Wednesday

Aug. 30, 2000

Mother's Nerves

by X. J. Kennedy

Should All of This Come True

by X. J. Kennedy

Vulture

by X. J. Kennedy

Broadcast date: WEDNESDAY, 30 August 2000

Poems: "Mother's Nerves," "Should All of This Come True," and "Vulture" all by X. J. Kennedy, from Cross Ties: Selected Poems (The University of Georgia Press).

It was on this day in 1637 that Ann Hutchinson was banished from Massachusetts and went with her family to settle Rhode Island. She was a liberal-minded woman in Puritan Boston, in trouble for inviting other women to stop by her house one afternoon a week to discuss the previous Sunday's sermon.

It's the birthday of writer Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, born in 1797, London. She was the only daughter of the philosopher William Godwin and the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. She married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814, and he said that she came as close to the ideal woman as any he'd ever found. When she was only 19 years old, she and her husband and two friends got into a contest to see who could write the best ghost story. Shelley wrote Frankenstein for the occasion. This is the moment of the monster's creation: "By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch--the miserable monster whom I had created. His eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks."

It's the birthday of the British physicist Ernest Rutherford, 1871, Nelson, New Zealand, who discovered that the basic structure of the atom is a nucleus surrounded by electrons, and that radiation is produced when atoms disintegrate. His research was ultimately used to build the nuclear bomb. He had strong ideas about the importance of physics, and said, "All science is either physics, or stamp collecting."

It's the birthday in London, 1906, of writer Elizabeth Longford, best known for her biographies of British historical figures like Queen Victoria, The Duke of Wellington, Lord Byron and Winston Churchill, that started coming out in the 1960s.

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