Apologies for missing yesterday's. Was out all day.
In other news, we mourn the passing yesterday of New Hampshire Poet Laureate Walter Butts to cancer.
April 1
Events:
Fool’s Day-thank you!
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/apr01.html
Coming Up-
April 20 Manchester SLAM FREE OR DIE presents the 2013 NH POETRY SLAM FINALS! NO open mic or feature We want to get right to the main event! Doors open at 7pm. $5 cover. Slam starts at 8. som of New Hampshire's most talented poets go head to head to secure 1 out of 5 spots on the 2013 NH Poetry Slam Team, which will be competing at this year's National Poetry Slam, being held this August in Boston! Expect spectacular performances all around in this no-holds-barred knock-down drag-out poetic battle royale!10 poets 2 rounds! on this night, som of New Hampshire's most talented poets go head to head to secure 1 out of 5 spots on the 2013 NH Poetry Slam Team, which will be competing at this year's National Poetry Slam, being held this August in Boston! Expect spectacular performances all around in this no-holds-barred knock-down drag-out poetic battle royale! on this night, som of New Hampshire's most talented poets go head to head to secure 1 out of 5 spots on the 2013 NH Poetry Slam Team, which will be competing at this year's National Poetry Slam, being held this August in Boston! Expect spectacular performances all around in this no-holds-barred knock-down drag-out poetic battle royale! Milly's Tavern. 500 Commercial St, Manchester, http://www.facebook.com/events/325316237570914/
Born:
0401
William Harvey, (1578 – 06/03/1657) English physician and biologist -the man who discovered that blood circulated in a closed system of the body.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/harvey_william.shtml
John Wilmot 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647 – 07/26/1680) English writer Song
http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=4/1/2013
http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/rochester/wilmotbib.htm
Otto von Bismarck (1815 – 07/30/1898) German Chancellor
http://www.ohio.edu/chastain/ac/bism.htm
Agnes Repplier (1858 – 12/15/1950) US writer
http://www.amazon.com/Agnes-Repplier/e/B001KI2WPW
Edmond Eugège Alexix Rostand (1868-Dec.2,1918) French poet and dramatist (Cyrano de Bergerac)
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rostand.htm
http://edmondrostand.tumblr.com/
Lon Chaney (1883 – 08/26/1930) US actor
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0151606/?ref_=sr_2
Alberta Hunter (1895 – 10/17/1984) US blues singer , singing with Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, and others.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/alberta-hunter-mn0000935212
Abraham Maslow (1908 – 06/08/1970) US psychologist
http://www.altruists.org/f62
Augusta Baker (1911-1998), librarian, storyteller, and writer
William Manchester (1922 – 06/01/2004) US historian
http://www.amazon.com/William-Manchester/e/B000AQ26Q0
Anne McCaffrey (1926- 21 Nov. 2011) fantasy/sci-fi writer Dragonriders of Pern series
http://mccaffrey.srellim.org/
http://pernhome.com/aim/
Milan Kundera (1929 – ) Czech-French novelist, essayist, dramatist and poet, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984),
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/milankundera
Fortuitous Poem
Since there is no single historical event
We can count on being commonly known,
I must speak of events that took place
A few years ago as if there were a thousand years old:
In 1939, the German army entered Bohemia
And the Czech state ceased to exist.
In 1945 the Russian army entered Bohemia
And the country, one again, was called an independent republic.
The people were enthusiastic about the Russia that had driven out the Germans
And seeing in the Czech Communist Party its faithful arm, they became sympathetic to it.
So the Communists took power in February 1948
With neither bloodshed nor violence,
But greeted by the cheers of about half the nation.
And now, please note:
The half that did the cheering
Was the more dynamic,
The more intelligent,
The better.
http://jotbepoems.blogspot.com/2012/02/fortuitous-poem-by-milan-kundera.html
Samuel R[ay] Delany Jr (1942- ) US, sci-fi author
http://www.pseudopodium.org/repress/KLeslieSteiner-SamuelRDelany.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/41419
Francine Prose (1947- ). US author Judah the Pious (1973), Hungry Hearts (1983), Bigfoot Dreams (1987). Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife (2009);My New American Life (2011).
http://www.amazon.com/Francine-Prose/e/B004N6CPD2/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1364775759&sr=8-1
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/factfict/ff9803.htm
Barry Sonenfeld (1953 – ) US director
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001756/
Susan Boyle,(1961- ) Scottish singer, debut 2009 album 'I Dreamed a Dream' was the biggest selling album in the world in 2009.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/susan-boyle-mn0002124302
Apple was founded on this date in 1976. The company was formed by Steve Jobs, his friend Steve Wozniak, and a man named Ronald Wayne, who had worked with Jobs at Atari. The partners planned to produce and sell Apple personal computer kits, hand-assembled by Wozniak. They weren't personal computers as we think of them today, but were rather just motherboards.
The company was incorporated the following January, but this time without Wayne; he had lost his nerve after a couple of weeks, and sold his 10 percent share back to Jobs and Wozniak for a little over $2,000. Had he held onto it, that share would be worth around $22 billion USD today.
Wayne said later that he did not regret selling the stock—he said, "I made the best decision with the information available to me at the time." He went into the stamp and rare coin business, and didn't own an Apple computer until last year when he was given an iPad 2. (less)
Today is the birthday of political commentator Rachel Maddow (books by this author). She was born in California's Castro Valley (1973), not far from San Francisco. She was the first openly gay American to be chosen a Rhodes scholar, and she went on to become the first openly gay American news anchor. When The Rachel Maddow Show, which she hosts on the cable news channel MSNBC, debuted in 2008, it was the network's most successful launch ever.
"I do worry if being a pundit is a worthwhile thing to be," she told New York Magazine in 2008. "Yeah, I'm the unlikely cable news host. But before that, I was the unlikely Rhodes scholar. And before that, I was the unlikely kid who got into Stanford. And then I was the unlikely lifeguard. You can always cast yourself as unlikely when you're fundamentally alienated in your worldview. It's a healthy approach for a commentator." (less)
Rachel Maddow (1973- ), US Rhodes scholar, political commentator - The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC
http://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Maddow/e/B0071R4RA4/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1364775868&sr=8-1
Passed:
0401
John Langhorne (March 1735 –1779) British poet , priest and translator(with his brother, William Langhorne) English translation of Plutarch's Lives Hymn to the Rising Sun
http://www.poemhunter.com/john-langhorne/
http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/authorrecord.php?action=GET&recordid=33157
Scott Joplin (11/24/1868 – 1917) US composer
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/scott-joplin-mn0000843212
Isaac Rosenberg, (Nov 25, 1890-1918) Eng. artist and engraver as well as a poet
Creation
As the pregnant womb of night
Thrills with imprisoned light,
Misty, nebulous-born,
Growing deeper into her morn,
So man, with no sudden stride,
Bloomed into pride.
In the womb of the All-spirit
The universe lay ; the will
Blind, an atom, lay still.
The pulse of matter
Obeyed in awe
And strove to flatter
The rhythmic law.
But the will grew ; nature feared,
And cast off the child she reared,
Now her rival, instinct-led,
With her own powers impregnated.
Brain and heart, blood-fervid flowers,
Creation is each act of yours.
Your roots are God, the pauseless cause,
But your boughs sway to self windy laws.
Perception is no dreamy birth
And magnifies transfigured earth.
With each new light, our eyes receive
A larger power to perceive.
If we could unveil our eyes,
Become as wise as the All-wise,
No love would be, no mystery :
Love and joy dwell in infinity.
Love begets love ; reaching highest
We find a higher still, unseen
From where we stood to reach the first ;
Moses must die to live in Christ,
The seed be buried to live to green.
Perfection must begin from worst.
Christ perceives a larger reachless love,
More full, and grows to reach thereof.
The green plant yearns for its yellow fruit.
Perfection always is a root,
And joy a motion that cloth feed
Itself on light of its own speed,
And round its radiant circle runs,
Creating and devouring suns.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/creation-67/
Flann O'Brien (10/05/1911 –1966) Irish writer
http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/obrien_flann
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 –1976) German/French painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet-primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism.
http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=1752
http://slope.org/archive/issue16/pageernst.phtml
Marvin Gaye (04/02/1939 –1984) US singer, songwriter
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/marvin-gaye-mn0000316834
Alan Dennis Kulwicki (Dec 14, 1954 –1993), American NASCAR Winston Cup Series racer and 1992 Champion; nicknamed "Special K" and the "Polish Prince"
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2405
Sites:
http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/
http://www.westminster-abbey.org/visit-us/highlights/poets-corner
http://www.92y.org/Uptown/Tisch-Center-for-the-Arts/Unterberg-Poetry-Center.aspx
http://www.spectraaccess.com/falcon2/camera1.html?buffer=2
http://www.youtube.com/v/czRaIDiLj-4?autohide=1&version=3&autoplay=1
http://www.opensecrets.org/index.php
History:
0401
1785 Robert Burns writes his first Epistle to J. Lapraik
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/epistle-j-lapraik
1966, John Lennon bought a copy of Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience and The Tibetan Book Of The Dead
http://www.beatlesbible.com/1966/04/01/john-lennon-buys-timothy-learys-the-psychedelic-experience/
Bonus Poem:
You
You are the whole building on fire.
You are the voice of sirens. You are
the dumb crowd milling, the capture
of Weegee’s lens. You are flames
licking up the escape. You're the hovering
of a mother at the cliff of her window ledge.
You are the choice to drop her baby.
You're the chance of a beckoning crowd,
six hands gripping a sooty raincoat. You
are the only option. You're a simple drop.
Ten stories below they pray you're like a cloud,
soft floating. You are like a cloud. Grey
and you don't hold anything. You are
that moment before a falling, the falling,
a whir of falling, wail of falling, the sweet
thud. You are black blood flaring
across the concrete. You are a needle
to the groove of a very sad song.
The whole building burns with you.
SANDRA BEASLEY
From the author of Jupiter Remembered and Until It’s Time: Embracing Life In Our Later Years comes Petals of Love: Poetry of a Woman’s Soul – a heartfelt collection spanning more than thirty-five years. Through tender reflections, these poems offer g
A people’s heart can be found in their poetic words. In history men and women have stood firmly upon their soapboxes and street corners, rallying the deepest beliefs of people to rise up and be heard. The poetrypages.com has offered that voice a new
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