Friday

Jul. 5, 2013


Wing Road

by Eamon Grennan

Amazing—
how the young man who empties our dustbin
ascends the truck as it moves
away from him, rises up like an angel
in a china-blue check shirt and lilac
woollen cap, dirty work-gloves, rowanberry
red bandanna flapping at his throat. He plants
one foot above the mudguard, locks
his left hand to a steel bar
stemming from the dumper's loud mouth,
and is borne away, light as a cat, right leg
dangling, the dazzled air snatching at that black-
bearded face. He breaks to a smile, leans wide
and takes the morning to his puffed chest—
right arm stretched far out,
a checkered china-blue wing
gliding between blurred earth
and heaven, a messenger under the locust trees
that stand in silent panic at his passage. But
his mission is not among the trees:
he has flanked both sunlit rims of Wing Road
with empty dustbins, each lying on its side,
its battered lid fallen beside it, each
letting noonlight scour its emptiness
to shining. Carried off in a sudden cloud
of diesel smoke, in a woeful crying out
of brakes and gears, a roaring of monstrous
mechanical appetite, he has left this unlikely radiance
straggled behind him, where the crows —
covening in branches—will flash and haggle.

"Wing Road" by Eamon Grennan, from What Light There Is and Other Poems. © North Point Press, 1989. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

It was on this day in 1937 that SPAM came onto the market. The canned meat product from Hormel Foods Corporation was given its name by a contest winner; the prize for his ingenuity was $100. On one occasion, a Hormel spokesperson said the name was short for "Shoulder of Pork and Ham"; on another, a company official said it was a conflation of the words "spice and ham." All sorts of parodic acronyms have circulated over the years, including "Something Posing As Meat."

On this day in 1954, Elvis Presley recorded his first rock and roll song and his first hit, "That's All Right (Mama)."

Today is the birthday of American artist Chuck Close, born in Monroe, Washington (1940). He had a rough childhood: He was dyslexic and didn't do well in school; his father died when Chuck was 11, and his mother developed breast cancer soon after. Their medical bills were so high that the family lost their house, and Close was bedridden for almost a year due to a serious kidney infection. He got through by drawing and painting, and took his first trip to the Seattle Art Museum soon after his father died.

He's become known for his enormous portraits, painted so realistically that they look like photographs. He had been painting them for 20 years before he finally figured out why he was so obsessed with these giant portraits: It's a way to remember them. He has a condition called "face blindness," which means he's unable to recognize individual faces.

In 1988, he was presenting an award in New York City when he began having chest pains. After the ceremony, he walked to the hospital across the street and collapsed in a seizure. An artery in his spine had ruptured, and he woke a quadriplegic. He's confined to a wheelchair, but through extensive physical therapy, he regained the ability to paint.

It's the birthday of one of the most versatile artists of the 20th century, Jean Cocteau, born in Maisons-Laffitte, just outside Paris (1889). He wrote essays, poetry, and novels. He worked on ballets, operas, and movies as well. He was involved in early stages of surrealism and cubism. He was a friend of Picasso's and a friend of Marcel Proust's.

He said, "Style is a simple way of saying complicated things."

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