Poetry Fortifies Your Inner Life

‘If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.’ – Seamus Heaney

Born on April 13, 1939, Heaney is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. A native of Northern Ireland, he was raised in County Derry, and later lived for many years in Dublin.         Author of over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."     For Saturday’s Poem, here is Heaney’s,

Follower

My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

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It's What You Do - Every Day

“Whether I'm critically well received, whether or not I sell books - of course it becomes progressively harder to get them published - nevertheless, it's what I do, every day.” – Tama Janowitz

Born on this date in 1957, Janowitz is part of the celebrated “Brat Pack” group of authors – along with Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney from the 1980s.   A novelist, short story writer, and close friend of artist Andy Warhol, she first gained acclaim through her 1986 short story collection Slaves of New York, later adapted into a film starring Bernadette Peters.

Author of 7 novels, that short story collection, and 3 nonfiction books, including a celebrated memoir, she lived in both Manhattan and Brooklyn before settling near Ithaca, NY, where she continues to write and sometimes teach. 

Among her many awards are the graduate fellowship that led to an MFA degree from Columbia, the Alfred Hodder Fellowship in the Humanities at Princeton University, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.   While she’s been chastised for her seeming obsession with money – a focus of many of her works – she says it’s just the part of life she’s chosen for her writings.

Her 2016 memoir, Scream: A Memoir of Glamour and Dysfunction, not only touches on that but also her somewhat “wild child” early life that often put her into the gossip columns and (some say) helped her book sales. But Janowitz has no deep desire to relive those years. “I did not particularly like being semi-famous,” she said.       “I did not write books to be liked.”

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That 'Itch' To Share

“A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.” – Leo Rosten

Born on April 10, 1908, Rosten was an American novelist, scriptwriter and humorist who also had a deep interest in the relationship of politics and the media and the intricacies of their connections. 

                             An immigrant (from Russia), Rosten grew up in New York City, started writing at age 9 and worked his way through all levels of school, including earning his doctorate degree at the University of Chicago.   After starting as an economist, he did a series of government information jobs during WWII, wrote the first of many successful screenplays, and began a writing career that included 22 years at Look magazine as a feature writer and essayist.  Fascinated by the power of of well-placed words, he once noted, “Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.”

Rosten, who died in 1997, counted major luminaries in journalism, politics and the cinema as friends and confidantes and was a much sought-after speaker.  His quotes were often shared, including one of his most famous – a version of which is often misattributed to Emerson.  "The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable.  It is to be compassionate.  It is to matter; to have it make some difference that you lived."

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Celebrating Libraries

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” – Walter Cronkite 

This is National Library Week (April 8-14) and today (April 11) is National Bookmobile Day.   Celebrated since 1958, National Library Week is sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country.   It is a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation's libraries and librarians and to promote library use and support. All types of libraries - school, public, academic and special - participate.   This year’s theme is “Libraries Transform: Libraries Lead.”

National Bookmobile Day is an opportunity for bookmobiles fans to make their support known—through thanking bookmobile staff, writing a letter or e-mail to their libraries, or voicing their support to community leaders.          

                                                                              Walter Cronkite & Misty Copeland

This year’s National Library Week Honorary Chairperson is American Ballet Theater principal dancer Misty Copeland, who also is a 3-time best-selling author for her memoir, Life in Motion, her picture book, Firebird, and her young people’s book, Ballerina Body. 

When asked by writer Amy Carlton what role libraries have played in her own life, Copeland said, “As a child, the library was a place to dream, learn, and escape. When you don’t have the means to travel or see possibilities for yourself, you can be transported through books and pushed to use your imagination.”

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'Ringing True' on Stage and Screen

“The films of which I'm most proud I've written are the ones that pivot on forgiveness.” – Peter Morgan

Born on this date in 1963, Morgan is a British film writer and playwright best known for writing the historical films and plays The Queen and Frost/Nixon, and for creating Netflix’s wildly successful drama series The Crown.   He also co-wrote the screenplay for the multi-award winning movie The Last King of Scotland.  In 2008, Morgan was ranked number 28 on "The 100 most powerful people in British culture" list.

The son of immigrants who fled to Great Britain to escape the Nazis (his father) and Soviet repression (his mother), he started writing while in college at the University of Leeds and had modest success with his early work until his big breakthrough with The Queen, for which he won a Golden Globe and lead actor Helen Mirren an Academy Award.   Since then, everything he’s written has been successful and influential.      In 2016 he was honored as Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to drama, and in 2017, he was awarded the prestigious British Film Institute Fellowship.

His advice to writers is to think about the audience, especially writing for the stage.   “As a dramatist, you have 200 choices at every fork in the road. But the audience will reject it if you make the wrong choice, if they feel you are trying to shape the character in a way that suits you.  It rings false immediately.  People can sense when you're being cynical or schematic.”

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The Magnificent Seven

My friend and fellow author John Cahill, who lives and writes in Vienna, Austria, recently posted a challenge to me on Facebook to share “7 Books That Made An Impact On Me” as a writer.  While I first thought about my childhood days when I devoured stories of the Old West or books like Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer and The Wind in the Willows, I decided it was probably books I read in my late Teens and early 20s that propelled me along the path to writing historical fiction and adventure stories.  It's hard to select just 7.  Think about books that you have liked and felt made an impact on your own life or your own writing.   The list can become very long, indeed.

Anyway, here are my 7 choices (and a bit about each) of books that made an impact on my writing, particularly my inclination to take real historical figures and employ them as “characters” who interact with the characters I create. 

 All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

Warren’s tale of power and corruption in the Depression-era South is a deep meditation on the unforeseen consequences of every human act, the vexing connectedness of all people and the possibility— even if  not much of one—of goodness in a sinful world. Willie Stark, Warren’s lightly disguised version of Huey Long, the onetime Louisiana strongman/governor, starts as a hero of the people and ends as a murderous populist demagogue.  Jack Burden, his press agent, carries out the boss’s orders, first without objection, then with an increasingly troubled conscience.   A remarkable and troubling tale, especially when taken in context of today’s political world.

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

Wouk’s 1951 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel grew out of his personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific Theater in World War II, dealing with, among other things, the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by the captains of ships. The mutiny of the title is legalistic, not violent, and takes place in December 1944. The court-martial that results provides the dramatic climax to the plot.   And, it sets the stage for his later books Winds of War and War & Remembrance.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

It would have been very easy to write a novel about a rape trial involving a black man and a white woman, set in the deep, deeply racist South and seen through the eyes of a young girl, but thankfully that is not To Kill a Mockingbird.  The young girl is the curious, clear-eyed Scout, and her father, who defends the accused, is Atticus Finch, what we can only all hope is a standard for our justice system.   Lee’s story is neither simple nor sentimental, but is instead a classic of moral complexity and an endlessly renewable fund of wisdom about the nature of human decency.

Hawaii by James Michener

Written in episodic format like many of Michener's works, the book narrates the story of the original Hawaiians who sailed to the islands from Bora Bora, to the early American missionaries (in this case, Calvinist missionaries) and merchants, to the Chinese and Japanese immigrants who traveled to work and seek their fortunes on the Islands.   Opening with the formation of the islands millions of years ago and ending just as Hawaii is to become our 50^th State, each page-turning section explores the experiences of different groups of arrivals and their ultimate melding into the Society that is today’s Hawaii and a reflection on the American melting pot and dream.

  

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

  

The Crystal Cave is the first in a quintet of five magical novels covering the Arthurian legend and the life of the magician Merlin.  Part of its attraction is that it isn’t about King Arthur as such, but about the events that led up to Arthur being born.  This book and the subsequent ones in the series are great examples of taking mythology, history, fantasy and real events from the times and combining them into a jaw-dropping narrative. 

The Winds of War by Herman Wouk

Out of Caine Mutiny came Wouk’s amazing The Winds of War, published in 1971 and followed seven years later by War and Remembrance.  Those two books are really just one gigantic novel totaling nearly 2000 pages.  These remarkable stories are tales of the time, historical fiction permeated with gripping drama and intrigue.  They feature a mixture of real and fictional characters all connected to the extended family of Victor "Pug" Henry, a middle-aged Naval Officer and confidante of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  All 3 books are historical fiction at its finest.

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

Doctorow’s tale of the American past remade the historical novel. In a story spanning the first decades of the 20th century, three groups of fictional characters — a white middle-class family, a family of Jewish immigrants, and an African-American couple — lead lives entwined with one another and with some of the great public figures of the day, including Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman, Henry Ford and Sigmund Freud. The interaction of real and fictional characters isn’t new in itself, of course, but with this absolutely amazing book, Doctorow makes it feel that way.





 

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Maya Angelou's Legacy

“A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.” –  Maya Angelou

Born on April 4, 1928, poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist Angelou left a lasting legacy.  She published 7 autobiographies, 3 books of essays, several books of poetry, and a long list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning some 50 years.          The recipient of dozens of awards, she was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom and more than 50 honorary degrees before her death in 2014.    For Saturday’s Poem, here is Angelou’s,

                                     When You Come

                                                                                                                                               

                         When you come to me, unbidden,
                         Beckoning me
                         To long-ago rooms,
                         Where memories lie.

                         Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
                         Gatherings of days too few.
                         Baubles of stolen kisses.
                         Trinkets of borrowed loves.
                         Trunks of secret words,

                          I CRY.

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