Rossetti, stoned again

Italian painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born on this day in 1828. He wrote:

The hour when you learn that all is vain
And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap.

To be something else than everyone else

Poet e. e. cummings, he of the no-punctuation-marks/no-capitalization style, died on this day in 1962. He wrote:

"To be nobody-but-myself--in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else..."

Or a noisy headache in a long street

English poet (and onetime Poet Laureate) John Masefield was born on this day in 1878. He wrote:


"Life is a long headache in a noisy street."
 

   Most of his life’s activity, it occurred to Sully, had consisted in just about equal parts of sports, reading and drinking. The rest had been sheer boredom. All of it had been boredom, to one degree or another, for that matter. Life was short only in retrospect; when it was happening it could take forever.  --  Chapter 22, The Misforgotten.

They sometimes make me sick when I eat them, though

Poet Walt Whitman was born on this day in 1819.

"Animals do not make me sick discussing their duty to God," Whitman wrote.

Words worth heeding

Poet William Wordsworth was born on this day in 1770. He wrote:

"Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?"

So if they're booing, wear dirt earplugs

English poet A. E. Housman was born on this day in 1859.

"Eyes the shady night have shut
Cannot see the record cut;
And silence is no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears."

-- Housman's To An Athlete Dying Young.

While we're on the subject of not hearing, Beethoven died on this day

And he never even met the Barrenmoores

Actor Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady) was born on this day in 1908.

"What a set of barren asses are actors." -- John Keats.

Ah, sweet metronome of life!

Birthday of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, born 1892. She wrote:


"It is not true that life is one damn thing after another--it is one damn thing over and over."

One thing he knew, he’d had a genuine taste for the stuff. It hadn’t always been like that; he’d had to develop it. He loved to drink. Life was, he’d seen early on, a monotony. Drinking made things interesting, at least. Therein lay his desire for it, he supposed.  --  Chapter 36, The Misforgotten.

Kipling, tippling again

Author Rudyard Kipling (Kim, Gunga Din) was born on this day in 1865. He wrote:


"Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre."

Ice cubes tinkled in Cutterback’s glass. “Let’s have another.” He called to the barmaid.

When the food came, Cutterback bit a half-moon out of his burger and said, with his mouth full, “What else can you do?”
“I’m pretty sure I can do ‘Gunga Din’.”
“Kipling?”
“Tippling.” Sully held up his glass and grinned.
“A-ha-ha-ha,” Cutterback barked. “Let’s hear it.” As Sully rendered “Gunga Din” he wolfed his food, nodding enthusiastically. When he’d finished he blew his nose again, crumpled the napkin and dropped it onto his plate.  --  Chapter 17, The Misforgotten.

He got deathly ill every Christmas-time

American poet Edward Arlington Robinson ("Miniver Cheevy") was born on this day in 1869. When he died in 1935 he was considered one of the greatest poets in America.


"The popular interpretation of Christianity," he wrote, "makes me sick."
 

   As a child Sully had thought about God only when he’d had to. Church was a dreary enough experience: The pastor’s perpetual pleas for donations, the highly unsatisfactory stories sandwiched in-between. The preacher’s exhortations to think of the Almighty as a friend and mentor were lost on Sully, who considered the whole business of God sending His own son down to suffer and die for his sake a pretty nasty one, not to mention a damn convoluted arrangement.  --  Chapter 13, The Misforgotten.

Then I'm the sanest person you'll ever meet

Emily Dickinson's birthday. She was born in 1830.


"It is essential to the sanity of mankind," she wrote, "that each one should think the other crazy."

Cutterback’s dad was a crazy alcoholic, as Cutterback had warned him, but when, the first time Sully ever met him, the old man leveled a gun at him, he was startled nonetheless. Sully had come by Cutterback’s office to help him count inventory, and after about an hour or so the old man had shown up with a case of beer, and they’d all three been drinking while Cutterback and Sully counted and Cutterback’s father told stories. Then the old man had brought out a bottle of whiskey from his cabinet and they’d started in on that, and at a certain point Cutterback had told his dad that he was in the way and holding things up. The old man had pulled out a pistol and started waving it around, and Sully had laughed at the sight of him, and it was then that he’d pointed the gun straight at Sully’s nose.  --  Chapter 25, The Misforgotten.

You might lose your place

John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, was born on this day in 1608.

"Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again." -- Samuel Johnson.

He couldn't see the forest

American poet Joyce Kilmer ("I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree") was born on this day in 1886.

"Trees, if I have the name right, is one of the most annoying pieces of verse within my knowledge." – Heywood C. Broun.

Today, everybody except me take the day off

Today is I Love to Write Day!

  "Everybody is writing, writing, writing–worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of scribblers—every damn one of us—were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work."  –  Walt Whitman.


"It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all."  –  La Bruyere.

Today's Perverse Verse:

The proliferation of The Blog
Leaves one agog.
From Chicago to Prague,
Like some noxious fog,
It hangs heavy as smog.
It's a World Wide bog,
Through which one can slog
Like a drunken hog,
Until you cry out: Aaaggh!

So she tells us

November 15, 1887 -- Poet Marianne Moore born. She wrote:

"The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease. Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best."

   She waved Doug off and tapped her cigarette ash onto the floor. She was facing Sully now.
   “I had high hopes for us, I really did,” she said. “You know that?”
   “I remember.”
   “No, you don’t. That didn’t even occur to you. Jesus, you’re a selfish bastard.”
   “Me?”
   “Sully. The name fits.”
   “Why’s that?”
   “You’ve sullied everything you’ve ever touched.”
   “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
   “Yeah. Me, too. I had hopes.” She pressed her hand to the back of his neck. “Well, thanks for the beer,” she said, and, steadying herself on his shoulder, she got up and took off.
   Maybe Dr. Johnson, Sully thought, had done too much reading and not enough drinking. There was nothing like a bar, he himself had found, for driving home to one the vanity of human hopes.  --  Chapter 21, The Misforgotten.