Fun_People Archive
12 Sep
LIT BITS V3 #257

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 100 20:16:54 -0700
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Subject: LIT BITS V3 #257

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Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #257
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp

Today is Wednesday, 13 September 2000; on this day,

408 years ago (1592),

     Michel de Montaigne dies at his family chateau while preparing another
     edition of his _Essays_. He had been living the life of a country
     gentleman since 1571, when he succeeded to the estate near Bordeaux.

124 years ago (1876),

     Sherwood Anderson--novelist, poet, and short story writer (_Winesburg,
     Ohio_)--is born in Camden, Ohio. F. Scott Fitzgerald will characterize
     him as "the possessor of a brilliant and almost inimitable prose style,
     and of scarcely any ideas at all."

84 years ago (1916),

     Popular British writer of ingenious, irreverent children's books and
     adult horror stories, Roald Dahl, is born in Llandaff, Wales. His
     first book, _The Gremlins_ (1943), is written for Walt Disney.

84 years ago (1916),

     American poet, editor, and social historian, John Brinnin is born in
     Halifax, Canada. From his first volume of poetry _The Garden Is
     Political_ (1942), his work will show increasing display of experiments
     with form. Brinnin will also be instrumental in bringing Dylan Thomas
     to America in the early 1950s, and will later write _Dylan Thomas in
     America_ after the poet's death.

Today's poem:

	And Death Shall Have No Dominion

     And death shall have no dominion.
     Dead men naked they shall be one
     With the man in the wind and the west moon;
     When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
     They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
     Though they go mad they shall be sane,
     Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
     Though lovers be lost love shall not;
     And death shall have no dominion.

     And death shall have no dominion.
     Under the windings of the sea
     They lying long shall not die windily;
     Twisting on ranks when sinews give way,
     Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
     Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
     And the unicorn evils run them through;
     Split all ends up they shan't crack;
     And death shall have no dominion.

     And death shall have no dominion.
     No more may gulls cry at their ears
     Or waves break loud on the seashores;
     Where blew a flower may a flower no more
     Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
     Though they be mad and dead as nails,
     Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
     Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
     And death shall have no dominion.

                                                Dylan Thomas

© 2000 Peter Langston