30 November 2011
Wednesday's Poem: "Deciding on the Day" by Hal Sirowitz, from Before, During and After. Wednesday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of Irish author Jonathan Swift (1667), born in Dublin. Swift's masterpiece was Gulliver's Travels (1726), the story of a man journeying through a series of exotic places and meeting all kinds of strange creatures, including a disgusting race of beings called Yahoos, which he eventually realizes are humans. The novel was full of vicious inside jokes about the politicians of the day, and Swift was so nervous about publishing it that he dropped the manuscript off at the publisher's house in the middle of the night...
Nov. 30, 2011: The Writer's Almanac • Opuss № I