Wednesday

Feb. 21, 2001

Inscription for a War

by A. D. Hope

WEDNESDAY, 21 February 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen

Poem: "Inscription for a War," by A.D. Hope from Collected Poems: 1930-1970 (Harper Collins Australia).

Inscription for a War

Stranger, go tell the Spartans
we died here obedient to their commands
—Inscription at Thermopylae

Linger not, Stranger; shed no tear;
Go back to those who sent us here.

We're the young they drafted out
To wars their folly brought about.

Go tell those old men, safe in bed,
We took their orders and are dead.

It's the birthday of newspaper columnist and best-selling author Erma Bombeck, born in Dayton, Ohio (1927). After graduating college she became a columnist for the Dayton Journal Herald. She soon left that position to stay home and raise her children. When her third child started school, Bombeck returned to her writing because she was, as she put it, "too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security, and too tired for an affair." She went on to write several best-selling books, including The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank (1976) and If Life is a Bowl of Cherries—What Am I Doing in the Pits? (1978)

"It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows."

On this day in 1925, The first issue of the New Yorker magazine came out.

It's the birthday of poet W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden, born in York, England (1907). He moved to America in the late 1930s and became an American citizen. He wrote many, many poems and was the librettist for Benjamin Britton's opera Paul Bunyan, as well as for Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress.

It's the birthday of writer and diarist Anaïs Nin, born in Neuilly, France (1903), who is probably most famous for writings that were never intended for public viewing. During her lifetime, Nin wrote more than thirty-five thousand pages of diaries, spanning the years from 1914 to 1974. Even though she had published essays, criticism, and fiction since the 1930s, she came to literary prominence in America in 1966 when the first volume of her diary was published. She was a woman who had a good deal to write in her diaries: she had passionate love affairs with both Henry Miller (author of Tropic of Cancer) and his wife, June.

It's the birthday of writer Raymond Queneau, born in Le Havre, France (1903). Influenced by the Surrealist movement in the 1920s, Queneau was the first French novelist to write language the way it was spoken on the street, regardless of syntax and grammar. His book, Exercises in Style (1947), recounts a brief and ordinary encounter on a bus ninety-nine different ways, including in prose, in free verse, as a sonnet, and as a play. His best-known work is Zazie (1959; filmed by Louis Malle in 1960).

It's the birthday of publisher Charles Scribner, born in New York City (1821). With Isaac Baker he founded the publishing firm of Baker and Scribner, which was called Charles Scribner's Sons from 1878. The firm published such prominent American authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe.

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