The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

It's the birthday of poet E.E. Cummings (books by this author), born Edward Estlin Cummings in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1894). His father was a Harvard professor, and Cummings grew up in a privileged and happy household — he said, "As it was my miraculous fortune to have a true father and a true mother, and a home which the truth of their love made joyous, so — in reaching outward from this love and this joy — I was marvelously lucky to touch and seize a rising and striving world." At times he rebelled against the strict Christian morality and academic world of his parents. He wrote in one early poem: "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls / are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds." He said, "I led a double life, getting drunk and feeling up girls but lying about this to my Father and taking his money all the time."

He graduated from Harvard, enlisted in the Ambulance Corps, and then moved to Greenwich Village to write poetry. His Harvard friend John Dos Passos used his influence to find a publisher for Cummings's first book of poems, Tulips and Chimneys (1923). Cummings complained that the editor cut the manuscript down from 152 poems to 66, and took out the ampersand in the title to write out the word "and." One critic said that his poems were "hideous on the page," and another corrected all his punctuation when she quoted him. He continued to publish books, but 12 years after his first collection of poems had come out, Cummings was still unable to find a publisher for his newest manuscript. He ended up self-publishing it with financial help from his mother — he titled it No Thanks (1935) and dedicated it to the 14 publishing houses who had rejected the book.

Slowly, his fame grew. His Collected Poems (1938) was a big success, but his six-month royalty checks were small — one for $14.94, another for $9.75. His mother still gave him a monthly check to help pay his living expenses. He started giving poetry readings, and by the last decade of his life, Cummings was a celebrity. His poetry readings were hugely popular, sold-out events — he packed venues from college campuses to theaters. He charmed his audiences — reading energetically, lingering on individual words, striding around the stage as he spoke, and timing his readings to the second. In 1957, he read to a crowd of 7,000 in Boston. During a reading at Bennington College in Vermont, the huge crowd of students greeted him by reciting his poem about Buffalo Bill en masse. The crowds were so enthusiastic that Cummings had to establish what he called "rules of engagement": he refused to autograph books or attend dinners or other social functions. He sometimes sneaked out after readings by what he called a "secretbackentrance." Young women came up to him on the streets of New York to give him bouquets of flowers, or left them on the doorstep of his Greenwich Village apartment. By the time of his death in 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in America, after Robert Frost.

In 1066 on this day, William the Conqueror defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings. In September of that year, William, Duke of Normandy, left France with 600 ships and up to 10,000 men. He disembarked at Pevensey, in Sussex, and moved along the coast to Hastings. Meanwhile, in the north of England, Harold II was fighting off his brother and an army of Vikings. When he heard of William's invasion, he hurried his bedraggled army south, to a ridge about 10 miles northeast of Hastings.

William sent his army to attack, archers in front, infantrymen behind, and knights in the rear. Although the Normans suffered many early casualties, they feigned retreat twice, luring the Englishmen from their positions. They then turned and annihilated them. When Harold was killed, the leaderless army fought on for a while, then scattered. The victorious Normans moved on to London, where William I was crowned king on December 25.

It's the birthday of the 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, born in Denison, Texas (1890). He grew up in a poor family that was very religious. His mother was a pacifist. When her son chose to go to West Point for college, she broke down in tears. He took a position training soldiers after he graduated in 1915. He wanted to go overseas to fight in World War I, but it ended a week before he was scheduled to go to Europe. He wrote a guidebook of World War I battlefields, but was then stationed in the Philippines.

He finally got back to the United States in 1939, and he was stationed at a base in Louisiana where he supervised the largest military games ever carried out in this country, a simulation designed to help prepare for a land war in Europe. Eisenhower planned the strategy for the invading army, and the following December, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he was put in charge of the strategy for an Allied invasion of Europe.

It's the birthday of the short-story writer Katherine Mansfield (books by this author), born in Wellington, New Zealand (1888). She was the daughter of a successful businessman who sent her away to school in England. At 18, her parents brought her back to New Zealand, and she found that she no longer had anything in common with her family.

She became one of the wildest bohemians in New Zealand. She had affairs with men and women, lived with the Maori, and published scandalous stories. She moved back to London and was part of the bohemian scene there. At one point, she married a man she barely knew and left him before the wedding night was over because she couldn't stand the pink bedspread.

She didn't begin to write the stories that made her famous until her younger brother came to see her in 1915. They had long talks, reminiscing about growing up in New Zealand. He left that fall for World War I and was killed two months later. She was devastated by his death, and she wrote a series of short stories about her childhood, including "The Garden Party," which many critics consider to be her masterpiece.

She said, "Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare fiddle?"