Garrison Keillor performs a daily labor of love called "The Writer's Almanac" — http://www.writersalmanac.org/ — a little early-morning poetry reading, supplemented by factoids about various literary figures born on that date. More than 90% of the time I don't think much of the poem he chooses or the people he mini-profiles. And his heavy-breathing style of speech is, alas, a major distraction from the content of what he reads. (Sorry, I gotta calls 'em as I hears 'em.)

Yet still somehow Almanac is a stunning success. Once or twice a month there's something so knife-sharply right in a verse that Keillor (or his staff) picks — a sliver of just so that stabs through the mundane muddled prose of the rest of my morning. And likewise, every so often there's a bit of biographical trivia that kicks an author forward in my consciousness and gives me a "So that's why s/he wrote it!" moment.

And the email version of the show appears reliably in my inbox on the days (which, sad to say, are frequent) when I miss hearing it on the radio. Thanks, GK & Co. ...

(see also LyingVerses (15 Mar 2001), IambicHonesty2 (27 Apr 2001), IambicHonesty3 (6 May 2001), NimbusHaloGloryAureole (15 Nov 2001), PoeticProcesses (3 Mar 2002), ...)

TopicPoetry - TopicLiterature - 2003-08-22

(correlates: InMyJournal, NimbusHaloGloryAureole, WhereWeAre, ...)