Fun_People Archive
22 Nov
LIT BITS V3 #327

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 100 16:21:42 -0800
To: Fun_People
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Subject: LIT BITS V3 #327

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Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #327
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp

Today is Thursday, 23 November 2000; on this day,

126 years ago (1874),

     _Far from the Madding Crowd_ by Thomas Hardy is published.

94 years ago (1906),

     Sait Faik Abasiyanik, short-story writer and major figure in modern
     Turkish literature, is born in Adapazari, Ottoman Empire.

87 years ago (1913),

     Jean Cocteau reviews Marcel Proust's _Swann's Way_: "It resembles
     nothing that I know of, and reminds me of everything I admire."

74 years ago (1926),

     English poet Christopher Logue is born in Portsmouth, Hampshire.  He
     will become one of the leaders in the movement to bring poetry closer
     to popular experience. His own pungent, political verse will be
     strongly influenced by the work of Bertolt Brecht and to the English
     ballad tradition. His first book of poetry, _The Weakdream Sonnets_
     will be published in 1955.

58 years ago (1942),

     In a letter to Felix Frankfurter, Alexander Woollcott imparts H.  L.
     Mencken's "Happy Formula" for answering controversial letters, which
     is final, courteous, and can be employed without reading the missive
     to which it replies. He merely says: "Dear Sir (or Madame): You may
     be right."

10 years ago (1990),

     After a successful, yet tragic personal life, popular British writer
     Roald Dahl dies in Oxford.

Today's poem:

         London Airport

     Last night in London Airport
     I saw a wooden bin
     labelled UNWANTED LITERATURE
     IS TO BE PLACED HEREIN.
     So I wrote a poem
     and popped it in.

                                           Christopher Logue

© 2000 Peter Langston