Adam Naming the Animals
by Faith Shearin

After he could no longer speak with them,
after the warm garden had a draft,

and Adam found himself naked and mortal,
after his wife was made from his own

cage of love, and after she introduced
him to the snake that offered its famous

advice, after all these things, God asked
Adam to name the animals. Eve would

bring forth children in great pain
but Adam must name the beasts,

one by one, remembering how he had
known them, how they once had voices

as clear as the difference between
good and evil. He felt the loss of their

friendship: he used to rely on the birds
to watch the future and the dogs to sniff

the past. Now he had names for them
but they had no name for him,

their thoughts as hidden as the wishes
of trees. God spoke loudly

and set things on fire but the animals
were now as silent as snow, traveling

on their many legs, wrapped in fur
or feathers. Adam was lonely and less able

to see the world, though the fruit he'd eaten
promised clarity. Naming the animals

was hard because it was like naming
all the parts of himself he no longer

knew, all the parts he could not understand.

“Adam Naming the Animals” by Faith Shearin from Moving the Piano. Stephen F. Austin University Press © 2011. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

It's the birthday of technology writer David Pogue, (books by this author) born in Shaker Heights, Ohio (1963), one of the best-selling "how-to-guide" authors ever. He's written several books in the For Dummies series, including the first guide to Mac computers, and guides to opera and classical music and magic. His novel Hard Drive was a New York Times "notable book of the year."

It's the birthday of writer Vita Sackville-West, (books by this author) born in Knole, England (1892), born with a silver spoon in her mouth: she grew up in a mansion with 365 rooms and 52 staircases. But her childhood wasn't exactly idyllic nor happy, since she and her mother didn't get along well.

She started writing early; before her 19th birthday she'd written eight novels. And by the time she married at age 22 the dashing diplomat Harold Nicolson, she'd had several love affairs with women. As it turns out, her husband was gay. It was a wonderfully companionable and happy marriage, and when the two were apart from each other, they wrote each other daily letters.

One of Vita Sackville-West's most famous romances was with writer Virginia Woolf. In January 1927, she wrote to Woolf a letter that said:

"I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. ... oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don't really resent it."

Later that year, in October, Woolf had come up with the idea for a new novel, inspired by Vita, who often wore man's clothes. Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography, about a transgender writer who lives for hundreds of years, came out in 1928. Vita's son Nigel called Woolf's book "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature." It was made into a movie in 1992.

Vita Sackville-West kept up one of the most famous gardens in England, and she went on to write a great many books, including the novels Seducers in Ecuador (1924), The Edwardians (1930), All Passion Spent (1931), and Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour (1932).

Vita Sackville-West said: "It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?"

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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