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13 poets born in September,
change is in the air, the
Seasons ever repeating,
whether men be at war
or peace or suspended
somewhere in between
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September 14
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1860 – Hamlin Garland born in West Salem, Wisconsin; prolific American novelist, poet, biographer, essayist and short story writer, who grew up on a Midwestern farm. He campaigned for the economic ideas of Henry George: that individuals should own the value they produce, but land and natural resources should belong collectively to all members of society. He is best-known for his realistic fictional accounts of the lives of hard-working Midwestern farmers, even though he lived most of his adult life in Boston, Chicago, and Hollywood. He won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for A Daughter of the Middle Border, the sequel to his autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border. He died at age 79, at his home in Hollywood, in 1940.
Indian Summer
by Hamlin Garland
.
At last there came
The sudden fall of frost, when Time
Dreaming through russet September days
Suddenly awoke, and lifting his head, strode
Swiftly forward—made one vast desolating sweep
Of his scythe, then, rapt with the glory
That burned under his feet, fell dreaming again.
And the clouds soared and the crickets sang
In the brief heat of noon; the corn,
So green, grew sere and dry—
And in the mist the ploughman's team
Moved silently, as if in dream—
And it was Indian summer on the plain.
.
“Indian Summer” from Prairie Songs, by Hamlin Garland, originally published in 1893 by Stone and Kimball
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September 15
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1889 – Claude McKay born in Jamaica as Festus Claudius McKay; Jamaican-American poet, author, essayist, and social activist; prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. McKay is best known for his novel, Home to Harlem, which won the 1928 Harmon Gold Award for Literature. He came to the U.S. in 1914 to go to college, but moved to New York City two years later, working as a waiter on the railways, then in a factory, and as an editor of The Liberator. He joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and became involved with a group of black radicals. McKay wrote one of his best-known poems, “If We Must Die,” in 1919, in response to the wave of white-on-black race riots and lynchings after WWI. He published four collections of poetry, five novels, a novella, short stories, and two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home and My Green Hills of Jamaica. He became disillusioned by communism, and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1944, just four years before his death from a heart attack at age 57 in 1948.
Harlem Shadows
by Claude McKay
.
I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire’s call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!
.
Through the long night until the silver break
Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth’s white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.
.
Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way
Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace,
Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,
The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!
Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet
In Harlem wandering from street to street.
.
“Harlem Shadows” from Harlem Shadows: The Poems of Claude McKay, a 2018 reprint of the 1922 edition
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1941 – Elizabeth Smither born in New Plymouth, Taranaki Region, New Zealand; New Zealand writer, poet, novelist, and librarian. Her first poetry collection, Here Come the Clouds, wasn’t published until 1975, but she has since published over fifteen poetry collections, as well as several short story collections and novels. She served as New Zealand’s Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, and has won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry three times. Her poetry collections include: The Sarah Train; Casanova’s Ankle; A Pattern of Marching; A Question of Gravity; and The Blue Coat.
A Cortège of Daughters
by Elizabeth Smither
.
A quite ordinary funeral: the corpse
Unknown to the priest. The twenty-third psalm.
The readings by serious businessmen,
One who nearly tripped on the unaccustomed pew.
The kneelers and the sitters like sheep and goats.
.
But by some prior determination a row
Of daughters and daughters-in-law rose
To act as pallbearers instead of men,
All of an even height and beautiful.
One wore in her hair a black and white striped bow,
.
And in the midst of their queenliness
One in dark sprigged silk, the corpse
Had become a man before they reached the porch
So loved he had his own dark barge
Which their slow moving steps rowed
As a dark lake is sometimes surrounded by irises.
.
“A Cortège of Daughters” from A Cortège of Daughters © 1993 by Elizabeth Smither – Cloud Publishing
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1977 – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie born in Enugu, Nigeria; Nigerian author of novels, short stories, nonfiction, children’s books, and poems. Adichie studied medicine at the University of Nigeria for a year and half, before leaving at age 19 to study in the U.S. at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, and later at Johns Hopkins University, and Yale. Her work includes the novels Purple Hibiscus; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Women’s Prize in 2007; and Americanah; her short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists. She was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2008. In 2017, Adichie was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the second Nigerian so honored, after Wole Soyinka in 1986.
We Died When Freedom Burned
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
.
I sit,
Where the ashes fills the air
Where children are left crying
Where starvation knocks your door
Where infirmity governs
Where red covers the streets.
.
I imagine,
For rainbow sprinkled ice cream
For echoing laughters
For tropical fruits in the counter
For moms weaving colored dresses
For a couple with a newborn.
.
I see,
Every bomb holes marking between gravels
Every military forces destroying
Every raped village girl
Every priest leaving churches
Every rotting carcass between the bricks.
.
I dream,
About the Freedom Land
About teenage boys returning home
About passions written in paper
About enchanted wedding
About all the happy faces filled with hope and magic.
.
I hear,
That mesmerizing blast
That glimpse of dust wind rage
That humming of enemy personnel
That shrieks of mockingbirds in the trees
That man breathing out his last gulp of air.
.
“We Died When Freedom Burned” from Decisions, © 1997 by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Minerva Press
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September 16
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1880 – Alfred Noyes born in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands of England; an extraordinarily prolific and popular English poet, short story writer, and playwright. His father had been unable to go to college, but studied on his own, and passed on to his son his knowledge of Latin and Greek, and a love of the written word. Though Alfred Noyes wrote in the 20th century, at heart he was really a 19th century poet, despising the modernist movement, and continuing to write traditional rhymed verse. As modernist poetry grew in popularity, critics became increasingly harsh in their reviews of his work, but Noyes remained beloved by “ordinary” readers. Noyes wrote his last poem, “Ballade of the Breaking Shell,” in May 1958, one month before his death. He died at age 77 in June 1958, and is still well-remembered for his poem “The Highwayman.”
Beethoven In Central Park
(After a glimpse of a certain monument in New York, during the
Victory Celebration)
.
by Alfred Noyes
.
The thousand-windowed towers were all alight.
Throngs of all nations filled that glittering way;
And, rich with dreams of the approaching day,
Flags of all nations trampled down the night.
No clouds, at sunset, die in airs as bright.
No clouds, at dawn, awake in winds as gay;
For Freedom rose in that august array,
Crowned with the stars and weaponed for the right.
.
Then, in a place of whispering leaves and gloom,
I saw, too dark, too dumb for bronze or stone,
One tragic head that bowed against the sky;
O, in a hush too deep for any tomb
I saw Beethoven, dreadfully alone
With his own grief, and his own majesty.
.
“Beethoven in Central Park” from The Complete Alfred Noyes: Harmony in Verse – 2023 edition
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September 17
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1883 – William Carlos Williams born in Rutherford, New Jersey; American physician, novelist, and poet, who managed to combine life as a small-town doctor with being part of the modern imagist revolution in American prose and poetry. Though born in the U.S., his father was English and his mother was Puerto Rican, a rich and diverse cultural heritage. He later became a mentor to Allen Ginsberg. Williams had a series of heart attacks and strokes in 1948 and 1949, and died at age 79 in March 1963. Among his many poetry collections are: Sour Grapes; An Early Martyr; The Wedge, which was published in a pocket-sized edition for U.S soldiers to carry with them during WWII; the multi-volume Paterson; The Desert Music; and The Red Wheelbarrow.
Winter Trees
by William Carlos Williams
.
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
.
“Winter Trees” from The Collected Poems, © 1938 by William Carlos Williams – New Directions Publishing
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1916 – Mary Stewart born in Sunderland, County Durham, England, as Mary Florence Elinor Rainbow; best-selling British novelist, screenwriter, poet, children’s author, and teacher. She graduated from Durham University in 1938 with first-class honours in English, was awarded a first-class Teaching Diploma in English with Art the following year and in 1941 gained her master's degree. Mary Stewart was a notable pioneer in the romantic suspense genre, and was honored with an Agatha lifetime Achievement Award. Her Merlin series, which has elements of both historical and fantasy fiction, won two Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards. Mary Stewart died at age 97 in May 2014.
Lidice
by Mary Stewart
.
This is a conquered village. Here is death
Sitting in silence; stone from very stone
Has dropped, and grey grass of oblivion
Crawls in the cracks to blot the lines beneath.
Cottage, street, orchard – blackened boughs uplifted
That have borne fearful fruit – and everywhere,
Over the village that has died in fear,
The thin essential dust has drifted, drifted.
.
This is a conquered village: but the hour
In which it died brought it beyond the clutch
Of fear, of freedom; and the tyrant’s touch
Startled potentiality to power.
Oh fools who did this thing, who dream of winning
Safe from day’s arrow, from the noonday’s terror,
Authors of unimaginable error –
Did you not know the End is the Beginning?
.
There is no end, oh blind. Though you have shot
The fortunate men, though girls in different graves
Lie crying through the night, though you call slaves
Children with murdered eyes – yet you forgot
There is no end. Since you have blindly made
Dangerous what lay dormant here before,
You who have murdered sleep shall sleep no more,
And shall, who wrought by terror, be afraid.
.
“Lidice” from Frost on the Window, © 1990 by Mary Stewart – Hodder & Stoughton
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1939 – Carl Dennis born in St, Louis, Missouri; American poet and educator; winner of the 2000 Ruth Lily Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Practical Gods. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota, and his PhD in English literature from UC Berkeley. In 1966, he began as an assistant professor of English at University of Buffalo. His many poetry collections include: A House of My Own; Climbing Down; The Near World; Meetings With Time; Callings; and Earthborn.
A Landscape
by Carl Dennis
.
This painting of a barn and barnyard near sundown
May be enough to suggest we don’t have to turn
From the visible world to the invisible
In order to grasp the truth of things.
We don’t always have to distrust appearances.
Not if we’re patient. Not if we’re willing
To wait for the sun to reach the angle
When whatever it touches, however retiring,
Feels invited to step forward
Into a moment that might seem to us
Familiar if we gave ourselves more often
To the task of witnessing. Now to witness
A barn and barnyard on a day of rest
When the usual veil of dust and smoke
Is lifted a moment and things appear
To resemble closely what in fact they are.
.
“A Landscape” from Night School, © 2018 by Carl Dennis – Penguin Poets/Penguin Random House
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September 18
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1709 – Samuel Johnson born in Lichfield, England, the son of a bookseller. The family lived above his father’s bookshop. Dubbed the ‘Dictionary Man’ he became a scholar, essayist, playwright, lexicographer, poet, biographer, and literary critic. He attended Pembroke College, Oxford, but had to leave before completing his studies due to lack of funds. After working as a teacher, he moved to London and began writing for The Gentleman's Magazine. Early works include Life of Mr Richard Savage, the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes and the play Irene. After nine years of effort, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language appeared in 1755, and was acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". Later work included essays, an annotated The Plays of William Shakespeare, and the apologue The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. In 1763 he befriended James Boswell, with whom he travelled to Scotland, as Johnson described in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Near the end of his life he completed a massive, influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets of the 17th and 18th centuries. Samuel Johnson died at age 75 in December 1784.
On Hearing Miss Thrale Consulting with
a Friend About a Gown and Hat
by Samuel Johnson
.
Wear the gown and wear the hat,
Snatch thy pleasures while they last;
Hadst thou nine lives, like a cat,
Soon those nine lives would be pass'd.
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1952 – Alberto Ríos born in Nogales, Arizona, just across Arizona’s southern border from the city of Nogales in the Mexican state of Sonora; American short story writer, academic, and poet. He has taught at Arizona State University since 1982, and was appointed as Arizona’s first poet laureate in 2013. Among his 13 poetry collections are: Whispering to Fool the Wind; The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body; The World Has Need of You: Poems for Connection; and Not Go Away is My Name.
To Mars from Arizona
by Alberto Ríos
.
Saturday mornings were science fiction—
That is, on that day anything was possible.
.
We didn’t have to go to the movies for that,
Though when we did, we were introduced to ourselves
.
More than anything. Ourselves in rockets,
Ourselves taking chances, ourselves speaking to the universe.
.
Outside of the movies, we were still in them—
Our bikes were our rockets, our submarines, our jets.
.
But mostly, and first, our bikes were our horses
In this childhood West, a loyal, red Western Flyer
.
Taking me everywhere, up and down, fast and slow.
Only later did I understand it was my own legs
.
That did it all. My own legs and my arms to steer,
My own small, mighty lungs to shout—
.
A shout that would later become a song.
When they weren’t horses, when my legs were tired,
.
When the shouts calmed down into just talking,
We bike-riders would sit, and find in that talking
.
The gold we had been looking for, though we didn’t know it.
The gold was made of plans for Saturdays still to come—
.
We each had different ideas, but we all had them,
Speaking them confidently as if we were lions,
.
Deep-voiced and sure even in that quietude.
What would happen next was far away,
.
But even as we rested, something in us knew
We would catch the future no matter how fast it ran.
.
“To Mars from Arizona” © 2023 by Alberto Ríos appeared in Poem-a-Day on September 27, 2023
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September 19
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1894 – Rachel Field born in New York City; American novelist, playwright, poet, and children’s author. Her book Hitty, Her First Hundred Years won the 1930 Newbery Award, and was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf. In 1935, the American Booksellers Association honored her novel Time Out of Mind with its inaugural National Book Award for Most Distinguished Novel. She moved to Hollywood, where her novels Time Out of Mind; All This and Heaven Too; and And Now Tomorrow were made into films. But in March 1942, she died in Los Angeles, of pneumonia following an operation. She was just 47 years old. In spite of all her success, she quickly faded from public memory, until another writer, Robin Clifford Wood, wrote her biography, The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found, published in 2021.
Something Told the Wild Geese
by Rachel Field
.
Something told the wild geese
It was time to go.
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered, — “Snow.”
Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned, — “Frost.”
All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.
Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,—
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.
.
“Something Told the Wild Geese” from Poems, © 1957 by Rachel Field – Macmillan
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September 20
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1902 – Stevie Smith born as Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, East Yorkshire, England; English poet. novelist, and illustrator. A friend gave her the nickname “Stevie” because the way she rode a horse reminded him of English jockey Steve Donoghue. Her parents separated when she was a child, and she saw very little of her father after that. Her mother, with her and her sister, moved to North London when Stevie was 3 years old. At age 5, she contracted tuberculous peritonitis, and spent 3 years in a sanatorium. When her mother became ill, her aunt Marge Spear, whom Stevie dubbed “the Lion Aunt” took over running the household and raising the girls. After the mother’s death when Stevie was 16, her aunt became their guardian. Smith was attended the North London Collegiate School for Girls, and Mrs Hoster's Secretarial College. She spent the remainder of her life with her aunt, and worked as private secretary to Sir Neville Pearson at Newnes Publishing Company in London (1923-1953). She corresponded and socialised widely with other writers and creative artists. Smith wrote three novels, and 17 collections of poetry, including: A Good Time Was Had By All; Alone in the Woods; Not Waving but Drowning; and The Best Beast. She won the Cholmondeley Award and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Stevie Smith died of a brain tumor at age 68 in March 1971. A substantial number of her poems were published posthumously in Scorpion and Other Poems (1972) and Collected Poems (1975).
The Singing Cat
by Stevie Smith
.
It was a little captive cat
Upon a crowded train
His mistress takes him from his box
To ease his fretful pain.
.
She holds him tight upon her knee
The graceful animal
And all the people look at him
He is so beautiful.
.
But oh he pricks and oh he prods
And turns upon her knee
Then lifteth up his innocent voice
In plaintive melody.
.
He lifteth up his innocent voice
He lifteth up, he singeth
And to each human countenance
A smile of grace he bringeth.
.
He lifteth up his innocent paw
Upon her breast he clingeth
And everybody cries, Behold
The cat, the cat that singeth.
.
He lifteth up his innocent voice
He lifteth up, he singeth
And all the people warm themselves
In the love his beauty bringeth.
.
“The Singing Cat” from The Collected Poems and Drawings of Stevie Smith, 2015 – Faber and Faber
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1954 – Wyatt Townley born in Kansas City, Missouri; American poet, nonfiction writer, and yoga instructor. She was the 4th Poet Laureate of Kansas (2013-2015). Her debut poetry collection, Perfectly Normal, was published in 1990; followed by The Afterlives of Trees, which won the 2012 Nelson Poetry Book Award; The Breathing Field; and Rewriting the Body. She also wrote two books on yoga and a history of the Kansas City Ballet. Townley currently lives in Shawnee Mission, Kansas.
The Breathing Field
by Wyatt Townley
.
Between each vertebra
is the through line
of your life’s story,
where the setting sun
has burned all colors
into the cord. Step
.
over. Put on the dark
shirt of stars.
A full moon rises
over the breathing field,
seeps into clover and the brown
lace of its roots
where insects are resting
.
their legs. Take in the view.
So much is still
to be seen. Get back
behind your back, behind
what is behind you.
.
“The Breathing Field” from The Breathing Field, © 2002 by Wyatt Townley – Little, Brown and Co.
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
The Prague Astronomical Clock -
originally built in 1410
In May 1945, it was damaged during the Prague Uprising, when the Nazis fired on the south-west side of the Old Town Square from armored vehicles. A major effort restored the clock to working order, as well as its artwork, by 1948.
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