December 10
Events:
Dec 10, 2012 Cambridge,MA The Blacksmith House Poetry Series: Alice
Mattison and Lesle Lewis 8:00p to 9:30p Cambridge Center for
Adult Education Brattle House: Blacksmith House, Cambridge Center for
Adult Education Cambridge,MA Alice Mattison reads from her new
novel, "When We Argued All Night," with Lesle Lewis, whose latest
poetry collection is "lie down too."
http://ccae.org/events/blacksmith.html http://www.leslelewis.com/
Born:
1210
Giovanni Battista Guarini 1538 - – 7 October 1612) Italian poet,
dramatist, and diplomat. (Faithfull Shepherd)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180704
Eugène Marie-Joseph Sue 1804-1857, Parisian journalist & serial novellest
http://kirjasto.sci.fi/esue.htm
William Lloyd Garrison (1805 – 05/24/1879) US writer
http://www.ushistory.org/us/28a.asp
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=384
George MacDonald (1824-1905), Scottish fantasy author who wrote The
Light Princess
http://www.online-literature.com/george-macdonald/
http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/george_macdonald_2012_4.pdf
Ada Byron (Lovelace) 1815- London England, considered the first
computer programmer
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/12/ada-lovelace/
Nikolai A Nekrasov (Russkije Zjenjshiny) 1821 - 8 January 1878;
Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher The Songs Of Siberian
Exiles
http://www.bartleby.com/164/23.html
Emily [Elizabeth] Dickinson (1830-1886) 'the Belle of Amherst'
(Massachusetts), poet
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?author=Dickinson%2C+Emily&amode=words&title=&tmode=words
http://www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org/
Melville Louis K] Dewey, (1851- December 26, 1931). US college
librarian - created Dewey Decimal System for libraries
http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/biography/
Frederick Upham Adams (1859 – August 28, 1921) inventor and author
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/15247/pg15247.html
http://www.archive.org/stream/oftropicconquest00adamrich/oftropicconquest00adamrich_djvu.txt
http://www.amazon.com/Frederick-Upham-Adams/e/B001KDLABY
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0010976/
http://suite101.com/article/frederick-upham-adams-a50978
Pierre Louis 1870 –June 6,1925 ) France, novelist/poet (Aphrodite,
Woman & Puppet)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sob/
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36378/36378-h/36378-h.htm
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0522223/
William Plomer (1903 – 09/21/1973) S. African-English children's
writer (Paper Houses, I Speak of Africa)
http://charlesmatthews.blogspot.com/2010/04/poem-of-day-william-plomer.html
http://themargins.net/bib/B/BJ/00bjintro.html
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/plomer_w.html
Mary Norton (1903-Aug 29,1992), children's writer who penned the
Borrowers stories
http://www.theweeweb.co.uk/public/author_profile.php?id=174
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0636260/
Rumer Godden (1907- Nov 8.1998) English novelist and children's
author(Thursday's Children) Black Narcissus (1939) The Greengage
Summer (1958), China Court (1961
http://www.lunaea.com/words/rumer/biography.html
John Hammond Sr. 1910 -10th July 1987. US rock/jazz producer (I Can
Tell, So Many Roads), A&R scout. Worked with Bob Dylan, Bruce
Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, George Benson and Janis Joplin.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-hammond-sr-mn0000082997
Chet Huntley (1911 – 03/20/1974) US telejournalist /newscaster (NBC
Huntley-Brinkley Report)
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=528
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0403142/
Dorothy Lamour (1914 – 09/22/1996) US actor
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?GRid=1728&page=gr
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/dorothy-lamour-mn0000195420
Carolyn Ashley Kizer (1925- ) US writer, poet Pulitzer Prize for
poetry in 1985, for her collection Yin.
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/731/the-art-of-poetry-no-81-carolyn-kizer
Night Sounds
The moonlight on my bed keeps me awake;
Living alone now, aware of the voices of evening,
A child weeping at nightmares, the faint love-cries of a woman,
Everything tinged by terror or nostalgia.
No heavy, impassive back to nudge with one foot
While coaxing, "Wake up and hold me,"
When the moon's creamy beauty is transformed
Into a map of impersonal desolation.
.
But, restless in this mock dawn of moonlight.
That so chills the spirit, I alter our history:
You were never able to lie quite peacefully at my side,
Not the night through. Always withholding something.
Awake before morning, restless and uneasy,
Trying not to disturb me, you would leave my bed
While I lay there rigidly, feigning sleep.
Still - the night was nearly over, the light not as cold
As a full cup of moonlight.
And there were the lovely times when, to the skies' cold No
You cried to me, Yes! Impaled me with affirmation.
Now, when I call out in fear, not in love, there is no answer.
Nothing speaks in the dark but the distant voices,
A child with the moon on his face, a dog's hollow cadence.
http://poemsproject.blogspot.com/2011/05/night-sounds-by-carolyn-kizer.html
Eddie Jones "Guitar Slim", 1926 -February 7, 1959 rocker / New
Orleans blues guitar player from the 1940s and 1950s best known for
the million-selling song ‘The Things That I Used to Do’, a song that
is listed in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped
Rock and Roll.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/guitar-slim-mn0000654490
Philip R. Craig (1933- May 8,2007) US mystery writer and creator of a
mystery series A Beautiful Place to Die (1989), Cliff Hanger (1993),
A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard (1998), and Vineyard Blues (2000).
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0237784/
http://www.philiprcraig.com/index.html
Douglas C. Kenney (1946–August 27, 1980) American writer and actor who
co-founded National Lampoon magazine 1970.
http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=1784074
http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=1784074
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0448469/
Thomas Lux, (1946- ).US Poet He's known for his surreal, funny poems
with titles like "Commercial Leech Farming Today," "Traveling
Exhibition of Torture Instruments," "The Oxymoron Sisters," and "Walt
Whitman's Brain Dropped on Laboratory Floor." His books of poetry
include Memory's Handgrenade (1972), The Blind Swimmer: Selected Early
Poems 1970–1975 (1996), and most recently, God Particles (2008).
http://www.cerisepress.com/01/01/love-it-hard-thomas-lux-on-poetry/view-all
http://www.slc.edu/news-events/events/commencement/2009/thomas-lux.html
http://plumepoetry.com/?page_id=340
Kenneth Branagh (1960 – ) Irish actor
http://www.kennethbranagh.net/
Meg White, 1974 US drumer, The White Stripes, (2003 album 'Elephant'
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/meg-white-mn0000628461
Passed:
121
Alfred Nobel (10/21/1833 –1896) Swedish chemist Swedish / Nobel
Prize ceremony on this date
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWnobel.htm
Olive Schreiner (03/24/1855 –1920) South African writer , anti-war
campaigner and intellectual.
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/SchreinerCrono.html
http://kirjasto.sci.fi/schrein.htm
Max Elskamp May 5, 1862- 1931, Antwerp), Belgian Symbolist poet /
author (Six Chansons)
Luigi Pirandello (06/28/1867 –1936) Italian playwright /writer (Enrico
IV, Nobel 1934)
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pirandel.htm
ALFRED Damon Runyan (10/04/1884 –1946) US journalist/writer (Guys & Dolls),
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0750357/
http://kirjasto.sci.fi/runyon.htm
Walter Johnson -1946 , pitcher (Nicknamed "The Big Train," Johnson
pitched his way to fame during twenty-one seasons with the Washington
Senators. His fastball is considered to be among the best in baseball
history.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html
Thomas Merton 01/31/1915 –1968) French/US priest/writer (7 Story
Mountain) Song for Nobody
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Merton%2C%20Thomas%2C%201915-1968
http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Merton/e/B000AQ6QX4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
http://www.thomasmertonsociety.org/altany1.htm
http://www.thomasmertonsociety.org.uk/index.php?page=1
Karl Barth (05/10/1886 –1968) Swiss theologian /minister (Kirchliche Dogma),
http://kbarth.org/
Otis Redding 1941-1967 singer/songwriter (Dock of Bay), dies in
plane crash at 26
http://otisredding.com/
Mark A. Van Doren (June 13, 1894- 1972) American poet, writer , a
critic, & scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University
http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/shakespeare/
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/mark_van_doren/poems
http://www.sonnets.org/vandoren.htm
Ed Wood Jr. (10/10/1924 –1978) US director, writer
http://www.edwoodonline.com/thehunt/MAIN.html
Miura Isshu 1903 - 1978 Zen teacher, Hakuin Rinzai line
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Isshu%20Miura&ie=UTF8&search-alias=books&sort=relevancerank
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (05/08/1895 –1979) US archbishop/religious
broadcaster (Life is Worth Living
http://fultonsheen.blogspot.com/
Philip MacDonald (November 5, 1900, —1980, English author of thrillers.
http://www.iblist.com/author3802.htm
http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/macdonaldbiog.htm
Freeman "Amos" Gosden May 5,1889- 1982 US radio actor (Amos 'n' Andy
http://www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/wmaq/early_wmaq/gosden_and_correll_1929.html
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/RADIO/amos/meet/meet.html
Kate Wolf (Kathryn Louise Allen) (January 27, 1942 -1986 folksinger
(Back Roads)
http://www.katewolf.com/
Anne Spencer Lindbergh,2 October 1940- 1993 Dgtr of chuck & anne ,US
Children’s Author
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-anne-spencer-lindbergh-1398347.html
http://childrensatheneum.blogspot.com/2010/03/author-of-week-anne-spencer-lindbergh.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/12/obituaries/anne-spencer-lindbergh-is-dead-flier-s-daughter-and-writer-53.html
Mary Madge Lascelles Feb.7,1900-1995 English scholar and teacher/
literary critic/poet
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-mary-lascelles-1525671.html
Eugene McCarthy (03/29/1916 –2005) US senator (MN), presidential candidate
THE MAPLE TREE
The maple tree that night
Without a wind or rain
Let go its leaves
Because its time had come.
Brown veined, spotted,
Like old hands, fluttering in blessing,
They fell upon my head
And shoulders, and then
Down to the quiet at my feet.
I stood, and stood
Until the tree was bare
And have told no one
But you that I was there
History:
1210
1869, John Campbell, governor of the Wyoming Territory, approved the
first law in U.S. history explicitly granting women the right to vote.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html
1896, Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, opened and closed in Paris. The play
caused a near-riot in the audience
http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=12/10/2012
1906 1st American awarded Nobel Peace Prize - President Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.asmainegoes.com/content/teddy-roosevelts-nobel-peace-prize-speech
1907 Ruyard Kipling receives Nobel prize for literature
http://www.britishempire.co.uk/biography/kipling.htm
1910 JD Van de Waals wins Nobel Prize for physics
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1910/waals-bio.html
Bonus Poem:
To the Lost
They came at the close of autumn, Moslem refugees from Bosnia
given shelter in this country, in the house next door, by a Yugoslav
woman in Baka.
After autumn came winter,
evergreen firs, cherry, pear, almond, plum
weathered it side by side, a magic trick of the gardener, who did
as befits a stalwart Palestinian, who built the house
now home to the Yugoslav woman, Jewish,
who took in a Moslem girl from Bosnia, whose Moslem forebears
hid her from the Nazis when she was young. Then came summer.
The refugees left.
The old man from Yugoslavia died.
In the garden, figures of tailor’s dummies fell apart
– all his life he’d made them – a severed leg, a bald head,
punctured torso, there in the garden, back and forth,
as if to show what man has done to man.
This book represents a thirty-day period of my poetry journal. Each poem addresses
the dominant thoughts occupying my mind during the early morning hours of a given
day.
Dear readers, this is my third book of poems, and inside are a special collection of what have turned out to be not only MY personal favorites, but also the favorites of many of YOU. Some of these have never been available in print before...
This is a book of free verse poetry that addresses the seven main tests in life and offers some sensible solutions to passing those tests with minimal discomfort.