| The Other Half
by Jonathan Greene
You take so much
of my life with you [otherwise forgotten]. I do the same
for you. [including much
you deny ever happened]. All the names,
the words [we need each other to remember]. “The Other Half” by Jonathan Greene, from Afloat. Broadstone Books © 2018. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
It’s the birthday of Edmund Wilson (books by this author), born in Red Bank, New Jersey (1895). He is generally considered one of the greatest American man of letters of the 20th century, though he published almost all of his work in popular magazines. He never took a teaching position and rarely gave lectures. He went to communist Russia and learned both Russian and German to write about the history of socialism in his book To the Finland Station (1940). He wrote about Russian poetry, Haitian literature, the Hebrew language, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the literature produced during the American Civil War. Wilson introduced Americans to writers like James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Vladimir Nabokov. He almost single-handedly resurrected the reputation of the novelist Henry James, who had been forgotten for years. He championed new writers like Ernest Hemingway, and it was Wilson who persuaded American readers that F. Scott Fitzgerald had been a genius, and that The Great Gatsby was an American classic. Wilson said, “If I could only remember that the days were, not bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety and peace, but only food for the fires of the heart.” And: “No two persons ever read the same book.”
Today is believed to be the birthday of poet Phillis Wheatley (books by this author), born in West Africa, most likely in Senegal or Gambia (1753). She was kidnapped and put on a slave ship, the Phillis, when she was eight years old. She ended up at a slave auction in Boston, where John Wheatley, a prominent tailor, bought her as a personal servant for his wife, Susanna. She was slender, frail, and asthmatic, and the captain believed she was terminally ill, so he sold her at a greatly reduced price. The Wheatleys named her Phillis after the ship that had brought her to Boston, and she took their last name, as was customary. It soon became apparent that the child was exceptionally bright, so she was taught to read and write by the older Wheatley children. She mastered English in two years and went on to learn Latin and Greek, and translated a story by Ovid. She studied astronomy, geography, history, and British literature — especially John Milton and Alexander Pope. She began writing poetry as a teenager, and the first poem she wrote was probably “To the University of Cambridge in New England” — although she didn’t publish it until she was older. She published her first poem in a Rhode Island newspaper when she was 13; that was “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin” (1767). But it was “An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of the Celebrated Divine … George Whitefield” (1770) that brought her wide renown. In 1772, Wheatley appeared in court to prove that she really was the author of her poems. She was examined by 17 Boston men, who then signed an affidavit that was included in the preface for her first and only book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). No one in Boston would publish her book, so she went to London in 1773, escorted by the Wheatleys’ son Nathaniel. With the help of Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, she found a publisher there. English friends appealed to John and Susanna Wheatley to grant Phillis her freedom, and she was manumitted in 1778.
It’s the 90th birthday of the American poet, essayist, and translator who once said, “Poetry gives you permission to say any kind of language, using any kind of grammar.” That’s Gary Snyder (books by this author), born in San Francisco (1930). He is a practicing Buddhist and an environmental activist. He writes most often about spirituality and the environment. The poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti once called Snyder “The Thoreau of the Beat Generation.” Gary Snyder grew up in King County, in Western Washington. It was just after the Great Depression and his family owned farm with dairy cows, hens, and an orchard, so Snyder worked hard every day. As a teen, his family moved around a lot, but he found a home in books and fell in love with D.H. Lawrence. He worked as a camp counselor and a mountaineer for a time and refers to his early attempts at writing poetry as, “Phase One: romantic teenage poetry about girls and mountains.” In the 1950s, he was captivated by the Beat poets in San Francisco for a time and became good friends with Jack Kerouac, who would later become famous for his coming-of-age novel, On the Road (1957). Kerouac and Snyder lived together in a cabin in Mill Valley, California, for several months. The character of Japhy Ryder in Kerouac’s book The Dharma Bums (1958) was loosely based on Snyder. Snyder wasn’t long for the San Francisco scene, which was quickly turning hedonistic. He said: “I’ll just say that I am grateful that I came to meet with peyote, psilocybin, LSD, and other hallucinogens in a respectful and modest frame of mind. I was suitably impressed by their powers, I was scared a few times, I learned a whole lot, and I quit when I was ahead.” He sailed for Japan, where he spent the next several years living on a small volcanic island called Suwanosejima in the East China Sea, along with several other people. They fished, hunted for food, and meditated daily. Snyder also began exploring Buddhism. His dharma name is “Chofu,” which means, “Listen to the Wind.” He ended up spending more than a decade in Japan studying Buddhism and living in monasteries. Sometimes, because the monastery had no books, he would leave the monastery for a few months and rent an apartment nearby, just so he could catch up on reading and writing poetry. He made ends meet by teaching conversational English and by taking jobs on oil tankers. On what Buddhism has taught him about poetry, he says, “Changing the filter, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing dishes, checking the dip stick, don’t let yourself think these are distracting you from your more serious pursuits.” He said, "As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the Neolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe." And he said, "True affluence is not needing anything."
It’s the birthday of novelist Thomas Pynchon (books by this author), born in the Long Island city of Glen Cove, New York (1937). He’s considered one of the 20th century’s most gifted writers, and certainly one of its most elusive. He’s the author of several novels, including V. (1963), Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Against the Day (2006), and Bleeding Edge (2013). He said, “Life’s single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.” Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 
