Saturday Dec. 19, 2015

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I had thought the tumors...

I had thought the tumors
on my spine would kill me but
the tumors on my head seem to be
extraordinarily competitive this week.

For the past twenty or thirty years
I have eaten the freshest most
organic and colorful fruits and
vegetables I did not drink I
did drink one small glass of red
wine with dinner nearly every day
as suggested by The New York Times
I should have taken longer walks but
obviously I have done something wrong

I don’t mean morally or ethically or
geographically I did not live near
a nuclear graveyard or under a coal
stack nor did I allow my children
to do so I lived in a city no worse
than any other great and famous city I
lived one story above a street that led
cabs and ambulances to the local hospital
that didn’t seem so bad and was
often convenient

                       In any event I am
already old and therefore a little ashamed
to have written this poem full
of complaints against mortality which
biological fact I have been constructed for
to hand on to my children and grand—
children as I received it from my
dear mother and father and beloved
grandmother who all
ah if I remember it
were in great pain at leaving
and were furiously saying goodbye

"I had thought the tumors...” by Grace Paley from Fidelity. © Etrusean Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission.  (buy now)

The Italian writer Italo Svevo (books by this author) was born on this day in Trieste, Italy (1861). He was devoted to literature but went into business, working as a bank clerk and writing a theater column and stories under a pseudonym on the side. When he published his first two books, A Life (1893) and As a Man Grows Older (1898), they were ignored by readers and critics alike.

Svevo needed to improve his English for business reasons and hired a tutor who turned out to be aspiring writer James Joyce, who had come to Italy to teach. Svevo shared his books with Joyce, who felt the Italian was a neglected genius. With Joyce's encouragement, Svevo wrote the book for which he is known, Confessions of Zeno (1923), a fictional memoir of a man undergoing psychoanalysis that today is considered one of the greatest Italian novels of the 20th century.

It's the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Eleanor Hodgman Porter (books by this author), born in Littleton, New Hampshire (1868). Beginning with her first novel, Cross Currents (1907), Porter was popular with readers, who loved her sentimental tales of orphaned heiresses and lost little girls. But her novel Pollyanna (1913), about a young girl who looks for the good in even the most dire hardships, eclipsed them all, spending two years on the best-sellers list and ultimately leading to a play, a movie, a calendar, and a daily almanac of reasons to be glad. Within a decade, the word "Pollyanna" entered the American lexicon, defined by Webster's Dictionary as "an excessively or blindly optimistic person" and one who is cheerful to a fault.

After the publication of a best-selling sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915), Porter became somewhat defensive about the character she'd created. She said: "You know I have been made to suffer from the Pollyanna books. ... People have thought that Pollyanna chirped that she was 'glad' at everything. ... I have never believed that we ought to deny discomfort and pain and evil; I have merely thought that it is far better to 'greet the unknown with a cheer.'"

It's the birthday of French singer Édith Piaf, born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Paris (1915). Her mother was a café singer and a drug addict, and her father was a street performer — an acrobat and contortionist. As a young girl, she was sent to her grandmother's brothel, where she was raised by prostitutes. When she was a teenager, her father took her along with him to sing on street corners as part of his act. In 1935, she was discovered by a nightclub owner, Louis Leplée, who nicknamed her La Môme Piaf, or "the little sparrow" — she was not even 4' 10".

With the help of Leplée's publicity, Piaf made her first record within the year; but in 1936, Leplée was murdered, and the police held Piaf for questioning. She was let go, but her reputation was damaged. The lyricist Raymond Asso, her lover, helped rebuild her image — he taught her how to dress and act on stage, and he wrote her songs about the tough life of the working class.

Piaf went on to become an international star, with songs like "La vie en rose" and "Non, je ne regrette rien." She died at the age of 47, and 40,000 mourners joined her funeral procession in Paris.

It's the birthday of educator Maria Sanford, born in Saybrook, Connecticut (1836). She took all the money that had been set aside for her dowry and used it to pay for college tuition. She began teaching for a salary of $10 a month, but she went on to become one of the first female college professors in the country. Sanford was the first woman to deliver a commencement speech at a university, and she was a frequent public speaker at a time when it was considered inappropriate for women to speak in public. She was able to project her voice to the back of any room. On her 80th birthday, the University of Minnesota held an event to celebrate her long career, and someone recited a speech that described her as "vehement and gusty, leonine, hale, and lusty."

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