Jesuit, he burned all his early work. In 1876, he broke a 7-year silence and wrote his long poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland." (1876). He lived his last 5 years in Dublin, deeply depressed, writing his 'Dark Sonnets.' He died of typhus at 44.

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