Notes For November 30th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 30th, 1835, the legendary American writer Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri. He was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the son of a lawyer and judge. He was the sixth of seven children; only three of his siblings would survive childhood.

When Twain was four years old, his father moved the family to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River. Growing up in Hannibal, Twain came to love the town and would model the fictional town of St. Petersberg, Missouri, after it.

Twain's father contracted pneumonia and died when he was eleven years old. A year later, Twain went to work as a printer's devil, (apprentice) where he learned the printing and typesetting trade.

By the age of sixteen, he was working as a typesetter and writing articles and humorous pieces for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his brother, Orion.

When he turned eighteen, Twain left Hannibal and moved East, living in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York City. He worked as a printer by day and educated himself at night.

Twain educated himself at public libraries, where he found a wider spectrum of information available to him than in conventional schools. He would return to Hannibal four years later.

While traveling by steamboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans, Twain befriended the pilot, Horace E. Bixby, who inspired him to become a steamboat pilot himself. At the time, steamboat piloting was a very prominent and respected position.

It also paid well - around $3000 per year, which is equivalent to about $72,000 in today's money. In order to obtain a steamboat pilot's license, one had to go through extensive training.

While Twain was training, his younger brother Henry was killed on another steamboat when it exploded. A month before the explosion, Twain had had a dream where his brother died.

After he was killed, Twain was racked with guilt because he had encouraged Henry to train on the ill-fated steamboat and never took the dream seriously. He would develop an interest in parapsychology as a result.

Despite this tragedy, Twain worked as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River until 1861, when the Civil War broke out. His famous pen name, Mark Twain, was a term used by steamboat captains to note that the water was at least two fathoms deep, and thus safe to travel on.

Twain's experiences as a steamboat pilot would lead him to write his classic book, Life on the Mississippi (1883), a combination of non-fiction and fiction in which he mixed autobiography and history with folklore.

In 1861, Twain moved out West and joined his brother Orion, who had been appointed secretary to James W. Nye, the governor of the Nevada Territory. To get there, Twain and Orion traveled two weeks by stagecoach across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains.

The trip would inspire him to write his classic first short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865) and his famous travelogue, Roughing It (1872).

When they arrived in Virginia City, Nevada, Twain found work as a miner. He failed at mining, so he switched gears and began working as a journalist for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, where he first used his famous pen name, Mark Twain.

He moved to San Francisco in 1864, where he met famous writers such as Bret Harte, Artemus Ward, Dan DeQuille, and Ina Coolbrith. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County would be published a year later in The Saturday Press, a weekly literary newspaper based in New York City.

In 1867, Twain was still working as a journalist when a newspaper sponsored him to take a tour of Europe and the Middle East, during which he wrote a series of popular travel letters.

These letters would be compiled and published in book form as his classic travelogue, The Innocents Abroad (1869). While on his tour, Twain met Charles Langdon, whose sister, Olivia, he would later marry.

Twain met Olivia in 1868. It was love at first sight, and within two years, they would be married. She bore him a son and three daughters. Twain's son Langdon died at the age of two from diphtheria. His daughter Susy would die suddenly from meningitis at 24.

Daughter Jean, an epileptic, would die at 29 after suffering a seizure in the bathtub. Though oldest daughter Clara would live a long life, her relationship with her father was tempestuous and plagued with scandal.

Mark Twain's wife, Olivia, came from a wealthy, liberal, intellectual family, and through them, he met fellow abolitionists and "socialists, principled atheists, and activists for women's rights and social equality."

These influential people included Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and the famous utopian socialist, William Dean, who became a lifelong friend.

Olivia's family and their friends would have a strong influence on Twain's philosophy and writings. Although a Presbyterian, Twain was often critical of religion and once quipped that "if Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian."

Twain would become most famous for his classic novels such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), Eve's Diary (1906), and many others.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), considered by many to be Twain's greatest novel, was attacked for its abolitionist themes when it was first published.

The novel finds Tom's friend Huckleberry Finn on an adventure of his own. While running away from his guardians, Huck meets Jim, an escaped slave who hopes to make it to Ohio - a free state - and eventually buy his family's freedom so they can join him there.

Through initially opposed to the idea of Jim becoming a free man, when he befriends and travels with him, Huck comes to realize that Jim is a good, intelligent man who deserves to be free.

When Jim is betrayed by some grifters and recaptured, Huck helps him escape again even though its against the law- it's considered a form of theft. In one of the novel's most famous lines, Huck, knowing that stealing is a sin, defiantly says, "All right then, I'll go to hell!"

Ironically, Twain's novel would be attacked again some seventy years after it was first published - this time for its alleged racism. The NAACP has denounced the novel for its use of the racial epithet nigger and alleged racist stereotyping of blacks.

The novel is often targeted by African-American activists who want it banned from classrooms and school libraries, but Twain scholars point out that the author let his Southern white characters speak their own ugly language as a way of denouncing slavery and the Southern notion that black people were subhuman.

In 2011, NewSouth Books, a publishing house in Alabama, issued a controversial new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - a bowdlerized edition with all uses of the word nigger changed to slave, and the word injun deleted entirely.

Suzanne La Rosa, co-founder of NewSouth Books, claimed that the changes would make the novel more acceptable for the classroom, but scholars derided the new edition as an attempt to whitewash the long history of white Southerners' venomous racism.

In addition to his writings, Mark Twain was also a world famous lecturer, and his lecture tours helped to establish his reputation as America's greatest humorist and iconoclast. When he ran into financial troubles from bad investments, he would go out on more lecture tours to earn back the money he lost.

During one European tour, Twain was invited to speak as the guest of the Concordia Press Club in Vienna, Austria. In typical Twain style, he gave a speech in German - Die Schrecken der Deutschen Sprache, which means The Horrors of the German Language.

Mark Twain died in 1910 at the age of 74. He will always be remembered as one of the greatest writers of all time and a founding father of American literature.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words." - Mark Twain

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Mark Twain's most famous novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Enjoy!

Notes For November 29th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 29th, 1832, the legendary American writer Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She had three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and Abigail, and would base her most famous novel on her experiences growing up with them in New England.

Louisa's father was Amos Bronson Alcott, who called himself Bronson. He was a famous teacher and transcendentalist philosopher who belonged to Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalist Club.

In addition to his spiritual beliefs, Bronson shared Emerson's ferocious abolitionist convictions. The Alcott family would host a runaway slave in their home. In 1840, when Louisa was eight years old, Bronson moved the family to Concord, Massachusetts.

Growing up in a liberal, intellectual family, Louisa was tutored mostly by her father's friend, the legendary writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau. She also received instruction from Ralph Waldo Emerson and family friends Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller.

Louisa would write of these experiences in an early newspaper article, Transcendental Wild Oats. She would also write of the brief time her family lived in the Utopian Fruitlands commune co-founded by her father.

The commune would fail not only because of the members' philosophical extremes, but also due to the severe New England winter for which most of them were unprepared.

Economic hardship would require Louisa to go to work at a very young age, and she worked at such various jobs as governess, seamstress, domestic servant, and occasionally, as a teacher. What she really wanted to be was a writer.

Her first book, Flower Fables, was published in 1849, when she was seventeen years old. It was a collection of short stories originally written for Ralph Waldo Emerson's young daughter, Ellen. A year later, she began writing for Atlantic Monthly magazine.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Louisa served as a Union hospital nurse, caring for wounded and sick soldiers in Georgetown, D.C. She wrote vivid detailed letters home chronicling her experiences.

These letters would be revised and published in the Commonwealth newspaper. When they appeared in book form as Hospital Sketches (1863), they brought their author to the attention of critics, who praised her talent.

While she worked to build her career as a writer of traditional fiction, Louisa also wrote sensational, passionate stories and novels strictly for money. They were published under the pseudonym of A.M. Bernard.

These early novels were torrid Gothic potboilers with titles like Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power, A Long Fatal Love Chase, and Pauline's Passion and Punishment. One novel she published anonymously was called A Modern Mephistopheles.

When her collections of children's stories became successful, Louisa was able to devote herself to traditional fiction. In 1868, she published her most famous novel. Originally intended for young adult readers, it would prove to be not only a critical and commercial success, but also one of the great classic works of American literature.

Little Women told the story of the four March sisters, (Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy) growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, was based on Alcott's experiences growing up with her own three sisters in Concord and Boston. Louisa modeled the character of Jo after herself.

Fifteen-year-old Jo March is the second oldest of the sisters. Intelligent, outspoken, and tomboyish, Jo longs to be a writer. An early feminist, Jo finds herself at odds with the restrictions placed on women in the late 19th century, including not being able to go to college and being pressured to marry.

Through the course of the novel, the March sisters become friends with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence, the handsome, charming, affluent boy next door. An orphan, Laurie lives with his grandfather. He becomes especially close to Jo. They get into various scrapes as Laurie joins in the March sisters' adventures.

The sisters also struggle to overcome their particular character flaws (Jo has a temper, Meg is vain, Beth is shy, and Amy selfish) in order to live up to their parents' expectations and become, well, little women.

The first part of Little Women became a huge hit with both critics and readers, and an overnight sensation, selling over 2,000 copies in 1868. Louisa May Alcott received many letters from fans (and visits from them at her home) clamoring for a sequel.

So, in 1869, Alcott published the second part, Good Wives. Although her fans were begging for Jo to get married - especially to Laurie - she initially resisted the idea, believing that Jo should remain a "literary spinster."

Louisa changed her mind, and in Good Wives, married off not only Jo, but Meg and Amy as well. However, in a surprising twist, Jo marries Friedrich "Fritz" Bhaer, the poor German immigrant and professor who encouraged her to be a serious writer, while Amy eventually marries Laurie.

Louisa would later write, "Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse and out of perversity went and made a funny match for her."

As for her own spinsterhood, in an interview with literary critic Louise Chandler Moulton, she joked that the reason she herself was a spinster was because she had "fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man."

In reality, while traveling through Europe, she'd had a passionate affair with a young man she'd met in Switzerland, a Polish freedom fighter named Ladislas "Laddie" Wisniewski.

Louisa would base the character of Laurie on Laddie. Though she had written of her affair with Laddie in her journal, she tore out those pages prior to her death. The details of their relationship remain unknown.

Little Women would be followed by two sequels: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Louisa would write more memorable novels including Eight Cousins (1875), Under The Lilacs (1878), and Jack and Jill: A Village Story (1880).

Louisa May Alcott suffered from chronically poor health in her later years, which she attributed to mercury poisoning from a typhoid fever treatment. She ultimately died of a stroke in March of 1888 at the age of 55.

Although her early biographers had agreed with her assessment of mercury poisoning, a more recent analysis of her chronic illness indicated that she most likely suffered from lupus.

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Quote Of The Day

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“Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can." - Louisa May Alcott

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video a reading from Louisa May Alcott's classic novel, Little Women. Enjoy!

Notes For November 28th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 28th, 1944, the famous American writer and activist Rita Mae Brown was born. She was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Florida. Her biological mother, an unwed 18-year-old girl, turned her over to an orphanage.

When Rita was three months old, she was adopted by her new parents, Ralph and Julia Ellen Brown. An intellectually gifted child, she had learned to read when she was three years old. As a high school student, she excelled at both academics and sports.

During Rita's teen years, she lost her adoptive father and began to experiment with sex, taking both male and female lovers. She considered herself a bisexual who preferred women, saying, "I don't believe in straight or gay. I really don't. I think we're all degrees of bisexual."

When she was 16, the father of Rita's high school girlfriend found her love letters and outed her. As a result, she was kicked out of the student council. It was the first and not the last incident of homophobic persecution she experienced.

By 1964, Rita had won a scholarship to the University of Florida. When she wasn't studying, she worked for the civil rights movement. Her scholarship was revoked and she was expelled from university, allegedly because of her civil rights work, but that was just the university's excuse.

The real reason for Rita's expulsion and loss of scholarship was that she had been outed as a lesbian by the officers of her sorority. When the officers suspected that Rita was gay and confronted her, she told them she didn't care if the person she was in love with was a man or a woman.

After losing her scholarship, a penniless Rita hitchhiked to New York City. Homeless at first, she lived in a car with a male friend and a cat she'd named Baby Jesus. Determined to make something of herself, she put herself through New York University.

Upon graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English and the classics, she continued her education, studying cinematography at the New York School of Visual Arts. She would ultimately receive a Ph.D at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC.

In 1970, while studying at the New York School of Visual Arts, Rita worked for the National Organization for Women (NOW). She would resign in protest over NOW president Betty Friedan's homophobic remarks and attempts to distance NOW from lesbian organizations.

After leaving NOW, Rita Mae Brown co-founded The Furies Collective, a lesbian feminist newspaper collective. She began her literary career with two poetry collections, The Hand That Cradles the Rock (1971) and Songs to a Handsome Woman (1973).

In 1973, Rita's classic first novel was published. One of the most controversial young adult novels ever written, it was rejected by every major publisher in New York. She tried to get an agent, but that didn't work, either.

One agent, a woman, literally threw Rita's manuscript at her, called her a pervert, and told her to get out of her office. She finally found a publisher, a new and small feminist publishing house called Daughters Press, who bought her novel for $1,000.

Rubyfruit Jungle is a picaresque, semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman's coming-of-age as a lesbian, a tale told with humor, pathos, and zest. It paints a frank and honest portrait of lesbians that shatters all the stereotypes.

Molly Bolt is a pretty young girl who has a tempestuous relationship with her mother, Carrie, who informs her that she is an adopted bastard child. Beginning at the age of eleven, Molly experiments sexually with both girls and boys, including her cousin Leroy.

As a teenager, Molly loses her adoptive father Carl, to whom she was close, and has an affair with a cheerleader, Carolyn, who rejects the lesbian label, seeing herself as a bisexual.

Determined to make something of herself, Molly becomes an excellent student and wins a college scholarship. When her lesbian affair with her alcoholic roommate is discovered, Molly loses her scholarship and is expelled from university.

Broke but not broken, the feisty Molly heads for New York City to study filmmaking and finds that life in the concrete jungle isn't all she dreamed it would be. Using her beauty, charm, intelligence, and sparkling wit, she determines to become the greatest filmmaker of all time.

Since Daughters Press, the publisher of Rubyfruit Jungle, was so small, there was no marketing or reviews of the novel at the time it was published, nor was it available in any major bookstores.

The novel was mostly sold in small bookshops, by mail, and even out of the backs of cars. Nevertheless, word of mouth made Rubyfruit Jungle an underground hit, selling 70,000 copies in its first four years.

When the novel gained a wide release, it received great reviews and copies soon appeared on high school library shelves, causing an uproar - a censorship row that would last for many years - due to its sexual content and language.

Rita Mae Brown would write more great novels, including In Her Day (1976), a lesbian comic romance set in early 1970s Greenwich Village. Carole is a conservative, middle aged art history professor whose life is turned upside down when she falls for Ilse, a 20-year-old feminist revolutionary.

Southern Discomfort (1982) is a demented Southern Gothic comedy set in Alabama, circa 1918. Hortensia Reedmuller Banastre is a Southern belle trapped in a loveless marriage who falls madly in love with Hercules Jinks - a handsome black prizefighter!

In 1990, Rita decided to try something different. She began a series of mystery novels allegedly co-written by Sneaky Pie Brown - her cat. The Mrs. Murphy Series features the adventures of Mrs. Murphy, a tiger cat, and her human companion, Mary "Harry" Haristeen, who live in the small town of Crozet, Virginia.

In the first novel, Wish You Were Here (1990), someone is brutally murdering Crozet's most prominent citizens. Each victim received a postcard before they were murdered, with a tombstone on one side and the message "Wish you were here" written on the back. Can Harry and Mrs. Murphy solve the murders?

So far, Rita Mae Brown has written twenty Mrs. Murphy Mysteries. She has also written several screenplays for TV movies and feature films, including the cult classic horror film The Slumber Party Massacre (1982). It was written as a spoof, but the director chose to shoot it as a serious slasher flick.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Writers will happen in the best of families." - Rita Mae Brown

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Rita Mae Brown speaking at the 2011 Gaithersburg Book Festival. Enjoy!

Notes For November 27th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 27th, 1909, the famous American novelist, poet, screenwriter, literary and film critic James Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. When he was six years old, his father was killed in a car accident. A year later, he and his younger sister Emma were sent to the first of several boarding schools.

James' favorite boarding school was the Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys in Sewanee, Tennessee. At this school, run by Episcopal monks, Agee met Episcopal priest Father James Harold Flye, who would become a lifelong friend.

When he was sixteen, after spending the summer traveling through Europe with Father Flye, James Agee entered Phillips Exeter Academy prep school, where he became president of the Lantern Club and editor of the Monthly, where his first writings, including short stories, poetry, and plays, were published.

Although he barely passed most of his classes, Agee was admitted to Harvard after graduation, where he became editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate and delivered the class ode at commencement.

After graduating Harvard, Agee married his first wife, Via Saunders, and began writing for Fortune magazine. In 1934, his first and only poetry collection, Permit Me Voyage, was published, featuring a foreword by poet Archibald MacLeish.

While writing for Fortune, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment living with poor sharecroppers in Alabama, but left the magazine before completing his article.

He turned the material into a non-fiction book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). The book only sold 600 copies before it was remaindered. That year, Agee's second marriage broke up.

The next year, James Agee became the literary critic for Time magazine. At one point, he was reviewing up to six books a week. He left Time to become the film critic for the liberal news magazine The Nation.

By 1948, he had become a freelance writer. An assignment for Life magazine resulted in the publication of an acclaimed article about legendary silent film comedians Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon. The article is credited with reviving Keaton's career.

Many of Agee's freelance assignments were movie reviews or articles on films, most of which were later published as Agee On Film and Agee On Film II. He championed Charlie Chaplin's classic film, Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a controversial black comedy that was ahead of its time.

A commercial failure that raised the ire of conservative audiences and the clergy, the movie starred Chaplin as Henri Verdoux, a Parisian bank teller who loses his job to the global depression. So, he comes up with a unique means of supporting his crippled wife and their little son.

Verdoux becomes a professional bluebeard, marrying rich women for their money, then murdering them. The funniest scene finds Chaplin in a rowboat, trying in vain to drown his latest wife, played by comedienne Martha Raye.

In the 1950s, while continuing his work as a freelance writer, James Agee became a Hollywood screenwriter. Although his screenwriting career was derailed by his alcoholism, Agee would co-write the screenplays for two classic films, The African Queen (1951) and Night Of The Hunter (1955).

The African Queen, directed by John Huston, was an adaptation of C.S. Forester's novel about British missionary siblings (Robert Morely and Katharine Hepburn) in German East Africa during the outbreak of World War I.

Humphrey Bogart co-starred as Charlie Allnut, the grizzled Canadian boat captain who delivers their mail and supplies and later attempts to rescue Hepburn from the Germans after her brother dies.

Night Of The Hunter, a classic suspense thriller, was directed by Charles Laughton and based on a novel by Davis Grubb. Robert Mitchum starred as Reverend Harry Powell, a preacher and psychopathic killer with the words LOVE and HATE tattooed across his knuckles.

Powell tracks down the two small children of his former cellmate, hoping to get his hands on a fortune in stolen money, after which, he plans to kill the kids.

The children find sanctuary with an elderly but tough woman (silent screen legend Lillian Gish) who sings religious hymns and packs a shotgun.

Despite Agee's success, the ravages of alcoholism and chain-smoking took their toll on his health. On May 16th, 1955, James Agee died of a heart attack (his third) while in a cab en route to a doctor's appointment. He was 45 years old.

In 1957, his first and only novel, an autobiographical novel titled A Death In The Family, was published posthumously. A year later, it won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary diction.' I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive." - James Agee

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the classic film Night Of The Hunter, co-written by James Agee. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

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Here are last week's publishing successes. Please join us in congratulating these IWW members.

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Mona Leeson Vanek

http://montanascribbler.com

My video, “Aunt Lena, Cabinet National Forest's Unsung Heroine.” is included in video resources at The University of Maine, Women in Curriculum/ Women's Studies. I'm thrilled! I recently received a request for a DVD copy of the video (originally on VHS tape, and also aired on PBS-TV and Channel stations during the 1990s.) History lives on and on and on....

Joanna M. Weston

My poem, “Up the block,” published in Ink, Sweat, and Tears http://ink-sweat-and-tears.com/

I've a poem, '”Copper Island,” at the Camel Saloon:
http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2012/11/copper-island.html

Tom Mahony

http://www.tommahony.net/

There is an interview with me about my new novel, Pacific Offerings at Underground Book Reviews
http://www.undergroundbookreviews.com/3/post/2012/11/guest-post-by-lynne-hinkey-an-interview-with-tom-mahoney.html

Lynn Hinkey

My interview of Tom Mahony, whose book, Pacific Offering, has just been published, is at Underground Book Reviews. Following the interview is my review of the novel.

http://www.undergroundbookreviews.com/3/post/2012/11/guest-post-by-lynne-hinkey-an-interview-with-tom-mahoney.html

Bob Sanchez

http://bitly.com/bobsanchez

Rick Bylina has just made my year. He chose Little Mountain as "Best I read in 2012":
http://rickbylina.blogspot.com/2012/11/book-review-best-books-for-2012.html

Francene Stanley

http://francene--wordstitcher.weeby.com/

Solstice Publishing has accepted Tidal Surge, the second novel in my Moonstone Series.

Kareen Wade McCabe

 http://kwmccabe.blogspot.com

My poetry book, Dark and Light: A Small Collection of Poetry, is now published and available in audio format on Audible and ITunes. It was narrated by Kristina Yuen, a very talented vocalist.

This Week's Practice Exercise

Imaginings (Verison 2)

Prepared by: Don Mackenzie

Posted on: Sunday, 25 November 2012

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Exercise: In 400 words or less, show us a character whose imagination has a particularly significant effect, either within the story or on the reader.

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Dreaming or imagining is a natural function of ordinary and creative life. A person may be trying to take him or herself out of an uncomfortable situation, or imagining the steps she or he needs to take to achieve a victory.

Dreaming/imagining can also be an activity that sneaks up on a character. It may undermine intentions or point the way to new success.

Dreaming/imagining is a powerful force that writers should be encouraged to explore, but caution is needed. The revelation "it was all a dream" is one of the most offensive devices in fiction. Readers object when they feel they have been tricked and the contract between writer and reader has been broken. Surprises are wonderful, but the reader must feel properly prepared and the surprise must be appropriate.

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."--T. E. Lawrence, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"

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Exercise: In 400 words or less, show us a character whose imagination has a particularly significant effect, either within the story or on the reader.

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When critiquing, explain whether you found it easy or difficult to  draw the line between what was real and what was imagined. Did you find the writing believable or insightful? Are the characters and the setting well drawn?

These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.

Notes For November 23rd, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 23rd, 1874, Far From The Madding Crowd, the classic novel by the legendary English writer Thomas Hardy, was published in London.

It first appeared in a serialized format, published by Cornhill Magazine, which at the time was the main rival of All The Year Round, the literary magazine founded by Charles Dickens.

Far From The Madding Crowd is not only one of the greatest love stories ever written, it's also a classic tale of rural English life during the Victorian era. It tells a tale of true love complicated and delayed by stubbornness, pride, and circumstance.

Gabriel Oak is a successful sheep farmer nearing thirty years of age who falls in love with Bathsheba Everdene, a proud, vain, determined, and independent woman eight years his junior who has come to live with her aunt.

Bathsheba grows close to Gabriel - she even saves his life - but when he proposes marriage, she refuses, as she values her independence more than his love. She moves away miles out of town.

When Bathsheba and Gabriel are reunited sometime later, things have changed drastically for both of them. Gabriel is ruined when an inexperienced sheepdog runs his flock over the edge of a cliff.

After being forced to sell off all his possessions to settle his debts, Gabriel wanders about looking for work. He happens upon a dangerous fire ravaging a farm and helps to put it out.

When the owner of the farm comes over to thank him, it turns out to be Bathsheba, who inherited her uncle's estate. In need of a capable shepherd, she hires Gabriel, although it makes her uncomfortable.

Bathsheba has another admirer - a lonely, repressed, middle-aged farmer named William Boldwood. She decides to play a joke on him and sends him a valentine with the words "Marry Me" written on it. Boldwood, not realizing that it's just a joke, proposes marriage.

Bathsheba doesn't love him, but toys with the idea of marrying him. Despite his shortcomings, he's also affluent and the most eligible bachelor in town.

Instead of accepting Boldwood's proposal right away, she puts off giving him an answer and plays with his affections. When Gabriel finds out, he chides Bathsheba for her thoughtlessness. She fires him.

Later, when bloat threatens to kill all of her sheep, Bathsheba is finally forced to swallow her pride and beg Gabriel for help. He saves her flock, she hires him back, and they become friends again.

Soon, however, Bathsheba falls for a dashing soldier, Sgt. Francis "Frank" Troy. Gabriel tries to discourage her from marrying him, telling her that she'd be better of with William Boldwood. In love with Troy, Bathsheba elopes with him.

When they return from their honeymoon, Troy is approached by Boldwood, who offers him a huge bribe in exchange for Bathsheba. He refuses, and Boldwood vows revenge.

Unfortunately for Bathsheba, her gallant husband soon shows his true colors - he's a compulsive gambler in love with another woman, whom he was going to marry. Her name was Fanny Robin.

On their wedding day, Fanny accidentally went to the wrong church. Mistakenly believing that she jilted him, a humiliated Troy called off the wedding, not knowing that Fanny was pregnant with his child.

Months later, Troy meets Fanny on the road. A destitute wreck about to give birth, Troy takes pity on her and gives her all the money he has on him. He plans to support her and their child, but she dies in childbirth, along with the baby.

Gabriel tries to conceal all of this from Bathsheba, but she finds out and has the coffin brought to her house. She opens it and sees both mother and child. Troy kisses Fanny's corpse.

Telling Bathsheba, "This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be," Troy leaves her. He takes a long walk to the coast, strips off his clothes, and bathes in the ocean. A riptide carries him out to sea and he's presumed dead.

William Boldwood still determines to marry Bathsheba. This time, out of guilt over all the pain she's caused him, (and others) she agrees to marry him in a few years, when she can have her husband declared legally dead. What she doesn't know is that he's still alive.

When Troy learns that Boldwood has forced Bathsheba to marry him, he returns on Christmas Eve to claim her. He finds her at Boldwood's house and she screams in horror when she sees him.

Boldwood, refusing to give her up, shoots Troy and kills him. He attempts suicide and is later sentenced to hang. Boldwood's death sentence is commuted on the grounds of insanity after his friends petition the Home Secretary for mercy.

Through all of her tribulations, Bathsheba came to rely more and more on her oldest and dearest friend, Gabriel Oak. But one day, he gives notice that he's resigning from her employ.

When she presses him for an explanation, Gabriel reluctantly admits that he's quitting to protect her good name, as people are gossiping that he wants to marry her.

Bathsheba finally realizes that he is the only one who ever truly cared about her - the only one who really loved her. When he summons the courage to ask for her hand again, she accepts without hesitation, and they quietly marry.

A huge hit with Victorian readers and critics, Far From the Madding Crowd would become an all-time classic novel, adapted for the stage, screen, radio, and television.

Thomas Hardy would write more classic novels, including Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). He died in 1928 at the age of 87.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things." - Thomas Hardy

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of the first chapter of Thomas Hardy's classic novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. Enjoy!

Notes For November 22nd, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 22nd, 1819, the legendary English novelist Mary Anne Evans, best known by her male pen name George Eliot, was born in Warwickshire, England. Growing up, she had more formal education than most girls in the Victorian era.

She was an intellectually gifted child and a voracious reader. Her father invested in her education partly because he feared that her homely looks would most likely prevent her from landing a husband.

Mary Anne's father was the manager of Arbury Hall, a magnificent estate belonging to the aristocratic Newdigate family. Because of his position, she was granted access to the estate's formidable library of books.

She used the library to educate herself from the age of sixteen; her visits to Arbury Hall exposed her to the stark contrast between the lives of the rich and the poor, which would influence her writing.

Around this time Mary Anne's mother died, so she served as her father's housekeeper and cook. When her brother Isaac married, he and his new wife took over the family home. Mary Anne and her father moved to a new home near Coventry.

There, she was introduced to Coventry society, and struck up a friendship with Charles and Cara Bray, a wealthy couple known for their philanthropy and reputation as progressive free thinkers.

Through the Brays, Mary Anne Evans was introduced to the great philosophers and writers of the day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Owen, Harriet Martineau, and Herbert Spencer.

She also met liberal theologians with whom she explored her simmering discontent with the conservative, evangelical Anglican beliefs her father raised her with. When she began questioning the literal truth of the Bible, her father threatened to kick her out of his home.

Mary Anne's father never followed through with his threats. She continued to serve as his cook and housekeeper until he died in 1849. She was 30 years old at the time. A few days after his funeral, she accompanied her friends the Brays on a trip to Switzerland.

She decided to remain in Geneva rather than return home with the Brays. There, she was befriended by French artist Francois d'Albert Durade and his wife, Juliet. Francois painted a portrait of her.

The following year, Mary Anne returned to England. Sometimes known as Marian, she began using the name Marian Evans. She determined to become a writer. She stayed with her old friend John Chapman, a radical publisher.

She would become the assistant editor of his liberal literary magazine, The Westminster Review. It was unheard for a woman to become a magazine editor during the Victorian era, and her living arrangement with John Chapman would add more fuel to the fire of scandal. The worst was yet to come.

A few years later, in 1854, Mary Anne Evans moved in with George Henry Lewes, a philosopher and critic whom she had met three years earlier. She had finally found her true love. Lewes was married, but he and his wife Agnes had an open marriage. They also had seven children, four of which had been sired by Agnes' lover, Thornton Leigh Hunt.

Since Lewes had named himself as the father of Hunt's children on their birth certificates knowing that they were not his, he couldn't divorce Agnes. If he did, he would be considered an accomplice to her adultery and subject to criminal prosecution under British law.

Although they never did marry, Mary Anne and George Henry Lewes considered themselves husband and wife, and lived together as such. Mary Anne even used George's last name. After enjoying what she considered to be her honeymoon in Germany, she resumed her literary career.

She edited and wrote for The Westminster Review. What she really wanted to be was a novelist. Knowing that women writers in the Victorian era were either derided or not taken seriously, she took the pen name George Eliot.

Mary Anne's first novel, Adam Bede, was published in 1859. Her tale of a handsome young squire in a rural English town caught up in a love "rectangle" who finally realizes who his true love really is became an instant hit.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about this new and talented writer named George Eliot whose true identity was a mystery. Speculation about who he might be spread like wildfire.

When a failed writer named Joseph Liggins claimed that he was George Eliot and took credit for her work, Mary Anne Evans came forward and proved that she was the real George Eliot.

It wasn't long before word got out about Mary Anne's scandalous relationship with George Henry Lewes. While most of her readers were shocked, her popularity wasn't affected. Neither was her talent, as she continued to write great novels. Two of her best known, classic novels were Silas Marner (1861) and Middlemarch (1871-72).

Silas Marner told the story of the title character, a weaver living in a small town in Northern England in the early 19th century. When Marner is falsely accused of stealing from the Calvinist congregation he belongs to, he's kicked out of Church. His fiancee breaks up with him and marries another man.

Heartbroken, Marner leaves town and settles in the village of Raveloe, where he becomes a bitter, miserly recluse obsessed with gold coins, which he hoards in his home. When someone breaks in and steals all of his gold, Marner sinks into a deep depression.

Then, one cold winter night, he finds something far more precious than gold - a golden-haired two-year-old girl who wanders into his home. He follows her tracks in the snow and finds her mother dead of exposure.

Silas Marner decides to adopt the orphaned little girl and names her Eppie after his mother and sister. In raising his loving daughter, Marner's broken heart finally heals. Eppie grows up to be a fine and respected young woman.

When the secret of her true parentage is revealed, Eppie's biological father offers her a life of luxury as a gentleman's daughter. She politely refuses, telling him that she could never be happy without her real father - Silas Marner.

Middlemarch would prove to be "George Eliot's" magnum opus - a 900+ page epic novel published in several volumes. The English historical novel, which takes place from 1830-32, would establish the author's reputation as one of the most accurate chroniclers of rural English life in the early Victorian era.

This brilliant, classic novel remains to this day one of the most popular works of English literature ever written. In 1877, five years after the publication of Middlemarch, Mary Anne Evans was introduced to one of her biggest fans, Princess Louise - the daughter of Queen Victoria.

Her admiration and acceptance by the royal family squelched the flames of her scandalous personal life. She would court scandal again in 1880, when, two years after the death of her lover George Henry Lewes from illness, she married John Cross, a man twenty years her junior.

Her new husband was supposedly mentally unstable, and when he had an accident during their honeymoon in Venice - he fell off their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal - some speculated that he had attempted suicide. Whatever the cause, John Cross survived.

He and Mary Anne returned to England and settled into a new home in Chelsea. Unfortunately, she soon fell ill with a throat infection. She had been suffering from kidney disease for a few years, so the throat infection took a toll on her frail health.

Mary Anne Evans, aka George Eliot, died on December 22nd, 1880, at the age of 61.

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Quote Of The Day

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“The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.” - George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading from George Eliot's classic debut novel, Adam Bede. Enjoy!

Notes For November 21st, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 21st, 1694, the legendary French writer and philosopher Voltaire was born. He was born François-Marie Arouet in Paris, France. He came from an upper class family; his father was a treasury official, his mother a noblewoman.

As a boy, Voltaire received his education at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, a Jesuit private school. There, he learned Latin and Greek. Later, he would become fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English.

Voltaire's father intended for him to become a lawyer, so after he completed his schooling he was sent to study law. But Voltaire wanted to be a writer. While pretending that he was apprenticed to a notary public, he had taken up the life of a bohemian poet.

His father found out what he was up to, and he was sent away to Normandy to study law, but he continued writing. When Voltaire's father arranged for him to work as secretary to the French ambassador to the Netherlands, he took the job.

In the Netherlands, he fell in love with a girl named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer, a French Protestant refugee. The couple planned to elope, but were foiled by Voltaire's father, who would not be scandalized by having a Protestant marry into his family.

This planted the seeds for Voltaire's seething lifelong hatred of not only the Catholic Church, but religion in general, as well as the aristocracy and bourgeois mores. Taking his famous pen name, he became one of France's greatest and most controversial writers.

Voltaire's poetry and prose works were of a polemic nature, and he possessed a rapacious wit. He wrote many polemic tracts, pamphlets, and books - over 2,000 during his lifetime. A leading figure of the French Enlightenment, his writings, radical for their time, often got him in trouble.

He was not an atheist; he believed in the existence of a higher power, but disputed the literal validity of the Bible and other religious books, considering them to be collections of fairy tales written by men that inspired ignorance, intolerance, cruelty, and violence.

Voltaire loathed religious institutions like the Catholic Church. In a letter to Frederick II, the King of Prussia, he wrote, "[Catholicism] is without a doubt the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most blood-thirsty [religion] ever to infect the world."

He didn't single out the Church or Christianity in general for criticism. He also blasted Judaism (which gave the world the Old Testament) for the same reasons, and also Islam, which he called "a false and barbarous sect" founded by a "false prophet."

Rejecting the biblical story of Adam and Eve, Voltaire believed that each race had its own distinct origin, and that no one race was superior to the others.

For this reason, and because he had always championed civil liberties and human rights, he denounced slavery, adding to his reputation as a radical.

In 1717, the publication of Voltaire's epic poem La Henriade, a satirical attack on the French monarchy and the Catholic Church, resulted in his arrest. He served almost a year in the Bastille. Imprisonment failed to temper his poison pen, and by 1726, he found himself in trouble again.

Outraged by Voltaire's retort to his insult, Chevalier de Rohan, a young aristocrat, obtained a royal lettre de cachet from King Louis XV - a warrant for Voltaire's arrest and imprisonment without trial.

To avoid serving more time at the Bastille, Voltaire fled to England. He returned to Paris nearly three years later. He continued to write and publish polemical essays, poetry, and prose.

Voltaire's essay collection Philosophical Letters on the English praised the constitutional monarchy of England for its respect for human rights while condemning the French monarchy for violating them.

The outrage over his writings would escalate. He would flee arrest again, then return. Eventually, King Louis XV banned Voltaire entirely from France. He moved first to Germany, then settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his classic comic novel Candide and lived for 28 years.

When Voltaire finally returned to Paris in February of 1778, he was met with a hero's welcome. Around three hundred people came to visit him. He died three months later at the age of 83.

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Quote Of The Day

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"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of Voltaire's classic short story, Memnon or Human Wisdom. Enjoy!

Notes For November 20th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 20th, 1875, Roderick Hudson, the first novel by the legendary American writer Henry James, was published. James was an American who emigrated to England, where he lived, wrote, and became a British subject.

He had previously written a novella, Watch and Ward (1871), which was published in serial format by the Atlantic Monthly magazine. This early work, overly melodramatic and primitive in technique, would prove an embarrassment to James, and he disowned it.

Watch and Ward would not be published in book form until 1878, in a revised version. Thus, Roderick Hudson is considered by the author to be his first published novel.

The novel opens with Rowland Mallet, a wealthy patron of the arts, visiting his cousin Cecilia before leaving on a trip to Europe. He becomes enamored with a bust he sees. Later, he meets the sculptor, Roderick Hudson, a poor young law student and aspiring artist.

The two men strike up a friendship. Rowland offers to take Roderick to Italy, where he can concentrate on his art. He visits Roderick's mother and explains his intentions. She agrees to let him give up his law studies and go to Rome.

After a rough start, Roderick's technique improves and his artistic development takes off. Unfortunately, despite his talent, Roderick is an immature man-child who has trouble coping with his artistic genius. He is also distracted by the women around him.

Engaged to one woman, (Mary Garland) but attracted to another, (Augusta Blanchard) Roderick's romantic entanglements get worse when he meets Christina Light, a coquettish flirt who becomes his muse.

Although she likes Roderick, he's poor, and Christina is interested in marrying for wealth and position. She eventually marries a prince, and Roderick's life plunges into a downward spiral.

Roderick Hudson is considered to be Henry James' most accessible novel, though it does contain his trademark complexities and erotic overtones - in this case, homoerotic overtones in the relationship between Rowland and Roderick.

Christina Light - one of James' favorite creations - would return as the title character in his novel The Princess Casamassima (1886).

Henry James would go on to become of one of the greatest writers of his generation, famous for his masterful novels and novellas such as The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1878), Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and The Bostonians (1886).

His most famous work was the classic horror novella The Turn of the Screw (1898). He also wrote plays, literary criticisms, travelogues, biographies, and memoirs. He died in 1916 at the age of 72.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant — no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes." - Henry James

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of the first chapter of Henry James' classic horror novella, The Turn Of The Screw. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

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Another banner week for IWW members. Here is a list of their latest publishing successes.

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Peter Bernhardt

Just wanted to let you know that The Stasi File is the Book of the Day on eareadernewstoday. http://ereadernewstoday.com/book-of-the-day-the-stasi-file/6721307/
It has been posted on ENT's Facebook and Twitter pages.
http://www.facebook.com/EreaderNewsToday
http://twitter.com/#!/ereadernewstoda

Behlor Santi

http://www.behlorsanti.com

Just got some incredible news... my flash fiction, “I Wish They All Could Be Chilean Girls,” will be published in the December 2012 edition of Toasted Cheese. I worked on this piece for god how long, and I'll like to thank the critiquers who helped me whip the drafts into shape... cheers! Link will be provided when story appears. 

Joanna Weston

http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com

A poem, “Instructions to a Speaker,” is in this month's Literary Review of Canada. http://reviewcanada.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2879fe623320bad65fa2e3701&id=edf11aeb65&e=f3365867fa>

Many thanks to Louisa and the poetry list for help with this one.

Mel Jacob

www.Nellduvall.com

My Christmas story, “Saving Marta,”by Nell DuVall, is available both as an ebook (Kindle, etc) and as part of an anthology: Christmas Wishes 2012 ebook. The covers are beautiful and the publisher made sure we had them up as ebooks. Saving Marta is about a lonely woman, a man, and an elderly hip surgery patient who wants only to die.

Mona Lesson Vanek

http://montanascribbler.com

The Nov-Dec Issue of Montana Magazine with our Cathy Moser's story about me and my history books has brought neat feedback. Deanna Tolman, Circulation: patrick.doyle@montanamagazine.com>deanna.tolman@montanamagazine.com.

The story includes links to my online books, Behind These Mountains.

Sue Ellis

I am included in the Fall/Winter issue of Rose and Thorn Journal with my short story, “The Caretaker.” Thanks so much to members of the Fiction list who helped me iron the wrinkles out.
http://www.roseandthornjournal.com/Fall_2012_TOC.html

Mark Budman

The Literary Review (TLR) notes two of my books:

http://www.theliteraryreview.org/WordPress/2012/11/15/alumni-news-two-books-from-mark-budman/

Wayne Scheer

A bit of silliness.  I have a poem up at New Verse News about the Petraeus affair called, “An Affair of the Hard.” www.newversenews.com

Anita Saran

http://www.anitasaran.com

I entered a competition held on Six Sentences and my flash won and was included in the anthology - 'The Mysterious Dr. Ramsey' on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/6S-The-Mysterious-Dr-Ramsey/dp/1453661239

Kareen Wade McCabe

http://kwmccabe.blogspot.com

I was interviewed here:

http://www.alittlebitofrnrreviews.com/2012/11/interview-excerpt-kw-mccabe-author-of.html  

G.K. Adams

My flash fiction, “Tears of the Virgin” was up at FICTION 365 on November 14, http://www.fiction365.com/ . Click on the date on the calendar.It was not critiqued here, but it benefited from all I’ve learned here.

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Notes For November 16th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 16th, 1913, Swann's Way, the first volume of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, (In Search of Lost Time, aka Remembrance of Things Past) the classic epic novel by the legendary French writer Marcel Proust, was published.

Clocking in at well over a million words, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu is one of the longest novels ever written. When Proust began work on it, he planned to publish it as a series of seven volumes.

It took him over ten years to complete the series. He died while editing his finished drafts of the last three volumes, so his brother Robert finished the revisions (working from Marcel's notes) and published them posthumously.

After completing the first volume of his epic novel, Swann's Way, Proust submitted the manuscript to several publishers, all of whom rejected it. One editor complained about some minor syntax errors, while another had a different complaint.

"My dear fellow," he told Proust, "I may be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may I can't see why a chap should need 30 pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep."

Proust's writing style was experimental in nature - dense and lyrical prose rich in symbolism and philosophy, eschewing plot in favor of a non-linear narrative. This reflected his fascination with the nature of memory.

The memories in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu are recalled in incredibly rich detail. Its style was in complete contrast with the plot-driven novels of its time. This may have contributed to its initial rejection.

Some believe it had more to do with the fact that Proust, who was gay, wrote openly and honestly about homosexuality at a time when it was not only despised by society but also illegal - a crime punishable by imprisonment.

His narrator in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu is not gay, but other characters are and homosexuality is a recurring theme in Proust's writings.

Unfazed by the rejection of Swann's Way by publishers, Proust raised the money to publish the novel himself. It made him famous. Scholars have proclaimed A la Recherche du Temps Perdu to be one of the greatest modern novels ever written.

The legendary Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov named it as one of the greatest prose works of the 20th century, along with James Joyce's Ulysses and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. W. Somerset Maugham called it "the greatest fiction to date."

In 2002, Penguin Books published a new English translation of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Edited by Christopher Prendergast, it's a collaboration of seven different translators.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Reading is at the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it. It does not constitute it... There are certain cases of spiritual depression in which reading can become a sort of curative discipline... reintroducing a lazy mind into the life of the Spirit." - Marcel Proust

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of Marcel Proust's classic novel, Swann's Way. Enjoy!

Notes For November 15th, 2012

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This Day In Writing History

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On November 15th, 1887, the famous American poet Marianne Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri. She was born in the living quarters of her grandfather's church. He was a Presbyterian minister. Marianne's father had walked out on the family before she was born, so she spent her early years living in her grandfather's home.

Marianne's grandfather died when she seven; her mother moved the family to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where she began her education. After attending college and business school, Marianne taught at the Carlisle Indian School for several years. In 1915, when she was twenty-eight, her first published poem appeared.

Marianne continued to write and determined to become a professional poet. She and her mother moved to New York City, where she would become an assistant librarian at the New York Public Library.

As her publication credits grew, with her works published in major literary magazines and newspapers, she was befriended by some of the greatest poets of the day, such as William Carlos Williams, H.D. (Hilda Dolittle), Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot.

In 1919, she struck up a friendship with Ezra Pound, a fellow American poet famous for his poetry and controversial for his political views. She continued to write to him even after the end of the war, as he languished in a brutal military prison.

Pound had been serving time for treason. In the 1930s, he proclaimed his support for fascism and admiration of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. During the war, he had lived in Rome and recorded propaganda radio broadcasts for Mussolini.

Although politically conservative, Marianne had denounced fascism long before America's entry into World War 2 and was revolted by Ezra Pound's anti-Semitism. Yet, she remained his friend. Pound would suffer a mental breakdown in prison, be declared insane, and transferred to a mental hospital.

Marianne Moore's first poetry collection, Poems, was published in London in 1921. It was actually published without her knowledge or consent by her friend H.D. as a surprise. When Marianne received her copy, she wasn't happy with the selection of poems, the editing, or the layout.

She continued to write and publish collections of her poetry, establishing herself as one of the finest poets of her generation. From 1925-29, she served as an editor for the famous literary magazine, The Dial (1840-1929). In 1931, the famous literary magazine Poetry (1912-present) awarded her the Helen Haire Levinson Prize.

Marianne became a celebrity among the New York literati. She was quite a character; whenever she went out, no matter what the occasion, she'd wear her trademark black cape and matching tricorn hat.

She was a huge sports fan, and her favorite sports were baseball and boxing. She regularly attended ballgames and boxing matches. Her favorite boxer was Muhammad Ali, and she wrote the liner notes for his 1963 spoken word album, I Am The Greatest!

Marianne's fame also attracted the attention of the Ford Motor Company. The company's manager of marketing research asked her to name their newest car, a breakthrough model that they believed would make automotive history.

She came up with a list of names, including the Resilient Bullet, the Ford Silver Sword, the Varsity Stroke, the Andante con Moto, and the Utopian Turtletop.

None of Marianne's names for the new car were chosen. Instead, Ford named it the Edsel. The company was right - the Edsel did make automotive history. It was the worst American car ever made, and Ford lost millions of dollars on it.

In 1951, Marianne published her most famous book, Collected Poems. It won her numerous awards, including a Pultizer Prize. She was a Modernist poet who believed that love of language and heartfelt expression were more important than meter, as you can see in her classic poem, Poetry:

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important
beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,
one discovers that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not be-
cause a

high sounding interpretation can be put upon them
but because they are
useful; when they become so derivative as to
become unintelligible, the
same thing may be said for all of us – that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand. The bat,
holding on upside down or in quest of some-
thing to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll,
a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a
horse that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician – case after case
could be cited did
one wish it; nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents
and

school-books;" all these phenomena are important.
One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half
poets,
the result is not poetry,
nor till the autocrats among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination" – above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads
in them, shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on one hand,
in defiance of their opinion –
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness, and
that which is on the other hand,
genuine, then you are interested in poetry.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others." - Marianne Moore

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare recording of Marianne Moore reading her classic poem, Bird-Witted. Enjoy!