The Writer's Almanac (Poetry)

Saturday’s Poem: “The Miracle of Bubbles” by Barbara Goldberg, from Cautionary Tales. Saturday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of Nobel Prize-winning author Elias Canetti, born in Russe, Bulgaria (1905). He grew up a polyglot, speaking four languages by the time he was 10, and spent his life in exile…

Thursday’s Poem: “Soundings” by Joyce Sutphen, from Naming the Stars. Thursday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of crime novelist Raymond Chandler, born in Chicago, Illinois (1888). He’s known for his novels about the private detective Philip Marlow, such as The Big Sleep (1939) and The Long Goodbye (1954). He’s one of the originators of hardboiled detective fiction, and he’s known more for the style and atmosphere of his novels than his plots…

Tuesday’s Poem: “Advice to Young Poets” by Martn Espada, from The Republic of Poetry. Tuesday’s Literary Notes: It was on this day in 1855 that Ralph Waldo Emerson sent Walt Whitman a letter to “greet” him “at the beginning of a great career.” Whitman had just self-published the first edition of Leaves of Grass earlier in the year…

Sunday’s Poem: “Respite” by Jane Hirshfield, from The Lives of the Heart. Sunday’s Literary Notes: It was on this day in 1799 that French soldiers discovered a slab of rock — about 4 feet high and 2 and half feet wide, 11 inches thick and weighing 1,700 pounds, and containing some writing in three different languages — at a port town on Egypt’s Mediterranean Coast…

Friday’s Poem: “Sober Song” by Barton Sutter, from Farwell to the Starlight in Whiskey. Friday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of American mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, born in Malden, Massachusetts (1889). He wrote more than 80 mystery novels featuring the brilliant lawyer Perry Mason. He’s one of the best-selling American authors of all time…

Wednesday’s Poem: “Blue Suburban” by Howard Nemerov, from The Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov. Wednesday’s Literary Notes: It was on this day in 1889 that The Wall Street Journal was founded. In 1882, three journalists who were interested in finances — Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser — founded a little company called Dow, Jones & Company. They started hand-writing daily news bulletins, which they called “flimsies,” and delivered to customers each afternoon, and the next…

Monday’s Poem: “Money” by John Updike, from Americana and Other Poems. Monday’s Literary Notes: It was on this day in 1798 that William Wordsworth wrote one of his greatest poems, which he called “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey on revisiting the banks of the Wye Valley during a tour, July 13, 1798.” The poem is now referred to as “Tintern Abbey.”..

Saturday’s Poem: “Pink and White” by Deborah Garrison, from The Second Child. Saturday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the essayist and children’s writer E.B. White, born Elwin Brooks White in Mount Vernon, New York (1899). E.B. White said, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”..

Thursday’s Poem: “The Place I Want To Get Back To” by Mary Oliver, from Thirst. Thursday’s Literary Notes: It is the birthday of British Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe, born in London (1764). Her most famous novel was The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), which is probably best remembered today because it is the book that Jane Austen satirized in Northanger Abbey (1818). Austen’s heroine, Catherine Morland, is so caught up in The Mysteries of Udolpho that she starts to think of herself as a Gothic…

Tuesday’s Poem: “Lonely Lake” by Joyce Kennedy, from Ghost Lamp. Tuesday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of painter Marc Chagall, born in Vitebsk, Russia (1887), the eldest of nine children in a poor Jewish family. He wanted to be an artist, and he moved to St. Petersburg, where he failed his first entrance exams but eventually got accepted to art school. He went on to become a famous painter, known for his bright, dreamlike scenes. He said, “I work in whatever medium likes me at the…

Sunday’s Poem: “A Warm Summer in San Francisco” by Carolyn Miller, from Light, Moving. Sunday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of French writer and artist Jean Cocteau, born in Maisons-Laffitte, France (1889), who hung out with Picasso, Proust, and Erik Satie. Cocteau was nicknamed “the Frivolous Prince” after the title of a poetry collection he’d published at age 21. Cocteau called poetry the foundation of art, and a “religion without hope.”..

Friday’s Poem: “At the Airport Baggage Claim” by Charles Darling, from The Saints of Diminshed Capacity. Friday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of Franz Kafka, born in Prague (1883). Kafka’s best-known work is The Metamorphosis, which begins, “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning after disturbing dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous bug.”..

Wednesday’s Poem: “Advice to a Pregnant Daughter-in-Law” by Charles Darling, from The Saints of Diminished Capacity. Wednesday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of grammarian William Strunk Jr., born in Cincinnati, Ohio (1869). He was a professor at Cornell University for 46 years, and during that time, he created the “little book” known as The Elements of Style (1918) in order to make it easier to grade his students’ composition papers…

Monday’s Poem: “The Effort” by Billy Collins, from Ballistics. Monday’s Literary Notes: On this day in 1613, the Globe Theatre burned down. It was built by Shakespeare’s acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, in 1599. A cannon was fired during a performance of Henry VIII to mark the King’s entrance, the thatched roof caught fire, and the whole theater was lost in an hour…

Saturday’s Poem: “Meditation on the Word Need” by Linda Rodriguez, from Heart’s Migration. Saturday’s Literary Notes: It was on this day that respected scientist James Smithson died. He was born in England, the illegitimate son of a British nobleman and his mistress. He didn’t marry or have any children, so when he died in 1829, he left all his money to his nephew, and he wrote in his will that if his nephew died without any heirs, the money would go “to the United States of America, to...