Quote for the Day: November 4th, 2021

*Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life* by Anne Lamott

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

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Poem for the Day: November 3rd, 2021

November Night by Adelaide Crapsey

Listen. . 
With faint dry sound, 
Like steps of passing ghosts, 
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees 
And fall.

Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914) is most famous for being the inventor of the cinquain, a poetic form containing five lines. Crapsey’s short and tragic life, coupled with the macabre nature of her work, which deals heavily with death and human suffering, makes her a poet not easily read. However, for the reader brave enough to wade through the murky waters of Crapsey’s sparse oeuvre, her work is richly rewarding. You can read more about Crapsey and her work here.

Quote for the Day: November 3rd, 2021

*Matilda* by Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake (Illustrator)

So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.
Roald Dahl, Matilda

Poem for the Day: November 2nd, 2021

Women by Alice Walker

They were women then 
My mama’s generation 
Husky of voice—stout of 
Step 
With fists as well as 
Hands 
How they battered down 
Doors 
And ironed 
Starched white 
Shirts 
How they led 
Armies
Headragged generals 
Across mined 
Fields 
Booby-trapped 
Ditches 
To discover books 
Desks 
A place for us 
How they knew what we 
Must know 
Without knowing a page 
Of it 
Themselves.

© Alice Walker. Alice Walker is one of the preeminent American writers of her generation. She is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, poet, and activist whose work, while critically-acclaimed and highly-lauded by members of the literary intelligentsia, far surpasses any words which mere mortals may bestow upon it. For her 1982 novel The Color Purple, Walker won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Steven Spielberg-directed film adaptation was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and if you’re asking me, the fact that it didn’t win in any category is one of the biggest snubs in Oscars history.

I first read “Women” as a high school freshman, memorizing and reciting it for extra credit. Later on, it grew in significance for me when I read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and learned that if not for Alice Walker, Hurston’s great body of work would probably have languished in obscurity for all time. Walker’s acknowledgment of the labor of her Black women foremothers in making her own life possible is a major theme throughout her body of work, and nowhere is it clearer than in today’s poem.

Quote for the Day: November 2nd, 2021

*Because of Winn-Dixie* *(Anniversary* *Edition)* by Kate DiCamillo and Ann Patchett (Introduction)

There ain’t no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.
Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie

Poem for the Day: November 1st, 2021

November for Beginners by Rita Dove

Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’t give.

So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing

a gloomy line
or two of German.
When spring comes
we promise to act
the fool. Pour,
rain! Sail, wind,
with your cargo of zithers!


November 1981

© 2012 Rita Dove. Today’s poem appeared in the June 2012 issue of Poetry. Among numerous other awards and accolades, Dove won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection Thomas and Beulah. She was named US poet laureate in 1993, which at the age of 40 made her the youngest person to ever hold that position. She is currently the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Quote for the Day: November 1st, 2021

Give of yourself of both hands and overflowing heart, but give only the excess after you have lived your own life.
Maybelle Stephens Mitchell, American suffragist, activist, and mother to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Margaret Mitchell, in a letter dictated to her daughter while on her deathbed

Poem for the Day: October 31st, 2021

Halloween Party by Kenn Nesbitt

We’re having a Halloween party at school.
I’m dressed up like Dracula. Man, I look cool!
I dyed my hair black, and I cut off my bangs.
I’m wearing a cape and some fake plastic fangs.

I put on some makeup to paint my face white,
like creatures that only come out in the night.
My fingernails, too, are all pointed and red.
I look like I’m recently back from the dead.

My mom drops me off, and I run into school
and suddenly feel like the world’s biggest fool.
The other kids stare like I’m some kind of freak—
the Halloween party is not till next week.

© 2005 Kenn Nesbitt. “Halloween Party” originally appeared in Nesbitt’s collection When the Teacher Isn’t Looking, which was published in 2005 by Meadowbrook Press and is available to purchase wherever books are sold.

Quote for the Day: October 31st, 2021

*Slouching Towards Bethlehem* by Joan Didion

…I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Poem for the Day: October 30th, 2021

go to the movies & see a rom-com by yourself. go to your favorite restaurant & request a table for one. go to a café & order a coffee & a pastry for yourself. lie in the grass & cloudgaze without holding someone else’s hand while you do it. we need to stop seeing these things as pathetic. you are the only person you have to be with every day, so why shouldn’t you find ways to appreciate you? 

—keep falling in love with yourself.

Today’s poem is from shine your icy crown by amanda lovelace. She is the author of several bestselling poetry collections, among them the titles in the “women are some kind of magic” series, the “you are your own fairy tale” trilogy, and the “things that h(a)unt” duology. shine your icy crown was published in January 2021 by Andrews McMeel Publishing and is available to purchase wherever books are sold.

Tag: quotes