Fun_People Archive
16 Sep
LIT BITS V3 #261

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 100 17:54:53 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: LIT BITS V3 #261

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Excerpted-from: LITERARY CALENDAR V3 #261
From: ptervin@pent.yasuda-u.ac.jp

Today is Sunday, 17 September 2000; on this day,

229 years ago (1771),

     Scottish physician and novelist Tobias Smollett (_Humphrey Clinker_)
     dies at Leghorn, aged 50.

136 years ago (1864),

     In Florence, Italy, English poet Walter Savage Landor dies.

117 years ago (1883),

     Poet and physician William Carlos Williams is born in Rutherford, New
     Jersey: "I don't play golf, am not a joiner. I vote Democratic, read
     as much as my eyes will stand, and work at my trade day in and day
     out. When I can find nothing better to do, I write." In 1951 his
     _Autobiography_ is published on his 68th birthday.

65 years ago (1935),

     A hero of the countercultural revolution and hippie movement of the
     1960s, the author of the bestseller, _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_,
     Ken Kesey, is born in La Junta Colorado.

49 years ago (1951),

     Popular author of whimsical quatrains, Gelett Burgess dies in Carmel,
     California. He is credited with adding several new words to the English
     language, including _blurb_.

Today's poem:

                 Absence

     Here, ever since you went abroad,
     If there be change no change I see:
     I only walk our wonted road,
     The road is only walk'd by me.

     Yes; I forgot; a change there is
     Was it of that you bade me tell?
     I catch at times, at times I miss
     The sight, the tone, I know so well.

     Only two months since you stood here?
     Two shortest months? Then tell me why
     Voices are harsher than they were,
     And tears are longer ere they dry.

                                               Walter Landor
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