The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

It was on this day in 1849 that Henry David Thoreau (books by this author) self-published A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, his first book. It was an account of the two-week boating trip Thoreau had taken with his brother, John, 10 years before, from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and back.

Thoreau had always been the introverted and studious one, while John was gregarious and fun-loving. They were close; John helped pay his brother's tuition to Harvard, and helped Thoreau open his own school when he got fired from his teaching job over his objection to corporal punishment. A few years after their boat trip, John died unexpectedly from tetanus in his brother's arms. Thoreau decided to seclude himself and began building a cabin by the banks of Walden Pond. He lived there for two years, completing the drafts of both his A Week, often seen as a memorial to his brother, John, and a series of lectures that would eventually become the classic Walden. Since A Week was initially rejected, Thoreau was only able to publish it by paying for its printing from its sales. Four years later, after paying off the printing debt, Thoreau wrote in his journal that his publisher had delivered the remaining unsold copies to his home. He wrote, "I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself."

Thoreau said: "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

And, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

It's the birthday of Harlem poet Countee Cullen (books by this author) , mostly likely born in New York City or Lexington, Kentucky, in 1903. Not much is known about Cullen's childhood, including his birthplace, because he was adopted by a Harlem minister's family as a teenager — taking their name, Cullen — and he usually remained silent on the topic of his early life. After he joined the Cullen family, he attended a mostly white high school and then New York University and Harvard, where he began winning prizes for poems like "Ballad of the Brown Girl," which also became the title of his third collection, published in 1927. Heavily influenced by Keats, much of his style was traditional — but his subject often touched on race.

Cullen was popular in the late '20s, and married the daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois. Their grand wedding was a huge social event in 1928, but the marriage only lasted a short while. He drew attention for his collections of poetry like Color (1925) and The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929).

Cullen said, "There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.' In order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things—read and write—and wait."