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The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, November 4, 2024

Posted on November 4, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the man who said, “Poetry didn’t find me, in the cradle, or anywhere near it: I found it.” That’s the poet C.K. Williams, born in Newark, New Jersey (1936). He grew up in a poor family during the Depression. His early exposure to poetry was through his father, who loved to read to him from One Hundred and One Famous Poems. He went to college to play basketball, but after a required English course, he decided that he wanted to write poems.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, November 3, 2024

Posted on November 3, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

A little dog named Laika was launched into space aboard Sputnik 2 on this date in 1957. The mission for Sputnik 2 was to determine if a living animal could survive being launched into orbit. Laika was a stray that had been picked up from the Moscow streets, a 13-pound mutt with perky ears, a curly tail, and uncertain ancestry. She probably had a little spitz or terrier in her family tree, maybe a Siberian husky or even a beagle here and there. She was three years old, a good-natured dog that came to have several nicknames: Lemon, Little Curly, and Little Bug.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, November 2, 2024

Posted on November 2, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the anniversary of the maiden — and only — flight of the Spruce Goose, made on this date in 1947. It’s technically known as the H-4 Hercules, and it was made of birch, not spruce. Dreamed up by shipping magnate Henry Kaiser, and designed by Howard Hughes, it remains the largest airplane ever built, by far: It’s five stories tall, it boasts a wingspan of 320 feet, its cargo area is large enough to hold two railroad boxcars, and it has eight engines with 17-foot propellers. It was made of wood because metal was at a premium during the war, and Kaiser wanted to see if aircraft could be built using other materials.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, November 1, 2024

Posted on November 1, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is All Saints’ Day, and Pope Julius II chose this day in 1512 to display Michelangelo’s paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the first time. It took Michelangelo four years to complete the paintings that decorate the ceiling of the chapel. The paintings are of scenes from the Old Testament, including the famous center section, “The Creation of Adam.” The chapel itself was built about 25 years earlier, and various Renaissance painters were commissioned to paint frescos on the walls.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, October 31, 2024

Posted on October 31, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of John Keats, who was born in London in 1795. His father, a livery-stable manager, died when Keats was eight years old. The boy didn’t receive much formal education, but he discovered literature as a teenager, becoming first a voracious reader and then an aspiring poet. In 1817, he devoted himself to poetry. In 1818, he tended to his brother, who was dying of tuberculosis; Keats contracted the disease himself, and became increasingly ill in 1819, although he produced poetry of remarkable quality during that year, some of the best poetry of the Romantic movement.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Posted on October 30, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the poet and critic Ezra Pound, born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho. Pound is famous for championing the Modernist movement, and he did this by celebrating and encouraging other writers like W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and T. S. Eliot. He was Yeats’s personal secretary, and he wrote articles praising Joyce (and also sent him money and spare clothes,) and he is most famous for taking T.S. Eliot’s huge poem The Waste Land and suggesting cuts line by line, and eventually cutting out half of it.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Posted on October 29, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the British novelist Henry Green, born Henry Yorke in Tewkesbury, England (1905). He wrote most of his first novel while he was a teenager, going to school at Eton, a novel called Blindness (1926). Then he went to Oxford, but he mostly drank, played billiards, and went to movies. So he dropped out and went to work as a laborer in an iron foundry, a factory which made beer-bottling machines and plumbing equipment, and he used that experience to write his second novel, Living (1929).

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, October 28, 2024

Posted on October 28, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of convicted murderer and best-selling detective novelist Anne Perry, born Juliet Hulme in London (1938). She had tuberculosis, and her doctor said she wouldn’t survive another winter in England, so she was sent away to live in the Bahamas, and then South Africa. She rejoined her family when she was 13, after her father — a well-known physicist — got a job as a president of a university in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, October 27, 2024

Posted on October 27, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Dylan Thomas, born in Swansea, Wales (1914). His father was a failed poet who worked as a schoolmaster, and Dylan grew up terrified of his violent mood swings. The only time he seemed to calm down, and the only time Thomas enjoyed his company, was when he was reading Shakespeare aloud. After graduation, Thomas got a job at a newspaper, but he was an awful reporter.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, October 26, 2024

Posted on October 26, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1825 that the Erie Canal opened. The canal was 363 miles long, linking Buffalo on Lake Erie in western New York to Albany on the Hudson River. The Erie Canal was such an impressive feat of engineering that it was called the Eighth Wonder of the World.

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