“Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? … The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something.” -Peter Høeg (Smilla’s Sense of Snow)
Category: Birthdays
May 16 2022
May 16th Birthday Love: Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich was a highly influential poet and essayist whose focus on feminist and lesbian themes helped to bring these topics to the literary arena. She was born Adrienne Cecile Rich on this day May 16, 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland. What Kind of Times Are These There’s a place between two stands of trees where …
May 15 2022
May 15th Birthday Love: Nancy Garden
Children’s and young adult book author Nancy Garden was born on this day May 15, 1938 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her best known work is the lesbian novel Annie on My Mind. “There’s a Greek legend—no, it’s in something Plato wrote—about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander …
May 14 2022
May 14th Birthday Love: Hal Borland
Author, naturalist, and The New York Times journalist Harold “Hal” Glen Borland was born on this day May 14, 1900 in Sterling, Nebraska. “Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.” -Hal Borland
May 13 2022
May 13th Birthday Love: Armistead Maupin
Armistead Maupin, author of the famous San Francisco-based novel series Tales of the City, was born on this day May 13, 1944 in Washington, D.C. “My life is full of love; I designed it that way. I try to make my own experience about love and I look for kindness in others. That’s the thing I …
May 12 2022
May 12th Birthday Love: Andrei Voznesensky
Writer and poet Andrei Voznesensky was born on this day May 12, 1933 in Moscow, Soviet Union. Voznesensky was highly regarded in his lifetime as both a skilled poet and poetry reader, in fact, Robert Lowell once described Voznesensky as “one of the greatest living poets in any language.” Here is his poem “Russian-American Romance,” translated by …
May 11 2022
May 11th Birthday Love: Irving Berlin
“Life is 10 percent what you make itand 90 percent how you take it.” -Irving Berlin
May 10 2022
May 10th Birthday Love: Suzan-Lori Parks
American author Suzan-Lori Parks was born on this day May 10, 1963 in Fort Knox, Kentucky. “And as you walk yr road, as you live yr life, RELISH THE ROAD. And relish the fact that the road of yr life will probably be a windy road.” -Suzan-Lori Parks
May 09 2022
May 9th Birthday Love: Joy Harjo
Today we celebrate writer and musician Joy Harjo, current U.S. poet laureate, and the first Native American poet laureate. Harjo was born on this day May 9, 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Don’t Bother the Earth Spirit “Don’t bother the earth spirit who lives here. She is …
May 08 2022
May 8th Birthday Love: Gary Snyder
The “poet laureate of Deep Ecology” Gary Snyder was born on this day May 8, 1930 in San Francisco, California. Mother Earth: Her Whales An owl winks in the shadowsA lizard lifts on tiptoe, breathing hardYoung male sparrow stretches up his neck,big head, watching— The grasses are working in the sun. Turn it green.Turn it sweet. …