The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

It's the 65th birthday of poet Joyce Sutphen (books by this author), born near St. Joseph, Minnesota (1949). She grew up on a small farm. She was one of nine children, and everyone worked hard: hoeing potatoes, driving the tractor, or milking. Her parents weren't literary — she said that her mother did not "like sentimentality and gush, keeping things plain and concise" — but they encouraged their kids' studies. She said: "My parents always felt that anyone doing homework or practicing a musical instrument was granted dispensation from other things. So as you can imagine, we were all good students and loved playing music!"

She said: "In college, I loved Shakespeare, Milton, the Romantic poets (all of them), and Blake and Yeats — but I began to feel overwhelmed. I couldn't imagine being able to write the kind of poem I was reading." Instead, she went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota to study Renaissance Drama. In 1990, at the age of 40, she was a teaching assistant with a group of students on a program in London. Away from her husband and three children, she had time for herself and her own room, and she was suddenly inspired to write poetry. She said, "It was so amazing. I got a little more rest, and I became a different person. I just expanded, and the poetry was there, like an untapped thing I turned on."

Some of the very first poems she sent out for publication were published in Poetry and American Poetry Review. About three years after she began writing poetry, she entered the Barnard Women's Poets contest. To assemble a manuscript, she printed out all the poems she had written, spread them out around her on the floor, and grouped them together as best she could. Then she sent off the manuscript and forgot about it. Months later, she got a call informing her that she had won the Barnard Women's Poets Prize, and her first book of poems, Straight Out of View (1995), would be published by Beacon Press.

She published several more books of poetry, and in 2011 she was named poet laureate for the state of Minnesota. She was the second poet laureate in the state's history, following Robert Bly. She said: "Compared to Robert Bly, I have done nothing — in fact, there are many other poets in this state (and I could name a dozen right off the top of my head) who are much more accomplished and eloquent than I am. I am a surprising choice, but here's what I think: no one could adequately follow Robert, so I make a great contrast, and whoever follows me won't have to worry."

Her other books include Naming the Stars (2004), Coming Back to the Body (2000), and First Words (2010).

She said: "When there are funding cuts for art and music and poetry and drama and dance, people just go ahead and do these things anyway — because it's absolutely necessary. People who love these things know how vital they are. I mean, humanly. And they won't stop, no matter what."

And: "I haven't finished with writing about my family and the experience of growing up on a small farm. That's material that keeps looking different to me and I continue to try to get it down, to create something that conveys what's being lost."

Today is the birthday of poet and playwright Laurence Binyon (books by this author), born in Lancaster, England (1869). He was deeply affected by the First World War, and though he was too old to serve, he is best remembered for his poem For the Fallen, which is often recited on Remembrance Sunday in Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. He wrote it in 1914, sitting on the cliffs of Cornwall and looking out to the sea.

An excerpt from For the Fallen:

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

On this day in 1912, Virginia Stephen married Leonard Woolf. She was 30, he was 31, and they married at London's St. Pancras Registry Office. Together, the couple founded the Hogarth Press in their dining room. They taught themselves how to print. Their first project was a printed and bound pamphlet containing a story by each of them. They published Virginia Woolf's novels (books by this author), a collection of Freud's papers, and the works of writers who were then unknown, including Katherine Mansfield, T.S. Eliot, and E.M. Forster.

It's the birthday of mystery novelist Ellen Hart (books by this author), born in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1949). Her experience in the restaurant business in Minnesota lends authenticity to her novels, including This Little Piggy Went to Murder (1994) and Dial M for Meat Loaf (2001), which mixes murder with a fictional Minnesota newspaper's meat loaf recipe contest. Her latest novel is Taken by the Wind (2013).

On this day in 1846, Congress passed an act establishing The Smithsonian Institution. When the English mineralogist James Smithson died in 1829, he left his large fortune to the United States, stipulating that it be used to "increase and diffuse knowledge among men." The money was shipped to the United States in 105 bags, each containing a thousand sovereigns — a total of about $500,000. The Smithsonian Institution now comprises 15 different museums, including the National Museum of Natural History, the National Portrait Gallery, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum of modern art, and the National Zoo.

It's the birthday of one of Brazil's best-loved writers: Jorge Amado (books by this author), born near Ilhéus, Brazil (1912). He is one of the most widely translated novelists in the world; they called him the "Pelé of the written word." His 32 books sold millions of copies in 40 languages. Brazilian hotels, bars, and restaurants, as well as brands of whiskey and margarine, were named for characters from his books. He's the author of Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (1958), Home is the Sailor (1961), and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1966).

It's the birthday of poet Mark Doty (books by this author), born in Maryville, Tennessee (1953). He said: "I was bored very early on by what seemed to me the plain nature of the clothes and toys and roles handed out to little boys. I saw no future for myself there. The sort of stuff my sister kept in her special drawer of souvenirs was redolent of something else — exuberance, playfulness, permission. [...] My love of that shiny stuff in the drawer was, I think, a kind of early outbreak of longing — a wish for life to be something more. That took other forms later on, of course, or I'd simply have become a drag queen rather than a poet!"

Doty did become a poet, and he has written many award-winning books of poetry, including My Alexandria (1993), Atlantis (1995), and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (2008).