A Writer's Moment: Celebrating Nature's Delights

A Writer's Moment: Celebrating Nature's Delights: Born in Leeds, England on this date in 1835, Austin authored 19 books of poetry, 7 dramatic works, and 3 novels in addition to dozens...

Celebrating Nature's Delights

Born in Leeds, England on this date in 1835, Austin authored 19 books of poetry, 7 dramatic works, and 3 novels in addition to dozens of stand-alone essays and long poems.  The most effective characteristic of Austin's writing was a genuine and intimate love of nature, highlighted perhaps by his long poems The Garden that I love and In Veronica's Garden.  He also served as Poet Laureate of Great Britain in the 1890s.

For Saturday’s Poem, here is Austin’s,

 

A Last Request

Let not the roses lie
Too thickly tangled round my tomb,
Lest fleecy clouds that skim the summer sky,
Flinging their faint soft shadows, pass it by,
And know not over whom.

And let not footsteps come
Too frequent round that nook of rest;
Should I-who knoweth?-not be deaf, though dumb,
Bird's idle pipe, or bee's laborious hum,
Would suit me, listening, best.

And, pray you, do not hew
Words to provoke a smile or sneer;
But only carve-at least if they be true-
These simple words, or some such, and as few,
``He whom we loved lies here.''

And if you only could
Find out some quite sequestered slope
That, girt behind with undeciduous wood,
In front o'erlooks the ocean-then I should
Die with a calmer hope.

And if you will but so
This last request of mine fulfil,
I rest your debtor for the final throw
And if I can but help you where I go,
Be sure, fond friends, I will.

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A Writer's Moment: 'Creating Pictures In People's Minds'

A Writer's Moment: 'Creating Pictures In People's Minds': “Life happens, and I write about it wherever I am.” – Melissa Etheridge     A native of Leavenworth, KS, Etheridg...

'Creating Pictures In People's Minds'

“Life happens, and I write about it wherever I am.” – Melissa Etheridge

  

A native of Leavenworth, KS, Etheridge was born on this date in 1961 and almost from the time she could walk and talk she was interested in music, singing everywhere she went and learning to play the guitar at age 8.

Known for her mixture of "confessional lyrics, pop-based folk-rock, and raspy, smoky vocals," her songs often are inspired by her own experiences. “But, sometimes,” she said,  “they (the words) are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.”  Her writing and singing have earned her both Grammy and Oscar Awards as well as dozens of other honors, including her own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. 

     Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 (now in remission) she underwent surgery and chemotherapy and said it caused her to celebrate life each and every day. "I don't have a bucket list," she said.  "Whatever I do each day IS my bucket list."

A champion for gay rights, environmental issues and the use of biofuels, she can be seen regularly on YouTube not only supporting those causes but also providing “from home” entertainment during the Coronavirus.  There are well over 100 YouTube videos of her performing.

 “As an artist, singer and songwriter,” she noted,  “I try to use my words to create pictures in people's minds.”

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A Writer's Moment: Our Greatest Man-Made Machine

A Writer's Moment: Our Greatest Man-Made Machine: “Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all – not the car, not the TV, not the computer or the smartphone." - Ken Bu...

Our Greatest Man-Made Machine

“Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all – not the car, not the TV, not the computer or the smartphone." - Ken Burns 

During this time of quarantine, we've had the opportunity to watch Burns' award-winning series Baseball, not only America's Pastime but also a reflection on American life, culture and development as a nation during the past 150 years.  I commend it to every writer (and reader), not only as a cathartic film during these pandemic times but also as an example of how the concise use of words - here as scripting for these wonderful shows - can be just as powerful and meaningful as the greatest literary volumes.

“Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts," Burns said to a graduating class in 2015 in advising what the graduates can ask of their country's leaders.   "They (science and the arts) have nothing to do with the actual defense of the country – they just make the country worth defending.”

 

Ken Burns

A Writer's Moment: A Page A Day; A Lifetime Of Achievement

A Writer's Moment: A Page A Day; A Lifetime Of Achievement: “I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.” – Herman Wouk Born on this date in 1915, Wouk ad...

A Page A Day; A Lifetime Of Achievement

“I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.” – Herman Wouk

Born on this date in 1915, Wouk admired those who could write humor.  But after starting as a gag writer for comedian Fred Allen, he turned his focus to historical fiction like the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Caine Mutiny, and his bestselling two-book series The Winds of War and The War and Remembrance.   All three were also made into popular movies. 

    Called by The Washington Post "the reclusive dean of American historical novelists, “ Wouk always treasured his privacy despite his public persona.  Born and raised in New York City he was leaning toward a business career when WWII intervened and he signed up for the Navy.  It was during time aboard two destroyer minesweepers that he started writing and became an instant success with his first effort, Aurora Dawn.

After 6 years in the service – where he earned 8 battle stars and multiple other awards for his heroism – he turned to writing full time with some of his most memorable works based on naval characters and battles, both from history and from his time in the military.  Wouk kept a personal diary from 1937 until age 100 (he lived to 103, dying just 10 days short of 104).  His extensive journals, numbering over 100 volumes, were donated to the Library of Congress with the first batch given at the ceremony honoring him with the first Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award for the Writing of Fiction. 

Wouk said he often referred to his journals to check dates and facts in his writing and always found writing to be both cathartic and a life’s purpose.  In addition to those journals and hundreds of essays, he wrote more than two dozen bestselling books. 

His advice to success in writing was simple:  “Write a page a day.   It will add up.”

 

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A Writer's Moment: Living On Through The Life You've Shared

A Writer's Moment: Living On Through The Life You've Shared: “We all lose somebody we care about and want to find some comforting way of dealing with it, something that will give ...

Living On Through The Life You've Shared

“We all lose somebody we care about and want to find some comforting way of dealing with it, something that will give us a little closure, a little peace.” – Mitch Albom

A best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster, and musician, Albom’s books have sold nearly 40 million copies.  His Tuesdays With Morrie, equally successful as both a play and a movie, continues to touch people’s lives through the wisdom that Albom was able to pass along from the conversations he had with his dying friend.   

   Born in New Jersey on May 23, 1958 (he now lives in Michigan) Albom was first a successful sportswriter before becoming – almost by accident – a phenomenal chronicler of people’s lives and hopes and the inspiration they brought to others, especially prescient on Memorial Day.    Among his most popular books are the “Heaven” novels –The Five People You Meet in Heaven; The First Phone Call from Heaven; and The Next Person You Meet In Heaven – all massive best sellers.

“I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages, sometimes I write them in a column, sometimes in a novel, sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction,” Albom said.   “But at the core I always say to myself, 'Is this something people want to read?'  I believe that you live on inside the hearts and minds of everyone you've touched while you were here on earth."

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A Writer's Moment: 'Every Day Is The Best Day'

A Writer's Moment: 'Every Day Is The Best Day': “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson When I focused on Emer...

'Every Day Is The Best Day'

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I focused on Emerson in yesterday’s “Saturday’s Poem” feature, it seemed that there was so much more to share.  Eminently quotable, Emerson was the first American to advocate for Americans to develop a writing style of their own; to create “American” writing and not just copy that of their forebears from other parts of the world.

He was born on May 25, 1803, on the day of the commissioning of Lewis and Clark's great expedition into the Louisiana Purchase.  Thus, as the Corps of Discovery was created to open American frontiers, this great writer and thinker was born to a similar pathway – only toward discovery of the written word. 

Emerson was one of the first writers to keep journals, influencing his great friend Henry David Thoreau to do the same.  Emerson’s lifelong extensive journals and notes ultimately were published in 16 volumes by Harvard University Press and are considered to be his key literary works – even though that was not his intent.  “I just wanted to maintain a record of the things that were important to my life,” he wrote.   As it turned out, they are things that have influenced generations of writers both in their content and the practice of journaling itself. 

He was a staunch supporter of education for girls and women and helped found a Massachusetts school for girls.  And, from the mid-1840s on, he was a national leader of the abolitionist movement.  Known for his kindness and support of others, he said simply, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”

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A Writer's Moment: Seeing Little Miracles Everywhere

A Writer's Moment: Seeing Little Miracles Everywhere: ''The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.'' – Ralph Waldo Emerson Bo...

Seeing Little Miracles Everywhere

''The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.'' – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Born in Boston on May 25, 1803, Emerson became known as The Sage of Boston for his myriad essays, philosophical treatises and thoughtful poems.  

"Trust thyself" was both Emerson's motto and the code of writers like Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and W. E. Channing.   And while he was not best known for his poetry, his prose was written in a poetic style of recurring themes and images.    His often-shared essay, "Self-Reliance," encourages readers to explore relationships with Nature and God while trusting their own judgment above all others.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Emerson’s,

Fable

The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter "Little Prig."
Squirrel replied,
"You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it's no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I'll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ: all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut."

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A Writer's Moment: A Formula For Wisdom

A Writer's Moment: A Formula For Wisdom: “No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday...

A Formula For Wisdom

“No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday. Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, and that mercy show to me.” – Alexander Pope

Pope is credited with some of the most lasting and well-used sayings in our lexicon:  “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”  “To err is human, to forgive divine” and  “Hope springs eternal in the human breast” being just a few.

Born in England on this date in 1688, Pope was a sickly child who was mostly self-educated, reading voraciously and teaching himself Latin and Greek while studying the works of Homer and Virgil and the great English writers Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dryden.    Fascinated by languages and how they related to one-another, he also learned French, German and Italian so he could read great works of literature in the languages in which they were first written.

Finding that Homer’s work was skewed in English translations, he set out to “translate it correctly,” and his finished piece has been cited as THE great translation of the great epic poet.  Once he began writing down his own thoughts he became the second-most frequently quoted writer in the Oxford Dictionary, only after Shakespeare.  

 “True ease in writing,” he said, “comes from art, not chance, just as those move easiest who have learned to dance.”

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A Writer's Moment: Born With 'Ink In Her Blood'

A Writer's Moment: Born With 'Ink In Her Blood': “The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.” – Margery Allingham There’s a saying about crusty old journali...

Born With 'Ink In Her Blood'

“The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable.” – Margery Allingham

There’s a saying about crusty old journalists that they were born with “ink in their blood,” but it’s a phrase that also applies to the genteel and light-hearted Allingham, who was born into a writing family and probably started putting pen to paper before she could even walk or talk.

Writing steadily almost from the time she was first in school, Margery was the daughter of two well-established newspaper writers who probably thought nothing of the fact that their daughter was already considered accomplished in writing before she reached age 10, when her first plays were already being performed in schools.

Ultimately this British writer (born on this date in 1904) focused on crime and mystery writing and created one of the most well-known crime detectives of the mid-20^th Century, the sleuth Albert Campion.  And, ironically, Campion was put into her first novel almost as an afterthought.  But he was such an optimistic and interesting character that her publishers demanded more stories that would focus on him.    With that encouragement and her creative and imaginative mind, Margery went to work and wrote nearly 30 novels with Campion (who many thought to be her alter-ego) at the center of all the action.

Allingham died at age 62 from breast cancer but ever the optimist, she laid out ideas for several more novels “just in case they’re wrong and I’m not really dying.”  As she noted just a few days before her death, “If one cannot command attention by one’s admirable qualities, one can at least be a nuisance.”

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A Writer's Moment: 'Keeping A Record'

A Writer's Moment: 'Keeping A Record': “Writers should know when not to intervene, for very little of any life can be tidily explained and its seams made straight.” – Gloria Em...

'Keeping A Record'

“Writers should know when not to intervene, for very little of any life can be tidily explained and its seams made straight.” – Gloria Emerson

Born in Manhattan on this date in 1929, Emerson intended to be a full-time novelist but gravitated to journalistic feature writing first when she discovered “numerous untold behind-the=scenes stories just waiting to be told.”  Ultimately she achieved fame in both arenas as a war correspondent for The New York Times and winner of the National Book Award for her Vietnam War masterpiece Winners and Losers. 

                                     Among her most famous feature stories was an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, during which she disputed the effectiveness of Lennon and Ono's anti-war campaign. Her skeptical approach enraged Lennon and became famous as an example of the establishment press’s resistance to the Lennons' peace movement. The interview is prominently featured in the 1988 documentary Imagine: John Lennon and the 2006 movie The U.S. vs. John Lennon.  Emerson said she believed the Beatles and Lennon "could have stopped the war" had they performed for U.S. troops in Vietnam.

Her Vietnam War dispatches won a George Polk Award for excellence in foreign reporting, and later a Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications.   Over her long career she wrote 4 major books and myriad articles for such wide-ranging magazines and newspapers as The New York Times, Esquire, Harper's, Vogue, Playboy and The Rolling Stone. 

“I didn't write to be famous,” she said.  “I wrote to keep a record.”

 

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A Writer's Moment: Powerful Imagination At Work

A Writer's Moment: Powerful Imagination At Work: “Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus ...

Powerful Imagination At Work

“Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.” – L. Frank Baum

Baum, who was born May 15, 1856 in New York, not only won lasting success but also several spots in the lexicon with his imagination by creating The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.   And while that is the story for which he is mainly remembered, he wrote some 60 other novels, 83 short stories, 200 poems and countless scripts, produced on stage and in the fledgling movie industry of the early 1900s. 

       Baum also was a newspaper editor for several years, working at the Saturday Evening Pioneer in Aberdeen, S.D.  He said it was his newspaper work in what was first the Dakota Territory and then South Dakota that led to his long and lucrative writing career.

His 1880s experiences on the Dakota prairies, in fact, became his model for the rural setting at the beginning of Dorothy’s journey into Oz.  But, of course he decided at the last minute – maybe to stop friends from thinking “Hey, that character sounds like me” – to change the location to Kansas, which he had never visited.

And thus, along with Dorothy, Toto, the Tin man and his idea that a land could be found somewhere over the rainbow, his phrase “Toto I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” would become one of the most recognizable in the English language.   It’s probably for the best, since it has a much better ring to it than “I don’t think we’re in South Dakota anymore.”

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A Writer's Moment: His Lasting Art of Reflection

A Writer's Moment: His Lasting Art of Reflection: “The history of catastrophe requires such a literature to hold a broken mirror up to broken nature.” – Edward Kamau Brathwaite      Born ...