| Holiday Concert
by Maryann Corbett Forgive us. We have dragged them into the night
in taffeta dresses, in stiff collars and ties,
with the wind damp, the sleet raking their cheeks,
to school lunchrooms fitted with makeshift stages
where we will sit under bad fluorescent lighting
on folding chairs, and they will sing and play.
We will watch the first grader with little cymbals,
bending her knees, hunched in concentration
while neighbors snicker at her ardent face.
Forgive us. We will hear the seventh-grade boy
as his voice finally loses its innocence
forever, at the unbearable solo moment
and know that now, for years, he will wince at the thought
of singing, yet will ache to sing, in silence,
silence even to the generation to come
with its night, its sleet, its hideous lunchroom chairs. "Holiday Concert" by Maryann Corbett, from Credo for the Checkout Line in Winter. © Able Muse Press, 2012. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
It’s the birthday of Kenneth Rexroth (1905) (books by this author), the American poet who published more than 50 collections, including The Phoenix and the Tortoise (1944) and In Defense of the Earth (1956). Rexroth was orphaned at 14, expelled from high school not long after, and began publishing in magazines by the age of 15. He hitchhiked around the country and Europe, backpacking in the wilderness and frequenting literary salons and lectures while simultaneously teaching himself several languages. Rexroth and his wife, the painter Andrée Schafer, moved to San Francisco in 1927. Rexroth was one of the first to bring Eastern mysticism and ecological awareness into poetry. Kenneth Rexroth said: “I’ve never understood why I’m [considered] a member of the avant-garde. ... I [just] try to say, as simply as I can, the simplest and most profound experiences of my life.” He died in 1982.
It was on this day in 1946 that George Bernard Shaw wrote to the Reynolds News: “Christmas is for me simply a nuisance. The mob supports it as a carnival of mendacity, gluttony, and drunkenness. Fifty years ago, I invented a society for the abolition of Christmas. So far I am the only member. That is all I have to say on the subject.”
It’s the birthday of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, born in Lucca, Tuscany, in 1858. His full name was Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini. Music was the family business: the Puccinis had served as musical directors to the Cathedral of San Martino for 200 years by the time young Giacomo came along. His first job, when he came of age, was as the cathedral organist. When he was 18, he attended a performance of Verdi’s opera Aida, and he was captivated. He began his operatic studies in 1880. His friends helped him produce his first one-act opera, Le villi, in Milan four years later. Puccini’s most famous operas — Madama Butterfly (1904), Tosca (1900), and La Bohème (1896) — all feature a common theme, namely “He who has lived for love, has died for love.”
It’s the birthday of the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (books by this author), born in Head Tide, Maine (1869), and among whose most celebrated works are the stories “Richard Cory” (1897) and “Miniver Cheevy” (1910).
On this date in 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen, a physics professor in Bavaria, took the very first X-ray image of the human body. His first image, which he called a “röntgenogram,” was of his wife’s hand. Röntgen’s X-ray used 1,500 times the dosage of radiation used by modern machines, and it took 90 minutes of exposure to get the full effect. When Mrs. Röntgen saw the skeletal image, she exclaimed, “I have seen my death!” It was an exciting breakthrough; now, the structures of the human body could be seen without surgery! Within a year, the first hospital — the Glasgow Royal Infirmary — had set up a radiology department. Doctors and scientists X-rayed everything: a penny in a child’s throat, a needle in a woman’s hand, kidney stones, bone fractures, fragments of shrapnel. It took years before people made the connection between frequent exposure to X-rays and higher rates of cancer. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 
