| Thanksgiving
by Linda McCarriston Every year we call it down upon ourselves,
the chaos of the day before the occasion,
the morning before the meal. Outdoors,
the men cut wood, fueling appetite
in the gray air, as Nana, Arlene, Mary,
Robin—whatever women we amount to—
turn loose from their wrappers the raw,
unmade ingredients. A flour sack leaks,
potatoes wobble down counter tops
tracking dirt like kids, blue hubbard erupts
into shards and sticky pulp when it's whacked
with the big knife, cranberries leap away
rather than be halved. And the bird, poor
blue thing—only we see it in its dead skin—
gives up for good the long, obscene neck, the gizzard,
the liver quivering in my hand, the heart. So what? What of it? Besides the laughter,
I mean, or the steam that shades the windows
so that the youngest sons must come inside
to see how the smells look. Besides
the piled wood closing over the porch windows,
the pipes the men fill, the beers
they crack, waiting in front of the game. Any deliberate leap into chaos, small or large,
with an intent to make order, matters. That's what.
A whole day has passed between the first apple
cored for pie, and the last glass polished
and set down. This is a feast we know how to make,
a Day of Feast, a day of thanksgiving
for all we have and all we are and whatever
we've learned to do with it: Dear God, we thank you
for your gifts in this kitchen, the fire,
the food, the wine. That we are together here.
Bless the world that swirls outside these windows—
a room full of gifts seeming raw and disordered,
a great room in which the stoves are cold,
the food scattered, the children locked forever
outside dark windows. Dear God, grant
to the makers and keepers power to save it all. "Thanksgiving" by Linda McCarriston, from Talking Soft Dutch. Texas Tech Press © 1984. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
It's the birthday of poet William Blake (books by this author), born in London (1757). He started seeing visions when he was a young boy — God in the window, angels in trees. He apprenticed to an engraver and spent his life as a little-known printmaker and poet. In 1809, Blake opened an exhibition of his art on the first floor of his brother's hosiery shop. He called the show "Poetical and Historical Inventions." He left the show up for a year, but not many people attended, and not a single piece of art was sold. There was only one review of the show, by an art critic named Robert Hunt, who described Blake as an "unfortunate lunatic" in his review. Blake died in poverty in 1827, at the age of 69. In the 30 years after publishing Songs of Innocence and of Experience, fewer than 20 copies had sold. Three years after his death, he was mentioned in a popular six-volume encyclopedia of British artists. The real breakthrough came when Alexander Gilchrist, a young admirer of Blake, set out to write his biography. Gilchrist died before it was finished, but his wife, Anne, took over the task. In 1863, Life of William Blake was published — it was subtitled Pictor Ignotus, or "unknown artist," because Blake was so obscure. Besides telling Blake's life story and claiming that he was not, in fact, insane, Gilchrist quoted many of Blake's poems and included his illustrations. The Life of William Blake was hugely popular, and for the first time, Blake was considered a major English poet. William Blake said, "The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself."
Today is the birthday of novelist, biographer, and essayist Nancy Mitford (1904) (books by this author), born in London. She was unapologetically aristocratic, but that didn't stop her from satirizing her own class. Her parents were illiterate, and anti-education; she and her five younger sisters called their father "Old Subhuman." She published her first novel, Highland Fling, in 1931. She also wrote four biographies and served as a regular columnist for the Sunday Times. She wrote to a friend, "If one can't be happy, one must be amused, don't you agree?"
It's the birthday of novelist Rita Mae Brown (1944) (books by this author), born in Hanover, Pennsylvania. Her first two books were poetry collections; she moved on to novels with Rubyfruit (1973). Since 1990, she has been "co-authoring" a series of mystery novels with her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown; the latest, Whiskers in the Dark, came out this year. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 
