Garrison Keillor Videos

Sunday’s Poem: “The Sacred” by Stephen Dunn, from Between Angels. Sunday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of Indian novelist Raja Rao, born in Hassan, in southern India (1909). He grew up going to Muslim schools in India, majored in history and English, and moved to France at 19 to study at the Sorbonne. At the time, India was still under British colonial rule, and Rao was one of the first Indian writers to try to capture with the English language the rhythm of Indian life. He wrote his…

Saturday’s Poem: “The Thumb” by Peter Schneider, from Line Fence. Saturday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of writer Albert Camus born in Mondovi, Algeria (1913). His book The Stranger was published in 1942, followed by a collection of essays, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)…

Wednesday’s Poem: “The Sum of Man” by Norah Pollard, from Death & Rapture in the Animal Kingdom. Wednesday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of British satirist Evelyn Waugh, born in London (1903). He came from a literary family, but didn’t do well in school or as a teacher. He said, “I was from the first an obvious dud.” He was seriously in debt, without a job, and had just been rejected by the girl he liked, so he decided to drown himself in the ocean. He wrote a suicide note and jumped in…

Thursday’s Poem: “Psalm for a Lost Summer” by Maura Stanton, from Immortal Sofa. Thursday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the Irish-American writer Tom Phelan, born in County Laois, Ireland (1940). He was a priest, a carpenter, and a professor before he came to the United States and became a writer. His best-known novel, In the Season of the Daisies (1993), is about the murder of a small boy by a member of the Irish Republican Army, after the boy witnessed a political murder. Phelan has…

Friday’s Poem: “Twenty-three” by Liam Rector, from The Executive Director of the Fallen World. Friday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of actor and novelist Ethan Hawke, born in Austin, Texas (1970). He’s best known for acting in such movies as Dead Poets Society (1989) and Training Day (2001), but he has also published some novels. He says he likes writing because it doesn’t require collaboration. His first novel, The Hottest State (1996), got mixed reviews, but most critics praised his…

Tuesday’s Poem: “Driving at Night” by Sheila Packa, from The Mother Tongue. Tuesday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of William Cullen Bryant, born in Cummington, Massachusetts (1794), who worked as a lawyer, hated it, wrote a history of world civilization in verse while still working as a lawyer in his 20s, quit his attorney job, became a journalist, and edited the New York Evening Post for 50 years, during which time he promoted unions, condemned slavery, and advocated for a Central Park…

There's a big pile of pumpkins in front of Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery...

Monday’s Poem: “The Accolade of the Animals” by Maxine Kumin, from Selected Poems 1960-1990. Monday’s Literary Notes: It was on this day in 1950 that Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw died, at the age of 94. But it was not old age that he succumbed to, nor disease, the nonagenarian fell off a ladder while pruning trees in his garden and died later from complications of his injury. He said: “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no ‘brief…

Sunday’s Poem: :“Driving Nails” by Gary Lark, from Getting By. Sunday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the co-founder of postcolonial literary theory and the man described as Palestinians’ “most powerful political voice,” Edward Said, born in Jerusalem (1935), the son of Protestant Palestinians, one of whom was American. In 1980 — three decades ago — he wrote: “So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say Moslems and Arabs are essentially…

Saturday’s Poem: “How Many Nights” by Galway Kinnell, from Three Books. Saturday’s Literary Notes: It was on this day that Martin Luther published his 95 Theses in 1517, an event that led to the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s initial goal was not schism nor even confrontation; he was hoping that his statements would shame the Church into mending its ways. He was particularly upset by the selling of indulgences to save one’s soul and help achieve salvation in the afterlife. Luther insisted…

Friday’s Poem: “She Dreamed of Cows” by Norah Pollard, from Death & Rapture in the Animal Kingdom. Friday’s Literary Notes:It’s the birthday of Ezra Pound, born in Hailey, Idaho (1885). He helped found the Imagist movement, along with H.D. — pen name of Hilda Doolittle — and declared its principles to be “direct treatment of the thing,” to use only words that “contribute to the presentation,” and in regard to rhythm: “to compose in the sequence of a musical phrase, not in the sequence of a…

Thursday’s Poem: “Off to the Country of Cancer” by Liam Rector, from The Executive Director of the Fallen World. Thursday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the current editor of The New Yorker magazine, David Remnick, born in Hackensack, New Jersey (1958). He’s only the fifth editor in the 84-year history of the magazine. As a junior reporter with The Washington Post in Moscow, he was tasked with finding a hairdresser for an interview between his boss, Post owner Katherine Graham, and…

Wednesday’s Poem: “The Sum of Man” by Norah Pollard, from Death & Rapture in the Animal Kingdom. Wednesday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of British satirist Evelyn Waugh, born in London (1903). He came from a literary family, but didn’t do well in school or as a teacher. He said, “I was from the first an obvious dud.” He was seriously in debt, without a job, and had just been rejected by the girl he liked, so he decided to drown himself in the ocean. He wrote a suicide note and jumped in…

Tuesday’s Poem: “The Digging” by Rennie McQuilkin, from The Weathering. Tuesday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the novelist Zadie Smith, born in London (1975), who grew up black in a working-class London neighborhood where she had a hard time making friends with other kids. In her sophomore year at Cambridge, she published a short story in her undergraduate literary journal that attracted a lot of attention, and people said she should try to get a book contract for a novel. So while she…

Lousy mushroom hunting in Lake Wobegon this year.

Monday’s Poem: “Diagramming Won’t Help This Situation” by Kevin Brown, from Exit Lines. Monday’s Literary Notes: On this day 50 years ago (in 1959), The Miracle Worker debuted on Broadway. It’s the story of how Annie Sullivan educated the young, blind-and-deaf Helen Keller. The play starred Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, ran for more than 700 performances, and won a Tony Award for Best Play. The Miracle Worker was written by William Gibson, based in part on the letters of Annie Sullivan — who…

Sunday’s Poem: :“Baptism” by Ted Thomas Jr., from Singing With The Dead. Sunday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the artist Pablo Picasso, born in Malaga, Spain (1881). Picasso eschewed early success as a commercial artist to paint a series with somber blue backgrounds Picasso would spend these years in poverty, but it was during his Blue Period that he began to develop his own style and produce his early masterpieces, including The Old Guitarist (1902). By the middle of the 20th century,…

Saturday’s Poem: “The Campus in Wartime” by Marvin Bell, from Mars Being Red. Saturday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the comic-book author Bob Kane, born in the Bronx (1916), the creator of Batman. He is alter ego of multimillionaire Bruce Wayne and one of the few superheroes in the history of comic books who doesn’t have any special powers. He’s just rich enough to build himself special crime-fighting gadgets. Kane said he based the character partly on Zorro, because he liked the idea…