Weekend Forecast

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Longfellow in Everyday Life (March 10, 2010)

Quote, Unquote: Edwin Arlington Robinson

"Two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give."

- Edwin Arlington Robinson, a Mainer who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1922, 1925, and 1928. Three collections of his poems--Children of the Night, The Man Against the Sky, and The Three Taverns--are available for free at Project Gutenberg.

- John C.L. Morgan

Related: Did You Know? (August 6, 2008)
Related: Good Salary. Little Work. Soft Snap! (April 7, 2008)

Longfellow in Everyday Life

Maybe it's just because I just read the excerpt from his poem "The Lighthouse" etched in a monument at Portland Head Light this weekend, but it seems like I'm seeing references to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Rainy Day" everywhere today.

This morning, I noticed Dieter Bradbury's wink at the hometown bard's poem in the lede of his story about how it feels as though winter just won't see itself out ("Into every life a little snow must fall."). And this afternoon I flipped to Golf magazine's lifestyle section, where, whaddya know, the whackers contribute its own riff on the apparently very famous line in a write-up on golf-specific umbrellas ("Unto all golfers a little rain must fall.").

- John C.L. Morgan

Maine Poetry

I recommend "Words from the Frontier," a delightful audio collection of Maine poetry, including that of Westbrook native Candice Stover.

- John C.L. Morgan

P.S. And don't forget about Westbrook poets Alice N. Persons (3:05) and Nancy A. Henry (2:45).

On Patriots' Day

Jeff Inglis of the Portland Phoenix's About Town blog reminded me of the peculiar nature of the Patriots' Day holiday and does well explaining the Maine connections to the holiday.

So I'm going to unashamedly complement his post by referring to two sites that give context to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" (here and here), as well as a YouTube video that is creepy, mind-numbing, and enjoyable all at the same time.

Our unfortunate union with the Commonhealth of Massachusetts has one redeeming quality after all.

- John C.L. Morgan

Poetic

In honor of National Poetry Month, the Press Herald published an article about the poetry scene in Maine. What's remarkable, though, is the collection of audible poems that accompany the article.

Steve Luttrell, the founder and publishing editor of The Cafe Review, reads "Landscape of Machines." Annie Finch, the Program Director of the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine reads "A Letter for Emily Dickinson." Betsy Sholl, the Maine Poet Laureate, reads the first part of Seamus Heaney's "Seeing Things." Michael Macklin, reads "How It Dawns On Us." Gil Helmick reads "The Marriage of the Future to the Moment" and "The Evolution of Apocalypse." Brianna Crusan reads "Still Standing." Juba Zaki reads (or, more accurately, spits) a slammed poem. And Jake Wortell reads "Betty."

Also noteworthy is the Westbrook-based Moon Pie Press, a Maine printing press that publishes Maine poets, including Westbrook's Alice N. Persons (hear Garrison Keillor read Persons's "Stealing Lilacs" on the May 16, 2007 edition "The Writer's Almanac"), Nancy A. Henry (hear Keillor read Henry's "Keys" on the September 5, 2007 edition of "The Writer's Almanac"), and Edward J. Rielly.

Check out Moon Pie's catalog.

- John C.L. Morgan

Good Salary. Little Work. Soft Snap!

For the last month or so, I've been plodding through Edmund Morris's Theodore Rex, an exacting account of Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. The reason I'm writing this post (besides to name-drop my reading habits, of course) is Morris's description of the relationship between the twenty-sixth president and Maine poet Edwin Arlington Robinson.

Edward Arlington Robinson (or as the cognescenti prefer, E.A. Robinson) was, according to Morris, a "reclusive and poverty-stricken northeastern balladeer" when President Roosevelt's oldest son, Kermit, read his collection of poems, Children of the Night. Kermit was so "transfixed by [the poems'] chilling beauty" that he urged the his father to read Robinson's work. Subsequently, the elder Roosevelt enjoyed Robinson's poetry so much that, after learning the Robinson was heavily drinking and working long days in the New York subway system, he offered the poet a job in the New York Customs House. The understanding being "that, in exchange for his desk and two thousand dollars a year, [Robinson] should work 'with a view to helping American letters,' rather than the receipts of the United States Treasury."

In fact, according to E.A. Robinson, President Roosevelt sold the Customs House job to the poet with the six-word description of the job that serves as the title to this post.

- John C.L. Morgan

How Longfellow Explains Today

It's days like today that remind me of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "The Rainy Day," particularly this excerpt: "Into each life some rain must fall,/Some days must be dark and dreary."

- John C.L. Morgan