24 Aug 2019
by jeannepoland
in Hermit Poet, Poetry
Tags: big city distracting for him, Coast Guard, Hermit Poet, How to be a hermit, How to tell your friends from the Apes, intelligence and instinct, isolated, Jones Beach Island, rxpanding cabin in Wales, shack, suicide, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, Will Cuppy
expanding cabin in Wales
It’s the birthday of humorist Will Cuppy (books by this author), born in Auburn, Indiana (1884). He spent seven years as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, before he finally dropped out and moved to New York City. He wrote advertising copy and tried to write a play, but it didn’t work out. He decided that the big city was too distracting for him, so he moved to Jones Beach Island, off the south shore of Long Island.
For eight years, he lived in a shack made of tarpaper, clapboard, and tin, which he called “Tottering-on-the-Brink.”
The only other people living on the island were members of the Coast Guard, who invited him to dinner, patched his roof, and rowed him to the mainland on the rare occasions when he had to go into the city. The Jones Beach State Park expanded and forced Cuppy out of his shack, so he moved back to Manhattan and published
How to be a Hermit (1929), which was a best-seller — it went through six printings in four months. In it, he wrote:
“‘A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself.”
Newfound fame and a life in Greenwich Village didn’t change Cuppy’s hermitic habits. He researched and wrote at night and slept during the day, he ordered food delivered to him, and he talked only occasionally to other people, mostly via letters. He was a prolific writer — he wrote essays for The New Yorker, and reviewed mysteries and crime fiction in his column “Mystery and Adventure” for the New York Herald Tribune — he read and reviewed more than 4,000 novels throughout his career. His essays were published in books like How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931) and How to Attract the Wombat (1949).
As Cuppy got older, he became more and more isolated, and depressed. His health deteriorated, he felt like he was being replaced by younger journalists, and he became estranged from one of his oldest friends. In 1949, he received notice that he would be evicted from the apartment where he had lived ever since he left Jones Beach Island. He committed suicide before he could be evicted. The following year, his book The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950) was published posthumously, and it spent more than four months on the New York Times best-seller list.
Cuppy said: “Intelligence is the capacity to know what we are doing and instinct is just instinct. The results are about the same.”
22 Aug 2019
by jeannepoland
in Annie Proulx-I love you!, Poetry
Tags: Annie Proulx-I love you!, born 1935, depth of writing, illustrator: J Byron Schachner, National Book Award, novel, Pulitzer Prize, short story, soul touching, write what you know and research.my life slows down
illustrator: J Byron Schachner
It’s the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Annie Proulx, born Edna Ann Proulx in Norwich, Connecticut (1935).
She said, “Spend some time living before you start writing.”
Proulx was in her 50s when she started writing fiction; her first book was a collection of short stories, Heart Songs (1988).
When her editor drew up the contract, he asked if he could put in a clause that she might someday write a novel. She said: “I just laughed madly, had not a clue about writing a novel, or even the faintest desire. I thought of myself as a short-story writer. Period, period, period.” Five years later, her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
Her books include Accordion Crimes (1996), Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999), Bird Cloud: A Memoir (2011), and Barkskins (2016).
She said: “What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence,
‘Write what you know.’
It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow.”
When I read my Proulx books, my whole life slows down.
The depth of the writing and the feel of the images are soul touching.
20 Aug 2019
by jeannepoland
in Orator tames the savage beast, Poetry
Tags: bathtub, Battle of Britain, blank verse poetry, dictated, fire, golden, goose, haggard, illustrator: J Byron Schachner, magic, moonlight, Orator tames the savage beast, Poets, Randolph Churchill, revised, scholars, The Story by Fred Chapell, Winston Churchill, witch
illustrator: J Byron Schachner
The Story
By Fred Chappell
Once upon a time the farmer’s wife
told it to her children while she scrubbed potatoes.
There were wise ravens in it, and a witch
who flew into such a rage she turned to brass.
The story wandered about the countryside until
adopted by the palace waiting maids
who endowed it with three magic golden rings
and a handsome prince named Felix.
Now it had both strength and style and visited
the household of the jolly merchant
where it was seated by the fire and given
a fat gray goose and a comic chambermaid.
One day alas the story got drunk and fell
in with a crowd of dissolute poets.
They drenched it with moonlight and fever and fed it
words from which it never quite recovered.
Then it was old and haggard and disreputable,
carousing late at night with defrocked scholars
and the swaggering sailors in Rattlebone Alley.
That’s where the novelists found it.
“The Story” by Fred Chappell from The Yellow Shoe Poets: Selected Poems 1964-1999. © Louisiana State University Press, 1999
It was on this day in 1940 that Winston Churchill delivered a speech to the House of Commons with the famous line: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” The Battle of Britain was raging, and he was referring to the small group of the Royal Air Force who had successfully held off the much larger Luftwaffe, the German air force.
Churchill wrote all of his own speeches, and he was a gifted orator, but people thought that his vocabulary and style of speaking were old-fashioned. But after the beginning of World War II, Churchill’s dramatic rhetoric fit the mood of the country.
His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, served in the Parliament and was a talented debater, famous for making spontaneous speeches. Winston, on the other hand, labored over every speech. He brainstormed, researched, planned out the speech in his head, then dictated it aloud to his secretary. From there, he revised it several times and typed it up in what he called “psalm form.” His speeches looked like blank verse poetry on the page, so that the rhythm and pauses were laid out just how he wanted them. Before Churchill delivered a speech, he would practice over and over, sometimes in the bathtub.
17 Aug 2019
by jeannepoland
in betwisk, Poetry
Tags: bent, betwisk, blankness full of meaning, buckle, contort, corkscrew, curling, distort, intertwine, Moby Dick, ringlet, spin, spiral, swivel, synonyms, twiddle, warp, wring
Natalist Owl
A Blankness Full of Meaning (Moby Dick)
synonyms for “betwisk:
bent
curling
buckle
warp
distort
ringlet
wring
intertwine
twiddle
swivel
spin
spiral
corkscrew
contort
16 Aug 2019
by jeannepoland
in acting is what you do when someone else is ready, Poetry
Tags: 1945, acting is what you do when someone else is ready, and acting..., comedian and actor, humorist: Steve Martin, plays and novels, Real joy is in constructing a sentence, Waco Texas, writing is what you do when you are ready
Real joy is in constructing a sentence!
It’s the birthday of humorist Steve Martin,
born in Waco, Texas (1945).
He’s known as a comedian and actor,
but he has also written several plays and novels, including WASP (1995), Shopgirl (2000), and An Object of Beauty (2010).
He said: “The real joy is in constructing a sentence.
But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready
and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.”
14 Aug 2019
by jeannepoland
in Poetry, romantic about death
Tags: children again, Death Again, Jim Harrison, last kiss, lovers, Mau, our most unique act, placid lake, romantic about death, slide, solitary loon, sun penetrates only so far, two eggs, water is deep
illustrated by Mau
Death Again
by Jim Harrison
Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl
or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin
after the fluids have been drained, or better yet,
slide into the fire. Of course it’s a little hard
to accept your last kiss, your last drink,
your last meal about which the condemned
can be quite particular as if there could be
a cheeseburger sent by God. A few lovers
sweep by the inner eye, but it’s mostly a placid
lake at dawn, mist rising, a solitary loon
call, and staring into the still, opaque water.
We’ll know as children again all that we are
destined to know, that the water is cold
and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far.
Jim Harrison, “Death Again” from Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems. Copyright © 2011 by Jim Harrison. Used by permission of The Permissions Company LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press,
(today’s post is for Ginny)
13 Aug 2019
by jeannepoland
in Poetry, things that cannot die
Tags: hand pushed lines in the paper, infinity times a million, lost swan, love, morning laughter, My love for you, Paige Riehl, piano notes, spoon in cup of tea, the Kelly and Frank kids, things that cannot die
the Kelly and Frank kids (LOVE)
Things That Cannot Die
by Paige Riehl
A spoon in a cup of tea.
Letters in yellow envelopes,
the way a hand pushed lines
into the soft paper.
Morning laughter.
A white shirt draped
over her chair.
An open window. The air.
Call of one blackbird.
Silence of another.
November. Summer.
My love for you, I say.
My love for you infinity
times a million, my son says.
Sounds of piano notes
as they rest in treetops.
The road from here to there.
Grief, that floating, lost swan.
“Things That Cannot Die” by Paige Riehl from Suspension. © Terrapin Books, 2018.
12 Aug 2019
by jeannepoland
in Poetry, under the gown
Tags: accidents, catheter, cold wet feeling, colostomy, diligence, Julie Rohan Zoch, mattress, patience, pole, qualities worn in heaven, sleep's gentle release, tubes, under the gown, waiting 78 years
illustrator: Julie Rowan Zoch
waiting 78 years…
for a colostomy bag on my right
and a catheter on my left
for a pole laden with tubes to drag behind while I walk the halls…
for a way to keep accidents from the bed
mattress, mattress cover, sheets, comforter, carpet, gown,
and avoid the cold wet feeling that robs me of sleep’s gentle release.
More chance to practice diligence
patience
and other qualities
worn in heaven.
all rights
Jeanne
11 Aug 2019
by jeannepoland
in my tempur-pedic, Poetry
Tags: 6 inches more, aids, comfort when you sprawl, doc, haspital bed for all, ICU, left early, longing for my bed, made the bed, my tempur-pedic, nurse, orderly, raises heads, remote control, Shady Groveby Anonymous
my tempur-pedic mattress with remote taken by my iPhone 6+
my tempur-Pedic
I love my tempur-Pedic
I told the nurse, and doc.
All the folk in ICU,
All the aids and jocks.
I made the bed each morning
I pulled the linens tight;
One nurse laughed: “You look like
an orderly tyke!
I left the hospital early
longing for my bed
with remote control, 6 inches more,
and tempur-Pedic spread.
Now family have an option:
A hospital bed for ALL!
It raises heads and feet and more-
brings comfort when you sprawl!
(all rights) Jeanne
This AM I read this poem on the Poetry Almanac, and somehow it spurred me to write this one. Perhaps it needs to be put to Music!
Shady Grove
by Anonymous
Shady grove, my true love,
Shady grove I know,
Shady grove, my true love,
I’m bound for the shady grove.
Peaches in the summertime,
Apples in the fall,
If I can’t get the girl I love,
Won’t have none at all.
Wish I had a banjo string,
Made of golden twine,
And every tune I’d pick on it—
Is ‘I wish that girl was mine.’
Some come here to fiddle en dance,
Some come here to tarry,
Some come here to fiddle en dance,
I come here to marry.
Shady grove, my little love,
Shady grove, my darlin’,
Shady grove, my little love
Goin’ back to Harlan.
Fly around, my blue-eyed girl,
Fly around, my daisy,
Fly around, my blue-eyed girl,
Nearly drive me crazy.
“Shady Grove” by Anonymous.
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