Tuesday

Oct. 9, 2001

Memory

by Hayden Carruth

TUESDAY, 9 OCTOBER 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen

Poem: "Memory," by Hayden Carruth from Doctor Jazz (Copper Canyon Press).

Memory

A woman I used to know well died
    A week ago. Not to be mysterious:
She and I were married. I'm told
    She fell down dead on a street in
Lower Manhattan, and I suppose
    She suffered a stroke or a heart attack.
The last time I saw her was in the spring
    Of 1955, meaning forty-four
Years ago, and now when I try
    To imagine her death I see in my
Mind a good-looking, twenty-nine-
    Year-old woman sprawled on the pavement.
It does no good to go and examine
    My own ravaged face in the bathroom
Mirror; I cannot transpose my ravage-
    Ment to her. She is fixed in my mind
As she was. Brown hair, brown eyes,
    Slender and sexy, coming home
From her job as an editor in a huge
    Building in midtown. Forty-four
Years is longer than I thought. My dear,
    How could you have let this happen to you?

It's the birthday of singer and songwriter John Lennon, born in Liverpool, England (1940). In 1956, Lennon was attending Liverpool Art College when a friend played him a recording of Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel. That same year he started his own band, the Quarrymen, with three of his friends. One of those friends introduced Lennon to Paul McCartney in 1957. By 1960 the band had become The Beatles. They played at various clubs in England and Germany, and often played at London's Cavern Club, where they were discovered by their soon-to-be manager Brian Epstein. The group was signed to EMI records in 1962.

It's the birthday of actor and filmmaker Jacques Tati, born in Le Pecq, France (1907), whose work has been compared to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. In 1931, he started making short films, including Oscar, Tennis Champion. His comedies included sight gags and physical action, and very little dialogue. In 1953, Tati introduced his signature character, Mr. Hulot, an earnest yet bumbling man who wore a crushed hat and raincoat, and trousers that were just a bit too short. In 1954, he produced Mr. Hulot's Holiday, which brought Tati international fame. In 1958, he produced Mon Oncle, which contrasted Hulot's life in a Paris suburb and that of his sister who lived in a modern, mechanized home.

It's the birthday of historian and journalist Bruce Catton, born in Petosky, Michigan (1899). In 1951, he published the first volume of a trilogy on the Army of the Potomac. Mr. Lincoln's Army was rejected by several publishers who said that Civil War books didn't sell. Only about 2,000 copies of Catton's book were sold. Still, a second volume, Glory Road, was published in 1952, and the third, A Stillness at Appomatox, came out in 1953.

It's the birthday of educator Francis Wayland Parker, born in Bedford, New Hampshire (1837). After serving as a lieutenant colonel in the Civil War, Parker served as head of a school in Dayton, Ohio. In 1872, he traveled to Germany to study new methods of education being developed there. He returned to the United States and became superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he originated what came to be called the Quincy movement. It was Parker's idea to replace the rigid formalism of American education by using normal experiences to teach subjects. Students learned geography by going on field trips, and learned arithmetic by manipulating objects rather than dealing with abstractions.

In 1701 on this day, the Yale University was founded. The colonial legislature of Connecticut chartered the Collegiate School, originally based in the house of its first rector in Killingworth, Connecticut. In 1716, the school moved to New Haven, and took the name Yale College to honor its early benefactor, Elihu Yale. The first doctoral degrees earned in the United States were awarded by the graduate school of arts and sciences in 1861.

In 1002 on this day, Viking Leif Eríksson landed in what is now North America. As a young man, he followed the custom of his time and made a trip to Norway. There, he met the king and was converted to Christianity. On his way back to Greenland, he was driven off course and found land on which there were fields of naturally growing wheat and grapevines. He named the country Wineland. Soon after his return to Greenland, he led an expedition to explore the lands he had discovered. Archeologists theorize that he then discovered Baffin Island and Labrador, and that Wineland was in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in what is now New Brunswick.

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