Thursday

Jul. 4, 2013


To a Young Girl in Washington Square Park

by George Green

Lolling beneath the Garibaldi statue,
you look like some pre-Raphaelite Cordelia,
except you're tarted up for rock and roll.
Your beauty is the barrel you'll go over

the falls in, and you're copping now, I see—
I hope it's only pot. Oh I would row
you back to Astolat, and swiftly too,
but that's just not my job. You're on your own,

and while you gambol off to get your buzz,
the statue tries to pull its damaged sword,
snapped off by hooligans eons ago.
That sword reminds me now of Marshal Ney,

who charged at Waterloo with half a saber
brandished above his powder-blackened head.
Five horses fell from under him, before,
unscathed, he made it out, at last, on foot,

only to find disaster on the roads,
and gallantry in short supply; though he
would tramp along, apparently unshaken,
to Paris and a Bourbon firing squad.

"To a Young Girl in Washington Square Park" by George Green, from Lord Byron's Foot. © St. Augustine's Press, 2012. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Today is Independence Day, celebrating the day in 1776 that the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, and the United States officially broke from the rule of England.

On this day in 1855, Walt Whitman (books by this author) published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The first edition consisted of 12 poems, and was published anonymously; Whitman set much of the type himself, and paid for its printing. Over his lifetime, he published eight more editions, adding poems each time; there were 122 new poems in the third edition alone (1860-61), and the final "death-bed edition," published in 1891, contained almost 400 poems. The first edition received several glowing — and anonymous — reviews in New York newspapers. Most of them were written by Whitman himself. The praise was unstinting: "An American bard at last!" One legitimate mention by popular columnist Fanny Fern called the collection daring and fresh. Emerson felt it was "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed." This wasn't a universal opinion, however; many called it filth, and poet John Greenleaf Whittier threw his copy into the fire.

The 1855 edition contained a preface, which was left out of subsequent editions, and in it he wrote: "This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

On this day in 1931, James Joyce (books by this author) married Nora Barnacle at the Kensington Registry Office in London. They had been living together for 26 years.

It's the birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne (books by this author), born in Salem, Massachusetts (1804). He's the author of The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). He was looking for a job, and at last won a well-paid appointment at the Salem Custom House, only to lose it when the Whigs came into power again. He arrived home, told his wife he was out of work, and wondered aloud what to do. "Now you can write your book," she said. He asked what she proposed they live on while he wrote, and she opened a desk drawer and showed him a pile of gold pieces she'd saved out of the household allowance — $150, enough to cover their expenses for several months. He sat down at once and began work on The Scarlet Letter.

It's the birthday of literary critic Lionel Trilling (books by this author), born in New York City (1905). He was one of the last literary critics that people read even if they weren't English majors. He's best known for a collection of essays published after his death, called The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent (2000).

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