Truth is not always beautiful

October 31 -- John Keats was born in 1795.

"I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what?" -- Jean Cocteau.

Fellow poet and contemporary Lord Byron called Keats "that dirty little blackguard."

Dust off your dancing shoes

August 22, 1893: American author and wit Dorothy Parker was born. A poem by her:

Leave for her a red young rose,
Go your way and save your pity;
She is happy, for she knows
That her dust is very pretty.



August 23, 1912: Dancer Gene Kelly born.

"Dancing? Oh, dreadful. How it is ever adopted in a civilized country I cannot find out." -- Fanny Burney.

Disguising the real issue, etc.

August 19, 1902: Poet Ogden Nash was born. Here's a verse:

They take a paper and they read the headlines,
So they've heard of unemployment and they've heard of breadlines,
And they philanthropically cure them all
By getting up a costume charity ball.



August 20, 1980: The first solo ascent of Mt. Everest was made on this date.

"Keep you down, and have breakfast while the asinine hunters after the picturesque go braying up the hill." -- Willam Makepeace Thackeray.



August 21, 1878: The American Bar Association was formed.

"Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished." -- Jeremy Bentham.

Where's everybody going?

Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on this day in 1792. He wrote:

The rapid, blind
And fleeting generations of mankind.

Today is World Environment Day!

"Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;
The mayfly is torn by the swallow, the swallow speared by the shrike,
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey."

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The sweet smell turns rancid

Emily Dickinson died on this day in 1886. She wrote:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.

For more on Emily Dickinson, visit Farewells

Words worth heeding

Poet William Wordsworth was born on this day in 1770. He wrote:

"Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

So if they're booing, wear dirt earplugs

English poet A. E. Housman was born on this day in 1859.

"Eyes the shady night have shut
Cannot see the record cut;
And silence is no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears."

-- To An Athlete Dying Young.

While we're on the subject of not hearing, Beethoven died on this day

America's pastime: Boredom

On this day in 1938, the first five players were admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson.

About baseball, team owner and raconteur Bill Veeck said:

"The season starts too early and finishes too late and there are too many games in between."

Also on this day, in 1845, the New York Evening Mirror first published Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven.

"Quoth the raven: Nevermore."

Nevermore

Birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, born in 1809.

"The play is the tragedy, ‘Man’," Poe wrote, "and its hero the Conqueror Worm."

Poe was born in Boston, where his itinerant actor parents were performing. Three years later he was orphaned.

Edgar married his 13-year-old, tubercular cousin, Virginia Clemm. (They may have been married a year earlier, when she was 12.)

Baudelaire’s translations of Poe’s works made him more popular in France than the U. S. Unable to find or hold work because of his drinking, Poe nearly starved to death. Following the death of Virginia, he attempted suicide.

Poe died at 40, after a violent bout of drinking left him delirious. His last words were "Lord, help my poor soul."

His epitaph reads: "Quoth the Raven nevermore."

Today’s Perverse verse:

Poe, with his outlook macabre,
Could never hold a real job.
His poems, stories and stuff
Never made him enough.
No one wanted to read
Of becoming worm feed.

He couldn't see the forest

American poet Joyce Kilmer ("I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree") was born on this day in 1886.

"Trees, if I have the name right, is one of the most annoying pieces of verse within my knowledge." – Heywood C. Broun.