"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations
"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy
I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike
"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]
Robert William Service (January 16, 1874 – September 11, 1958) was a British-Canadian poet and writer who has often been called "the Bard of the Yukon".[1][2] He is best known for his poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", from his first book, Songs of a Sourdough (1907; also published as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses). His vivid descriptions of the Yukon and its people made it seem that he was a veteran of the Klondike gold rush, instead of the late-arriving bank clerk he actually was. "These humorous tales in verse were considered doggerel by the literary set, yet remain extremely popular to this day."
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.
There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my head — and there watching him was the lady that's known as Lou.
His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands — my God! but that man could play.
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? —
Then you've a haunch what the music meant. . . hunger and night and the stars.
And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman's love —
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true —
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, — the lady that's known as Lou.)
Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through and through —
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere", said Dangerous Dan McGrew.
The music almost died away... then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill ... then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell. . .and that one is Dan McGrew." Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark,
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou.
These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch," and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two —
The woman that kissed him and — pinched his poke — was the lady that's known as Lou.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Robert W. Service, 1874-1958
Biography of Poet The fame of Robert Service—considerable in his day—resulted from the publication of two best-selling volumes of verse: The Spell of the Yukon (1907) and The Ballads of a Cheechako (1909). In rollicking rhythms and comical rhymes, Service regaled armchair adventures with gripping yarns of the wild Northwest—rough men braving hardship on the lonely frontier in pursuit of “the muck called gold.”
"The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ballads of a Cheechako, by Robert W. Service. This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Ballads of a Cheechako Author: Robert W. Service Release Date: July 1, 2008 [EBook #259] Last Updated: January 15, 2013 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII Produced by A. Light and David Widger
We have a beautiful new song from Eddie Vedder this morning, called Skipping. The track is featured on the new compilation Every Mother Counts, the namesake of a foundation dedicated to addressing the issue of maternal mortality during pregnancy.
The love letter from a parent to a child is a delicate, complexly personal yet gorgeous composition, a conveyance of unquenchable adoration between souls that may be entirely lost on those without children of their own – or at least a true depth of love with which they can relate.
Framed by the sounds of his own daughter playing and gentle acoustic guitar tones, the Pearl Jam frontman delivers a heartfelt performance full of gorgeous self-harmonizing that does a fine job of encapsulating the tenderness, fragility, pride, joy and immersive love of a bond between a father and child, wrapped in the metaphor of skipping along with her. He knows that the moment and innocent joy can’t possibly last forever, and the song is a conveyance of cherishing that fleeting purity of a childhood connection with a parent.
It’s a deeply personal track, once which doesn’t fit the single cycle or the hype headline machine. So it’s with a warm feeling that I’m able to post this on a quiet Sunday morning.
Lyrics
I didn't have to ask you, just took my hand
Off we went skipping throughout the land
The sky was blue and the blood filled my head
Me and you skipping throughout the land
All of my life from beginning to end
What I remember is holding your hand
And all that I'll cherish is that time that we've spent
Me and you skipping throughout the land.
All the loves lost and the one that I found
You lifted my gaze up off of the ground
Forever we'll talk and forever we'll drown
In each other skipping around.
Gravity pulls so many men down
The atmosphere breathes but not in this town
You took me away and you held me so proud
Skipping, skipping, skipping around.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could not keep me from holding your hand
When all that I wanted was something to protect
And all that I needed was your voice in my head
And all I remember from this life that I lived
Is me and you skipping throughout the land. - Eddie Vedder
Kindred Fellowships by R.E. Slater Have you ever watched a rising morning sun
stalking knee-high clovered fields wet in dew? Or felt the deepening rumble of a storm cloud's approach
shrouding breathless airs soaked in fresh ozone?
Or witnessed a cold fog envelop a murky beach
against a restless sea moving in endless rhythm?
Or listened the wandering night sky's starry silence upon a far hillside from setting dusk to waking dawn?
In all these things God's handiwork abounds,
written across the laden heavens,
across this good earth we live and breathe,
filling our hearts with wondrous mystery.
Whose very lives are held so dear,
so adorned by redeeming love,
so cherished by mercy's grace,
so lost in a world so complex and feared.
We, the living temples of God's first Words,
who wouldst tread the mounts of His holy creation,
or delve into our Redeemer's inmost sanctuaries,
impassioned by all that inspires and devotes.
We, who keep the night watches and morning suns,
who inhale evening's early mists in lingering whispers,
who are blessed and wouldst give blessing,
who seek, and grasp, and fall, and fail.
Let us praise our heavenly Sovereign for His wisdom,
our mighty Creator for all that is good and strong.
Let us sing our Savior's wonders and mercies,
met new everyday upon the souls of men.
Let us seek harmony's peace amidst its grander fellowships,
giving thanksgiving forheaven's abiding love and devotion.
And for this good earth whose good fellowship we tread,
scribing a poet's inspiration to a Redeemer's heart filled with tears. - R.E. Slater
June 6, 2014 revised June 7-8, 22, 2014 *read to the music of Ludovico Einaudi, "Nuvole Bianche" @copyright R.E. Slater Publications all rights reserved
Calla Lilies along the Big Sur, Garrapata State Park, California
A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Marked the mastodon. The dinosaur, who left dry tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no more hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness, Have lain too long Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me, But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world, A River sings a beautiful song, Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I and the Tree and the stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your Brow and when you yet knew you still Knew nothing.
The River sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew The African and Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher. They hear. They all hear The speaking of the Tree.
Today, the first and last of every Tree Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some passed On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of Other seekers- desperate for gain, Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot... You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the Tree planted by the River, Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree I am yours- your Passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you.
Give birth again To the dream.
Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out upon me, the Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, into Your brother's face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning.
* * * * * * * * * * Maya Angelou, Poet, Activist and Singular Storyteller, Dies At 86
Poet, performer and political activist Maya Angelou has died after a long illness at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C. She was 86. Born in St. Louis in 1928, Angelou grew up in a segregated society that she worked to change during the civil rights era. Angelou, who refused to speak for much of her childhood, revealed the scars of her past in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of a series of memoirs.
Growing up in St. Louis, Mo., and Stamps, Ark., she was Marguerite Johnson. It was her brother who first called her Maya, and the name stuck. Later she added the Angelou, a version of her first husband's name.
Angelou left a troubled childhood and the segregated world of Arkansas behind and began a career as a dancer and singer. She toured Europe in the1950s with a production of Porgy and Bess, studied dance with Martha Graham and performed with Alvin Ailey on television. In 1957 she recorded an album called "Calypso Lady."
"I was known as Miss Calypso, and when I'd forget the lyric, I would tell the audience, 'I seem to have forgotten the lyric. Now I will dance.' And I would move around a bit," she recalled with a laugh during a 2008 interview with NPR.
"She really believed that life was a banquet," says Patrik Henry Bass, an editor at Essence Magazine. When he read Angelou's memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, he saw parallels in his own life in a small town in North Carolina. He says everyone in the African-American community looked up to her; she was a celebrity but she was one of them. He remembers seeing her on television and hearing her speak.
"When we think of her, we often think about her books, of course, and her poems," he says. "But in the African-American community, certainly, we heard so much of her work recited, so I think about her voice. You would hear that voice, and that voice would capture a humanity, and that voice would calm you in so many ways through some of the most significant challenges."
Film director John Singleton grew up in a very different part of the country. But he remembers the effect Angelou's poem "Still I Rise" had on him as a kid. It begins:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
"I come from South Central Los Angeles," he says. It's "a place where we learn to puff up our chests to make ourselves bigger than we are because we have so many forces knocking us down — including some of our own. And so that poem ... it pumps me up, you know. ... It makes me feel better about myself, or at least made me feel better about myself when I was young." Singleton used Angelou's poems in his 1993 film Poetic Justice. Angelou also had a small part in the movie. Singleton says he thinks of Angelou as a griot — a traditional African storyteller.
"We all have that one or two people in our families that just can spin a yarn, that has a whole lot to say, and holds a lot of wisdom from walking through the world and experiencing different things," he says. "And that's the way I see Dr. Maya Angelou. She was a contemporary of Martin Luther King, a contemporary of Malcolm X and Oprah Winfrey. She transcends so many different generations of African-American culture that have affected all of us."
Joanne Braxton, a professor at the College of William and Mary, says Angelou's willingness to reveal the sexual abuse she suffered as a child in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was unprecedented at the time. The critical acclaim and popularity of the book opened doors for both African-American and female writers.
"Maya Angelou brought about a paradigm shift in American literature and culture," Braxton says, "so that the works, the gifts, the talents of women writers, including women writers of color, could be brought to the foreground and appreciated. She created an audience by her stunning example."
For Braxton, the world will never be quite the same without Angelou.
"I love her," she says. "She's beloved by many, including many, many people who have never met her in person, and who will never meet her in person — but she has extended herself that way, so that her touch extends beyond her physical embrace. That is truly a gift, and we are truly blessed to have known her through her presence and her work."
Angelou once said she believed that "life loves the liver of it," and she did live it, to the fullest.
Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928) was an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her first seventeen years. It brought her international recognition, and was nominated for a National Book Award. She has been awarded over 30 honorary degrees and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her 1971 volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie.
Angelou was a member of the Harlem Writers Guild in the late 1950s, was active in the Civil Rights movement, and served as Northern Coordinator of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Since 1991, she has taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where she holds the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. Since the 1990s she has made around eighty appearances a year on the lecture circuit. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. In 1995, she was recognized for having the longest-running record (two years) on The New York Times Paperback Nonfiction Bestseller List.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou was heralded as a new kind of memoirist, one of the first African American women who was able to publicly discuss her personal life. She is highly respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women. Angelou's work is often characterized as autobiographical fiction. She has, however, made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books, centered on themes such as identity, family, and racism, are often used as set texts in schools and universities internationally. Some of her more controversial work has been challenged or banned in US schools and libraries.
This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia Maya Angelou; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.
I wish I could to tell you that the first class I sat in on with Maya Angelou was filled with an unforgettable poetry reading and rich stories about her textured life, but for the next hour, each of the students circled the room introducing themselves, stating and spelling their names. In this class, I was no longer Margaret, I was Ms. Feinberg, and everyone else would recognize me as such.
At the end of hour, Ms. Angelou explained that what we were learning was very important. This formed the basis of our first test. Our first test. I should have been paying more attention. Sketching a seating chart, I recorded as many people’s names as I could from memory….
Why did we just spend the last three weeks getting to know each other’s names?
She pressed it further:
Why did I just spend nearly 20% of our very valuable class time together making sure you knew each other’s names?
The room stewed in a kind of deafening, molasses-thick stillness that only the presence of Maya Angelou could command. She explained:
Because your name is a sign of your dignity.
When you recognize someone’s name, you recognize them not just as human but as a person. One of the greatest ways you bestow human dignity on someone is by calling them by name.
For the remaining weeks of class, we read a wide range of African American literature—including works by Maya Angelou. We listened in reverent awe as she read and recited poems that shook the soul. We laughed when she shared colorful stories from her childhood, personal adventures, and movies. We held back tears when she told of her painful past. We dug deep to create a final project that answered the granddaddy of all questions:
Why does the caged bird sing?
* * * * * * * * * *
Poet Carol Wimmer
"I Am a Christian" Actual Author: Carol Wimmer, 1988 http://www.snopes.com/glurge/christian.asp last update May 28, 2014 Falsely attributed to Maya Angelou who corrected this popular mistake by the public on her website
My heart was heavy in 1988 as I wrote the poem, When I say I am a Christian. I had begun to sense increasing societal resentment within American culture toward the attitude of self-righteousness that has been adopted by so many Christians. I knew such behavior was, and is, a distortion of Christianity. Thus, the sentiment of the poem was born out of my personal awareness of this distortion and the heartache it causes in society.
Tears rolled down my face as I jotted down my thoughts with an inner determination to define the Christian spirit as I wished to experience it. But, the words flowed out of me with such ease that I knew it was God’s spirit moving in my heart. I was simply holding the pen. The resulting words formed a reflection of my own beliefs and the reputation I hoped to secure for myself.
Four years later, I sent the poem to several publishers. As a result of its first publication in 1992, someone placed the poem on the Internet where it miraculously began taking on a life of its own. From Manila to South Africa, Australia to Singapore, Finland to Bahrain—I continue to receive emails from people all over the world who share a common desire to walk humbly with God.
Dr. Maya Angelou, who passed away in May 2014, became one of those figures (Ã la Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln) who ended up with more of other people's words attributed to her than words of her own. (As we note in another article dealing with an apocryphal poem erroneously attributed to her, many Internet-circulated bits of verse lacking authorship identification eventually become credited to Dr. Angelou, especially light-hearted inspirational pieces and/or poems written from an African-American point of view.) In this case, we not only know that Maya Angelou did not write I Am a Christian (she disclaimed it on her web site), we know exactly who did write it.
"When I Say, 'I Am a Christian'" (the correct, full title) was penned in 1988 by Carol Wimmer, was first published in the Assemblies of God periodical Hi-Call Gospel Magazine, and has subsequently been anthologized in several books (including Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul.) Unfortunately, over the years the work has been reprinted on the Internet with either missing or incorrect attributions (most often being ascribed to "author unknown" or the aforementioned Maya Angelou), and with verses that have been rearranged or altered by others.
