Saturday

Jul. 15, 2006

Lucky

by Michael Blumenthal

SATURDAY, 15 JULY, 2006
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Poem: "Lucky" by Michael Blumenthal from Against Romance. © Pleasure Boat Studio. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Lucky

Off to the market to buy a lottery ticket,
I consider the possibilities of luck: good luck.
bad luck, beginner's luck, hard luck, the luck
of the draw, and I realize I am lucky, in fact,
to be here at all, on this benignly lit street
on a night in October, as luck would have it,
and I know that it's not just the luck of
the Irish, but any man's, to walk the streets
of his town, beneath the shapely moon,
and ponder the dumb luck that brought him here,
against all odds, into the vast lottery of minnow
and ovum, and to know he has once again lucked out,
this very night, spent as it has been without
accident or incident, a small testimonial
to the quietudes that are still possible,
the only half-felt wish for some grand stroke
of luck that will change everything, that will
change, really, nothing at all, our lives being,
in some sense, beyond the vicissitudes
of luck and yearning, the night being lovely,
the day finite, many of those we know whose luck
has already run out, and we not yet among them,
thank the beneficence of Lady Luck, our stars
just now flickering into flame
as the night lucks in.


Literary and Historical Notes:

It's the birthday of the painter and engraver who signed his works with just his first name Rembrandt, born Rembrandt van Rijn in Leiden, Netherlands (1606). He was one of the greatest portrait artists of all time, because he was so good at capturing facial expressions. His most famous painting is known as The Night Watch (1642), and it shows a group of men getting ready to go on a patrol of the city. All of the men in the painting paid to be in it.


It's the birthday of the novelist and short-story writer Richard Russo, (books by this author) born in Johnstown, New York (1949). He's the author of many novels about small-town life in New England, including Nobody's Fool (1993) and Empire Falls (2001). He grew up in Gloversville, New York, a small town that Russo found suffocating and depressing, and he wanted to get as far away from it as possible. So he went away to college in Arizona.

Russo started a novel about a woman who had moved to Arizona from a small town in New York state. He wrote five hundred pages, but it was a mess. He showed his novel to a friend, who pointed out that the only good parts were the flashbacks to the woman's hometown in New York. So Russo started over and rewrote his novel about that town in New York state, and the result was his first novel Mohawk (1986).

Russo said, "The thing about small towns is that ... in cities you can escape. In small towns you have to deal with everybody. ... You can't simply walk past the poster in the restaurant that announces the auction for the family with the house that burned down. In New York City you habitually walk past people in far more desperate straits than that. You're more your brother's keeper in a small town."


It's the birthday of novelist Iris Murdoch, (books by this author) born to Anglo-Irish parents in Dublin (1919). Her novels include A Severed Head (1961), The Sea, The Sea (1978), and Jackson's Dilemma (1995). She wrote twenty-six novels, all of them in longhand, copied them out, sealed the two handwritten manuscripts in plastic bags, and carried them down to her publisher herself. She was a perfectionist, and she never let publishers change a word of what she had written.

Murdoch said, "Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."


Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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