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Emma Lazarus, Sylvia Plath, Men
On this day in 1884 the cornerstone was laid for the Statue of Liberty. Among the thousands who helped Joseph Pulitzer raise the money for construction were Whitman and Twain -- each donated manuscripts for auction -- but Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus," raised more than these literary giants. Decades later, Sylvia Plath would join the giant-killing with her "Colossus."
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on this day in 2006 . i got up early than usual .n' i decided to write something to make this day unusual . hehe .
On this day in 1786, twenty-seven-year-old Robert Burns served the last of three public penances for "ante-nuptial fornication" with his eventual wife, Jean Armour. The "fornication police," as Burns called them, allowed the poet to stand in his usual pew, rather than make him sit on the penitential stool -- or, again in Burns parlance, "the Creepie Chair."
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Ulysses in America
On this day in 1934, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling allowing James Joyce's Ulysses into America. This enabled Random House to issue the first U.S. edition, over a decade after Sylvia Beach's original Paris edition; according to Random House editor Bennett Cerf, the case hinged entirely and hilariously upon one of these smuggled Beach editions.
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On this day in 1965, Shirley Jackson died of heart failure, at the age of forty-eight. For twenty years and from various angles Jackson had built a reputation for quietly ripping the lid off life in Pleasantville; by the end, a tangle of physical and mental ailments made her feel unable to venture out into her own town of Bennington, Vermont.
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On this day in 1922 Philip Larkin was born. Larkin's mordant tone and accessible verse became so popular in mid-twentieth-century Britain that he was offered the Poet Laureateship shortly before his death in 1985-a position which he characteristically declined. Over the next decade, after his Collected Poems, his Selected Letters and a biography by Andrew Motion (the current Poet Laureate) appeared, some found "the sewer under the national monument Larkin became."
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August 9th
On this day in 1631, was born John Dryden, the poet.
On this day in 1593 was born Izaac Walton, author of the Compleat Angler.
On this day in 1637, Edward King, college friend of John Milton, was drowned at sea; three months later, Milton published his commemorative poem, "Lycidas." This is one of the major contributions to the elegiac tradition, giving not only inspiration to Shelley ("Adonais") and Tennyson ("In Memoriam") but a title to Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel.
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On this day in 1937, expatriate Edith Wharton died in France, in the quiet, Old World style she liked to live and describe; also on this day in 1937, and in New World contrast, ex-expatriate Ernest Hemingway bared his hairy chest to Max Eastman's unhairy one, demanded "What do you mean accusing me of impotence?" and then wrestled Eastman to the floor.
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On this day in 1827 William Blake died at the age of sixty-nine. Blake's last years passed more or less as his others: in such poverty and obscurity that his burial in Bunhill Fields was largely unnoticed and on borrowed money -- nineteen shillings for an unmarked grave, the body nine feet down, stacked on top of three others, and eventually followed by four more.
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On this day in 1923, Ernest Hemingway published his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems. This was an edition of 300 copies, put out by friend and fellow expatriate, the writer-publisher Robert McAlmon. Both had arrived in Paris in 1921, Hemingway an unpublished 22-year-old with a handful of letters of introduction provided by Sherwood Anderson, and with his own clear imperative: "All you have to do is write one true sentence."
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On this day in 1834, nineteen-year-old Richard Dana boarded the merchant brig, Pilgrim for the Boston-California return voyage that would become Two Years Before the Mast. His 1840 book, written with a desire to tell in "a voice from the forecastle" of the ordinary seaman's life, was an immediate international hit.
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August 20th
On this day in 1591 was born Robert Herrick, poet.
On this day in 1305 Scotland's William Wallace was executed -- to be accurate: hanged, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered. The William Wallace legend and the popularity of the Braveheart movie owe much to a 15th century epic poem by Blind Harry the Minstrel. Robert Burns added to Wallace literature too, though his "Scots Wha Hae" went forth behind cover.
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August 23rd
On this day in 1628, the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated in Portsmouth, providing Alexandre Dumas with a chapter or so in Three Musketeers. I think I'll just nip down to the hostelry opposite to the house where the event took place, and drink a toast to Felton, the assassin.
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