The Writer’s Almanac for June 3, 2018

“I started Early – Took my Dog –” by Emily Dickinson. (buy now)

I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –
And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands –
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground – opon the Sands –

But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt
And past my Boddice – too –

And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Opon a Dandelion’s Sleeve –
And then – I started – too –

And He – He followed – close behind –
I felt His Silver Heel
Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl –

Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing – with a Mighty look –
At me – The Sea withdrew –


It’s the birthday of Allen Ginsberg (books by this author), born in Newark, New Jersey (1926). When he was 17, his freshman year at Columbia University, Ginsberg was introduced to Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Kerouac and Burroughs were older, no longer in school, experimenting with drugs, and trying to write. Ginsberg later said they encouraged him to think for himself and to worry less about conforming. When he was 28, he moved to San Francisco, where he was introduced to the poetry scene by Kenneth Rexroth, and he began working on a poem that would later be called “Howl,” a poem in which the length of a line was based on how much he could say in one breath. Today it is one of the most recognized poems in literature and has sold nearly one million copies.

Ginsberg read a draft of “Howl” at the now-famous Six Gallery, on an October night in 1955. Another poet who was there that night said the crowd left “standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America …” The next day, Ginsberg received a telegram from the Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Press, who’d attended the reading: “Please send manuscript,” it said.

Howl and Other Poems was published the following year (1956); one year later, the publisher and the manager of a bookstore who sold the collection to a couple of undercover cops stood trial for obscenity. Most of the country had never heard of Allen Ginsberg, but the huge sensation the trial caused — including a story in Life magazine— ensured that they would. Other poets, critics, and scholars testified on the poem’s behalf, explaining for the judge how and why the work was significant. The judge returned a landmark ruling, noting that although he himself was a “God-fearing Sunday school teacher,” he recognized that the poem had redeeming social importance. He wrote: “Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemism?”

“Howl” begins with the famous lines:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night


It’s the birthday of the writer who put sex in the romance novel: Kathleen Woodiwiss (books by this author), born Kathleen Erin Hogg in Alexandria, Louisiana (1939). She submitted her first novel to eight publishers and was rejected by them all — until an editor at Avon picked her manuscript up off the slush pile and couldn’t put it down. Although romance novels had existed since the 1700s, and historical romance novels had been around since the 1920s, Woodiwiss became famous for following her characters into the bedroom. Romances until then had relied mostly on chaste kisses or sly euphemisms, but Woodiwiss wrote explicit descriptions of sex. She also featured strong willed women that went against the damsel-in-distress prototype. The success of her 500-page book, The Flame and the Flower (1972) transformed the genre and was the first romance novel to be published first in paperback rather than hardcover.


It’s the birthday of author Larry McMurtry (1936) (books by this author), born in Wichita Falls, Texas, and raised in nearby Archer City. His hometown is about 80 miles from the town of Thalia, which is the setting for several of McMurtry’s novels, like his first, Horseman, Pass By (1961), as well as Leaving Cheyenne (1963) and The Last Picture Show (1966) and its four sequels. He writes a lot about small-town life in Texas, and sometimes he writes historical novels about the frontier, like his Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Lonesome Dove (1985), although he strongly resists romanticizing the Old West and doesn’t hold a very high opinion of cowboys in general.

In the early 1960s, when he was at Stanford on a Wallace Stegner fellowship, he began working as a rare-book scout, haunting used-book stores in search of first editions and other valuable books, which he would buy on behalf of antiquarian booksellers. It was a great job for a bookish kid who liked to hang around and browse the shelves, and when he moved to Washington, D.C., in 1970, he opened his own store in Georgetown, called Booked Up. In 1988, he opened a second Booked Up in his hometown of Archer City, in four large buildings that once housed a car dealership. He bought up the stock of failing independent bookstores all over the country, and he filled the towering white shelves with hundreds of thousands of volumes.

He doesn’t see his current vocations — author and bookseller — as entirely different from his cattle-ranch roots. He told The New York Times: “The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsmen tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching; instead of herding cattle, I herd books. Writing is a form of herding, too; I herd words into little paragraphlike clusters.” He occasionally talks about giving up fiction, but he’ll never give up the bookstores.

A series of poems read by Garrison

Garrison’s Weekly Column

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“I started Early – Took my Dog –” by Emily Dickinson. (buy now)

I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –
And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands –
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground – opon the Sands –

But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt
And past my Boddice – too –

And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Opon a Dandelion’s Sleeve –
And then – I started – too –

And He – He followed – close behind –
I felt His Silver Heel
Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl –

Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing – with a Mighty look –
At me – The Sea withdrew –


It’s the birthday of Allen Ginsberg (books by this author), born in Newark, New Jersey (1926). When he was 17, his freshman year at Columbia University, Ginsberg was introduced to Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Kerouac and Burroughs were older, no longer in school, experimenting with drugs, and trying to write. Ginsberg later said they encouraged him to think for himself and to worry less about conforming. When he was 28, he moved to San Francisco, where he was introduced to the poetry scene by Kenneth Rexroth, and he began working on a poem that would later be called “Howl,” a poem in which the length of a line was based on how much he could say in one breath. Today it is one of the most recognized poems in literature and has sold nearly one million copies.

Ginsberg read a draft of “Howl” at the now-famous Six Gallery, on an October night in 1955. Another poet who was there that night said the crowd left “standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America …” The next day, Ginsberg received a telegram from the Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Press, who’d attended the reading: “Please send manuscript,” it said.

Howl and Other Poems was published the following year (1956); one year later, the publisher and the manager of a bookstore who sold the collection to a couple of undercover cops stood trial for obscenity. Most of the country had never heard of Allen Ginsberg, but the huge sensation the trial caused — including a story in Life magazine— ensured that they would. Other poets, critics, and scholars testified on the poem’s behalf, explaining for the judge how and why the work was significant. The judge returned a landmark ruling, noting that although he himself was a “God-fearing Sunday school teacher,” he recognized that the poem had redeeming social importance. He wrote: “Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemism?”

“Howl” begins with the famous lines:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night


It’s the birthday of the writer who put sex in the romance novel: Kathleen Woodiwiss (books by this author), born Kathleen Erin Hogg in Alexandria, Louisiana (1939). She submitted her first novel to eight publishers and was rejected by them all — until an editor at Avon picked her manuscript up off the slush pile and couldn’t put it down. Although romance novels had existed since the 1700s, and historical romance novels had been around since the 1920s, Woodiwiss became famous for following her characters into the bedroom. Romances until then had relied mostly on chaste kisses or sly euphemisms, but Woodiwiss wrote explicit descriptions of sex. She also featured strong willed women that went against the damsel-in-distress prototype. The success of her 500-page book, The Flame and the Flower (1972) transformed the genre and was the first romance novel to be published first in paperback rather than hardcover.


It’s the birthday of author Larry McMurtry (1936) (books by this author), born in Wichita Falls, Texas, and raised in nearby Archer City. His hometown is about 80 miles from the town of Thalia, which is the setting for several of McMurtry’s novels, like his first, Horseman, Pass By (1961), as well as Leaving Cheyenne (1963) and The Last Picture Show (1966) and its four sequels. He writes a lot about small-town life in Texas, and sometimes he writes historical novels about the frontier, like his Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Lonesome Dove (1985), although he strongly resists romanticizing the Old West and doesn’t hold a very high opinion of cowboys in general.

In the early 1960s, when he was at Stanford on a Wallace Stegner fellowship, he began working as a rare-book scout, haunting used-book stores in search of first editions and other valuable books, which he would buy on behalf of antiquarian booksellers. It was a great job for a bookish kid who liked to hang around and browse the shelves, and when he moved to Washington, D.C., in 1970, he opened his own store in Georgetown, called Booked Up. In 1988, he opened a second Booked Up in his hometown of Archer City, in four large buildings that once housed a car dealership. He bought up the stock of failing independent bookstores all over the country, and he filled the towering white shelves with hundreds of thousands of volumes.

He doesn’t see his current vocations — author and bookseller — as entirely different from his cattle-ranch roots. He told The New York Times: “The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsmen tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching; instead of herding cattle, I herd books. Writing is a form of herding, too; I herd words into little paragraphlike clusters.” He occasionally talks about giving up fiction, but he’ll never give up the bookstores.

Link test

And it’s the birthday of author John Boyne (books by this author), born in Dublin in 1971. He knew he wanted to be a writer ever since he was about 14, and after college, where he studied literature and creative writing, he took a job at Waterstone’s bookstore in Dublin. He’d write for a few hours each morning, […]

Read More

Pricing

The cruise cabin pricing will range between $2,200 and $5,200 per person. This fare includes taxes, port and fuel, onboard cabin service charges/gratuities.   Please reserve your cabin via the EMI website

Read More

House band?

House band, led by Richard Dworsky, will include Chris Siebold, Larry Kohut, et. al. Richard Dworsky  Richard Dworsky is a versatile keyboardist/composer/recording artist/producer/music director, and is known for his amazing ability to improvise compositions on the spot in virtually any style. For 23 years (1993-2016), he served as pianist and music director for Garrison Keillor’s […]

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August 25, 2001

August 25, 2001

A May 27, 2000, rebroadcast from The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, with special guests Butch Thompson, and Kathy Mattea and her band.
Listen to the episode here

Read More
July 12, 2008

July 12, 2008

A summertime mix of three shows from Ohio. Dusty and Lefty get stuck roping shopping carts at a strip mall opening and “the drifter” returns to Lake Wobegon.

Read More

What I saw in Vienna that the others didn’t

I was in Vienna with my wife and daughter last week and walked around the grand boulevards and plazas surrounded by imperial Habsburg grandeur feeling senselessly happy for reasons not quite clear to me but they didn’t involve alcohol. Nor paintings and statuary purchased with the sweat of working men and women. Nor the fact that to read about the daily insanity of Mr. Bluster I would need to learn German.

The sun was shining though the forecast had been for showers. I was holding hands with two women I love. There was excellent coffee in the vicinity, one had only to take deep breaths. Every other doorway seemed to be a Konditorei with a window full of cakes, tarts, pastries of all sizes and descriptions, a carnival of whipped cream and frosting, nuts and fruit. A person could easily gain fifty pounds in a single day and need to be hauled away in a wheelbarrow.

Read More

A good vacation, now time to head home

I missed out on the week our failing president, Borderline Boy, got depantsed by the news coverage of crying children he’d thrown into federal custody and a day later he ran up the white flag with another of his executive exclamations, meanwhile the Chinese are quietly tying his shoelaces together. Sad! I was in London and Prague, where nobody asks us about him: they can see that he is insane and hope he doesn’t set fire to himself with small children present.

London was an experience. I landed there feeling ill and was hauled off to Chelsea hospital where a doctor sat me down and asked, “Can you wee?” I didn’t hear the extra e so it was like he’d said, “Can she us?” or “Will they him?”

Read More

Man takes wife to Europe by ship

A man in love needs to think beyond his own needs and so I took my wife across the Atlantic last week aboard the mighty Queen Mary 2 for six days of glamor and elegance, which means little to me, being an old evangelical from the windswept prairie, brought up to eschew luxury and accept deprivation as God’s will, but she is Episcopalian and grew up in a home where her mother taught piano, Chopin and Liszt, so my wife appreciates Art Deco salons and waiters with polished manners serving her a lobster soufflé and an $18 glass of Chablis. If Cary Grant were to sit down and offer her a Tareyton, she’d hold his hand with the lighter and enjoy a cigarette with him.

Read More

A summer night in the Big Apple Blossom

I went to prom Saturday night at my daughter’s school, which parents all allowed to attend so long as we don’t get in the way. It was held in the gym, under the basketball hoops, boys in suits and ties, girls in prom dresses, a promenade of graduating seniors, the crowning of a king and queen, a loud rock band to discourage serious conversation.

Read More

Old man at the prom

I went to prom Saturday night at my daughter’s school, which parents all allowed to attend so long as we don’t get in the way. It was held in the gym, under the basketball hoops, boys in suits and ties, girls in prom dresses, a promenade of graduating seniors, the crowning of a king and queen, a loud rock band to discourage serious conversation.

Read More
A Prairie Home Companion An Evening of Story and Song Love & Comedy Tour Solo The Gratitude Tour
Schedule
Radio
A Prairie Home Companion: test only

A Prairie Home Companion: test only

A summertime mix of three shows from Ohio. Dusty and Lefty get stuck roping shopping carts at a strip mall opening and “the drifter” returns to Lake Wobegon.

Read More
A Prairie Home Companion: September 10, 2011

A Prairie Home Companion: September 10, 2011

A summertime mix of three shows from Ohio. Dusty and Lefty get stuck roping shopping carts at a strip mall opening and “the drifter” returns to Lake Wobegon.

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A Prairie Home Companion: September 8, 2007

A Prairie Home Companion: September 8, 2007

It’s all about school in this week’s special compilation from the archives, so please remember your number two pencils and spiral bound notebooks. There will be a quiz.

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A Prairie Home Companion: July 12, 2008

A Prairie Home Companion: July 12, 2008

A summertime mix of three shows from Ohio. Dusty and Lefty get stuck roping shopping carts at a strip mall opening and “the drifter” returns to Lake Wobegon.

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The Writer’s Almanac for August 24, 2018

It was on this day in the year 410 that Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. It was the first time in 800 years that Rome was successfully invaded.

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I Think of You – 7/2/2016

I’m With Her (Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan) sing Utah Phillips’ “I Think of You” during our July 2, 2016 broadcast from the Hollywood Bowl.

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The Writer’s Almanac for July 15, 2018

The Writer’s Almanac for July 15, 2018

It’s the birthday of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who founded the literary analysis technique known as deconstruction and who famously proclaimed that “there is nothing outside the text.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for July 14, 2018

The Writer’s Almanac for July 14, 2018

Today is the birthday of Woody Guthrie (born 1912), who once wrote a song about Billy the Kid. Coincidentally, today is the anniversary of the day Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881 in New Mexico Territory.

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The Writer’s Almanac for July 13, 2018

The Writer’s Almanac for July 13, 2018

Today is the 41st anniversary of the 1977 blackout in New York City. It is also the birthday of poet John Clare, whose poem “The Sweetest Woman There” is featured in today’s episode. In 1840, Clare was committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he wrote some of his best poetry.

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The Writer’s Almanac for July 12, 2018

The Writer’s Almanac for July 12, 2018

Birthdays for today include those of Pablo Neruda, Henry David Thoreau, Julius Caesar, and Donald Westlake, who was such a prolific mystery writer that he used multiple pen names–Richard Stark, Curt Clark, Timothy J. Culver, and more–to circumvent his publisher’s reluctance to publish multiple titles per year by a single author.

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Writing

Link test

And it’s the birthday of author John Boyne (books by this author), born in Dublin in 1971. He knew he wanted to be a writer ever since he was about 14, and after college, where he studied literature and creative writing, he took a job at Waterstone’s bookstore in Dublin. He’d write for a few hours each morning, […]

Read More

Pricing

The cruise cabin pricing will range between $2,200 and $5,200 per person. This fare includes taxes, port and fuel, onboard cabin service charges/gratuities.   Please reserve your cabin via the EMI website

Read More

House band?

House band, led by Richard Dworsky, will include Chris Siebold, Larry Kohut, et. al. Richard Dworsky  Richard Dworsky is a versatile keyboardist/composer/recording artist/producer/music director, and is known for his amazing ability to improvise compositions on the spot in virtually any style. For 23 years (1993-2016), he served as pianist and music director for Garrison Keillor’s […]

Read More
August 25, 2001

August 25, 2001

A May 27, 2000, rebroadcast from The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, with special guests Butch Thompson, and Kathy Mattea and her band.
Listen to the episode here

Read More
July 12, 2008

July 12, 2008

A summertime mix of three shows from Ohio. Dusty and Lefty get stuck roping shopping carts at a strip mall opening and “the drifter” returns to Lake Wobegon.

Read More

What I saw in Vienna that the others didn’t

I was in Vienna with my wife and daughter last week and walked around the grand boulevards and plazas surrounded by imperial Habsburg grandeur feeling senselessly happy for reasons not quite clear to me but they didn’t involve alcohol. Nor paintings and statuary purchased with the sweat of working men and women. Nor the fact that to read about the daily insanity of Mr. Bluster I would need to learn German.

The sun was shining though the forecast had been for showers. I was holding hands with two women I love. There was excellent coffee in the vicinity, one had only to take deep breaths. Every other doorway seemed to be a Konditorei with a window full of cakes, tarts, pastries of all sizes and descriptions, a carnival of whipped cream and frosting, nuts and fruit. A person could easily gain fifty pounds in a single day and need to be hauled away in a wheelbarrow.

Read More

A good vacation, now time to head home

I missed out on the week our failing president, Borderline Boy, got depantsed by the news coverage of crying children he’d thrown into federal custody and a day later he ran up the white flag with another of his executive exclamations, meanwhile the Chinese are quietly tying his shoelaces together. Sad! I was in London and Prague, where nobody asks us about him: they can see that he is insane and hope he doesn’t set fire to himself with small children present.

London was an experience. I landed there feeling ill and was hauled off to Chelsea hospital where a doctor sat me down and asked, “Can you wee?” I didn’t hear the extra e so it was like he’d said, “Can she us?” or “Will they him?”

Read More

Man takes wife to Europe by ship

A man in love needs to think beyond his own needs and so I took my wife across the Atlantic last week aboard the mighty Queen Mary 2 for six days of glamor and elegance, which means little to me, being an old evangelical from the windswept prairie, brought up to eschew luxury and accept deprivation as God’s will, but she is Episcopalian and grew up in a home where her mother taught piano, Chopin and Liszt, so my wife appreciates Art Deco salons and waiters with polished manners serving her a lobster soufflé and an $18 glass of Chablis. If Cary Grant were to sit down and offer her a Tareyton, she’d hold his hand with the lighter and enjoy a cigarette with him.

Read More

A summer night in the Big Apple Blossom

I went to prom Saturday night at my daughter’s school, which parents all allowed to attend so long as we don’t get in the way. It was held in the gym, under the basketball hoops, boys in suits and ties, girls in prom dresses, a promenade of graduating seniors, the crowning of a king and queen, a loud rock band to discourage serious conversation.

Read More

Old man at the prom

I went to prom Saturday night at my daughter’s school, which parents all allowed to attend so long as we don’t get in the way. It was held in the gym, under the basketball hoops, boys in suits and ties, girls in prom dresses, a promenade of graduating seniors, the crowning of a king and queen, a loud rock band to discourage serious conversation.

Read More

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