The following blog post is reposted from MDStories.com, a sports-oriented blog from the Maryland Humanities Council, which celebrates what makes Maryland sports unique, our state’s sporting heritage, and sports fans whose lives wouldn’t be the same without them.
This Saturday, July 11 marks the 101st anniversary of Babe Ruth‘s debut in Major League Baseball with the Boston Red Sox. Ruth led the Sox to a 4-3 win over the Cleveland Naps on that day in 1914. A Baltimore native, Ruth went on to win 7 World Series titles throughout his career as a major league pitcher and legendary hitter. His #3 jersey was retired by the New York Yankees in 1948, the year he died.
Today, Ruth’s legacy lives on in many ways. Babe Ruth Baseball today includes over 60,000 youth teams with players ranging in age from 4-18. The Babe Ruth League World Series is played annually in Maryland at the Ripken Complex in Aberdeen, MD.
Interested in learning more about Babe Ruth – from “The Bambino” himself? See three iconic Maryland sports figures through July 15 with Chautauqua: Sporting Lives, presented by the Maryland Humanities Council at locations throughout the state. Living history performances of Wilma Rudolph, Babe Ruth, and Jim Thorpe bring these historical characters to life once again.
Illustrations by artist Tom Chalkley. All Rights Reserved.
References:
Babe Ruth. “Career Highlights and Awards.” Accessed July 8, 2015. http://www.baberuth.com/
The Maryland Humanities Council (MHC) Chautauqua event is less than a month away, and in preparation for the free performances, MHC spoke with the scholar-performers headlining the events. The performances run from July 5th to July 15th. This week’s interview is with Mark Megehee, performing scholar of Jim Thorpe. We spoke about Jim Thorpe’s life, legacy, and what it means to bring Jim Thorpe alive through performance. Mark Megehee succinctly summarized Jim Thorpe’s importance, and anyone wanting to know more, or even glean questions for the Chautauqua, will enjoy his words.
(MHC) What drew you to Jim Thorpe? ( MM ) I was recommended for this impression; it is an honor that I dreamed not of. Yet it does appeal to me. I belong to the same tribe (Sac and Fox of Oklahoma) as Thorpe and had a similar early life in a number of respects. I am drawn to him particularly because he inspired so many Native Americans, young and old, enhancing their self-esteem, pride of culture, and encouraging whatever dream they may have in life. In a wider sense, he personifies the American Spirit in its admiration of the underdog and confidence in the triumph of good sportsmanship.
(MHC) How did you research Thorpe and prepare for your performance? ( MM ) I read several biographies; did research at the Oklahoma Historical Society (under the guidance of Dr. Bob Blackburn and Mr. Bill Welge) plus visited Thorpe’s birth site; preserved home in Yale, OK; as well as the schools he attended in Haskell, KS and Carlisle, PA. From museum collections, I examined early specimens of sports equipment ca. 1910-1930.
>> Check out the schedule to see when and where Mark Megehee will be performing!
(MHC) What is the most interesting facet of Thorpe’s life? What’s a public misconception about him? To me, the most interesting facet was Thorpe’s astonishing athletic versatility. A misconception is that his favorite sport was a team sport; he preferred hunting or fishing–something he could do by himself.
(MHC) What’s the most memorable audience question you’ve received? ( MM ) What tribe/clan I belong to (Sac and Fox of Oklahoma–Bear Clan), because it highlights some commonality we share. Same tribe, different clans, yes, but my grandmother and her brother–Emma and William Newashe– were classmates of Thorpe at Carlisle; my great uncle Bill played football with Thorpe.
(MHC) Do you have any favorite performance memories? ( MM ) Interacting with an audience while describing football feats and track feats of Thorpe, and my own experience.
Original caption: James Thorpe (1888-1953), athlete, shown in his football gear. Head and shoulders photograph.
(MHC) Are there any other historical figures you’d like to portray? ( MM ) Native Americans: Reverend Frank Hall Wright, Choctaw evangelist to Native American tribes of southwest Oklahoma, ca. 1895. Tecumseh, Shawnee patriot chief and organizer of a great pan-Indian tribal alliance ca. 1810.
Also joining Mr. Megehee is Gwendolyn Briley-Strand as Wilma Rudolph and Gene Worthington as Babe Ruth. Watch some of our past Chautauqua’s on our YouTube page, and don’t forget to check the schedule to find an event location close to you. We hope to see you at the Chautauqua!
The Maryland Humanities Council (MHC) Chautauqua event is less than a month away, and in preparation for the performances, MHC spoke with the scholar-performers headlining the events. The performances run from July 5th to July 15th. This week’s interview is with Gene Worthington, performing scholar of Babe Ruth. We spoke about Babe Ruth’s life, legacy, and what it means to bring Babe Ruth alive through performance. Gene Worthington succinctly summarized Babe Ruth’s importance, and anyone wanting to know more, or even glean questions for the Chautauqua, will enjoy his words.
(MHC) What drew you to Babe Ruth?
(GW) I have had a fondness for baseball since I was a little boy. My parents were always comparing the players of the fifties and sixties to what Ruth had done in his day. I read a lot about him and decided that he was someone of interest who started me on a lifelong loving of the game. As a little boy I wanted to be the greatest ballplayer of all time, and by portraying Ruth, for an hour I get to be.
(MHC) How did you research Ruth and prepare for your performance?
(GW) I did most of my research just reading the many books about him and his time period. I have seen film of him and of course the Ken Burns program for PBS.
>> Check out the schedule to see when and where Gene Worthington will be performing!
(MHC) What is the most interesting facet of Ruth’s life? What’s the biggest
public misconception about him?
(GW) The most amazing thing to me was that at 16 he was made into a pitcher and at 19 he was pitching in the Major leagues. The biggest misconception I think is that as he aged he was out of shape and seldom is it mentioned that until the 1920’s he had the body of a young Adonis. As he aged he did tend to gain weight, but he was one of the first to have a personal trainer to keep himself in shape to continue the amazing career he was blessed with.
(MHC) What’s the most memorable audience question you’ve received?
(GW) There are so many. Questions about how he felt about Black baseball players – he actually played against them. How would he feel about his records being broken – he thought that many would not be broken. And would he have used steroids if he had access. I get this one a lot. I don’t know since there are no records of him taking any drugs. One writer said that the only PEDs that he took were beer and hot dogs.
Ruth (top row, center) at St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1912
(MHC) Do you have any favorite performance memories?
(GW) When a little boy wearing a Babe Ruth jersey came up on stage and sang “Take me out to the Ballgame” with me.
(MHC) Are there any other historical figures you’d like to portray?
(GW) I am interested in the teens and twenties, so someone from that era would be fun.
Also joining Mr. Worthington is Gwendolyn Briley-Strand as Wilma Rudolph and Mark Megehee as Jim Thorpe. Follow up on our blog next week to check out the Q&A with Mark Megehee. Also, watch some of our past Chautauqua’s on our Youtube page, and don’t forget to check the schedule to find an event location close to you. We hope to see you at the Chautauqua!
Summer’s here, which for many means summer reading. In addition to The Boys in the Boat, our One Maryland One Book selection for 2015, I’m engrossed in China Dolls by Lisa See. See is a favorite author of mine known for her historical novels centering on the lives of Chinese and Chinese-American women.
I was drawn to See’s novels because of my interest in Chinese history, but her novels about the experiences of Chinese Americans became my favorites. I devoured Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy, a duology about two sisters from Shanghai who emigrate to America in the 1930s to pay off familial debt and escape the Second Sino-Japanese War. Given my fondness for See’s books set in America, I’m enjoying China Dolls.
China Dolls is set in the 1930s and 1940s during the little-known Asian-American nightclub era, and features three girls performing in the clubs. Club performers face shunning by their conservative families, racism from the audience, and a mainstream entertainment industry that looks down on them and denies them careers. Despite all this, the girls are determined and leave behind their old lives to pursue entertainment.
“I traveled west—alone—on the cheapest bus routes I could find. Every mile took me farther from Plain City, Ohio, where I’d been a fly-speck on the wallpaper of small-town life. Each new state I passed through loosened another rope around my heart, my legs, my arms, yet my whole body ached and I couldn’t shake my vertigo. I lived on aspirin, crackers, and soda pop. I cried and cried and cried. On the eighth day, California.”
So begins the novel with a chapter narrated by Grace, a girl who flees her abusive family in Ohio hoping to make a living as a dancer at a new California attraction. Turned away because the showrunner doesn’t want to cast an Asian dancer, she meets Helen and Ruby while looking for work and together they find employment at a local club. The three bond over a common goal and troubled childhoods, and become fast friends.
Like most of See’s novels, the central theme is women’s relationships. The trio’s friendship and bonds with other women are a source of strength in hard times, while still having natural conflicts. This is one of my favorite parts of the novel, in addition to the detailed history of the nightclub era. I’d recommend China Dolls to anyone who enjoys a good historical novel, a saga, or just wants an entertaining and emotive read.
Chang, Heidi. “These Nightclub Entertainers Paved The Way For Asian-Americans In Showbiz.” NPR. NPR, 14 Mar. 2015. Web. 15 June 2015. http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/03/14/392554991/these-nightclub-entertainers-paved-the-way-for-asian-americans-in-showbiz
See, Lisa. “A Measly Girl.” China Dolls: A Novel. 1st ed. Vol. 1. New York City: Random House, 2014. 1. Print.
See, Lisa. Lisa See: Official Website. Lisa See, n.d. Web. 15 June 2015. www.lisasee.com
What do you know about electronic literature? Since the 1980s, electronic literature has engaged authors, readers, software developers, and critics.
Combining literature and technology, the pieces are designed to be experienced on a computer. One subgenre, hypertext fiction, is known for its use of hyperlinks to new passages, creating a unique and nonlinear experience for every reader.
The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) is a digital humanities center that “engages in collaborative, interdisciplinary work at the intersection of technology and humanistic inquiry.” One of MITH’s current projects is “The Deena Larsen Collection (DLC),” a collection of the personal computers and software of Deena Larsen, a pioneer of the hypertext genre.
Deena Larsen is a hypertext author who’s been active since the 1980s. She’s best-known for Marble Springs, which debuted in 1993 as one of the first hypertext poetry collections. Marble Springs revolves around the lives of women in a Colorado mining town between the mid-1800s and mid-1900s and is written as a collection of poems in the style of Spoon River Anthology. Larsen is a prolific author and amateur archivist responsible for collecting old computers, outdated software, and a wide body of electronic literature that would otherwise be difficult if not impossible to locate.
The collection is notable for containing not only Larsen’s work, but the work of nearly every writer from her creative circle, producing an impressive cross-section of the early electronic literature community. Among the materials are the unpublished or first-edition works of Larsen and multiple other authors.
To explain the importance of the DLC, MITH Associate Director Matthew Kirschenbaum says: “The Deena Larsen Collection at MITH–what Deena herself terms the “Great Library of Alexandria”–is a major resource for the study not only of electronic literature, but early personal computing and the Web, offering researchers a cross-section of software, hardware, and documentation from a period that already seems like ancient history.”
While open to interested scholars, the Deena Larsen Collection is difficult to access from a distance. There is interest in digitizing the collection, but MITH faces obstacles related to intellectual property rights (as the collection contains works from authors other than Larsen), and the challenge of transferring and storing delicate electronic materials.
The official collection website has photographs of some of the artifacts but digitization of the collection is slow-going. Currently, the best way to work with the collection is in-person via a scheduled visit to MITH.
The Deena Larsen Collection at MITH represents not just the work of one author, but an entire community. It represents the early potential of the Internet, and how electronic literature developed via community, experimentation, and curiosity.
Larsen’s personal website, including links to an online version of Marble Springs and most of her other works, is available here.
To schedule a visit to access the Larsen Collection, contact MITH.
Citations:
Christiansen, Leighton. “Accessing the DLC from a Distance?” Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, 21 June 2011. Web. 04 June 2015. http://mith.umd.edu/accessing-the-dlc-from-a-distance/
“About.” Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, n.d. Web. 08 June 2015. <http://mith.umd.edu/about/>.
Kirschenbaum, Matthew, and Amanda Visconti. “Deena Larsen Collection.” Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, n.d. Web. 04 June 2015. http://mith.umd.edu/research/project/deena-larsen-collection/
Larsen, Deena. “Deena Larsen’s Life and Works.” Deena Larsen Escapes. Deena Larsen, n.d. Web. 04 June 2015. http://www.deenalarsen.net/works/index.html
As you enjoy the 140th running of the Preakness this weekend, however and wherever you enjoy it, remember first and foremost that you are taking in an ages-old Maryland tradition. The Preakness’ lineage is engrained within the history of Maryland and animates the annual running of the race.
Although it has gained a national reputation, the Preakness didn’t always hold a place of prominence in our national culture. In 1868, at a dinner party hosted by the famous horse-breeder Milton H. Sanford following a day at the races in Saratoga, New York, Sanford proposed to his guests that they hold a sweepstakes race in two years’ time. Under circumstances that are still unclear, Governor Oden Bowie of Maryland won the rights to hold the race in his state. To hold the running of the “Dinner Party Stakes,” Bowie built a track near the Jones Falls in Baltimore: Pimlico Race Course.
The running of the Dinner Party Stakes in October 1870 took onlookers by surprise. Instead of a muddy, unfit course, the Stakes were run during an Indian Summer uncommon in the history of Maryland’s Autumnal weather; and instead of the 2-1 favorite Foster, it was an untested colt named Preakness that won the Stakes that day. It was in honor of the trailblazing winner of the Dinner Party Stakes that Pimlico’s soon to be signature race would be named.
Some 3 years later, the first Preakness was run, and a proud tradition was born. With the exception of a 19 year hiatus, in which it was held at sites throughout New York and New Jersey, the Preakness has been run at Pimlico. Among the Triple Crown races, the Preakness may not have the Derby’s name, or Belmont’s slightly more august reputation, but it’s recognized as a test of skill for the best of that year’s Derby class. To quote famous Baltimorean Ogden Nash, “The Derby is a race of aristocratic sleekness, for horses of birth to prove their worth in the Preakness.”
On Saturday, Pimlico’s pleasures will be momentary and enjoyed live by comparatively few people, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ways to honor the Preakness throughout the weekend. For instance, the original Woodlawn Vase, a copy of which is awarded to the owner whose horse wins the Preakness, is on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art. However, you can also enjoy a bit of Preakness tradition at home as well. Following a simple recipe transcribed below, you can enjoy “The Preakness,” a recently revived cocktail originally conceived for the occasion of the Preakness Ball, held in May of 1936. However you choose to honor the Preakness this weekend, make sure to keep one thing in mind. The Preakness is not just a time to celebrate and enjoy the height of Spring; it’s also a way to connect into one of the proudest traditions in our state’s history.
The Preakness Cocktail
The following recipe is a simplified version but still very similar to the traditional recipe recorded in most cocktail books. By all accounts, it’s simply a Manhattan variant. Recipe adapted from David Wondrich.
2 ounces straight rye whiskey
1 ounce Martini & Rossi red vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1/2 teaspoon Benedictine
Stir with cracked ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and twist a swatch of thin-cut lemon peel over the top.
Citations
Joseph J. Challmes, The Preakness: A History (Anaconda: Severna Park, 1975).
Richard Gorelick, “The Preakness and Other Forgotten Cocktails,” The Baltimore Sun, May 12, 2015.
Samuel Meisenberg is a graduating senior at The George Washington University. Here, he offers reflections on the sesquicentennial of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and its modern day relevance.
There’s a ghost in D.C. A particularly rangy, haggard one with long black coattails and a silk top hat can be found limping around Ford’s Theater on 10th and F Street and at the nearby Petersen boarding house. These locations have been recreated to help us see the ghost. The Presidential box has been restored to look the way it did on April 14th, 1865, when the ‘American Brutus,’ John Wilkes Booth, fired a bullet into the brilliant brain that had conceived the words “a new birth of freedom” and pledged America to rebuild with, “malice toward none, with charity for all.”
But more than just commemoration is at work in this place. The spirits are especially active this month as it is the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s death. At a recent showing of The Widow Lincoln, an imagining of the grief experienced by Mrs. Lincoln and the nation in the aftermath of the assassination, the spirits hung over the President’s box. On the front of the Presidential box is a portrait of Lincoln’s favorite President, our own George Washington. It is framed by the restored flag bunting which entangled the assassin and caused him to plummet to the stage, shattering his leg. From that stage, history emanates in shimmering waves. There’s Booth ranting “Sic Semper Tyranis” before limping his way to the basement and exiting to his rendezvous with Dr. Mudd and a Union patrol. Listen carefully and you can hear the President’s guests shout for help and watch the chaos unfold as two doctors fight the crowd to reach the stricken President, destined never to regain consciousness.
While an actor simulates him on that infamous stage, the mind’s eye can pass over the box and imagine the President. The haggard man, famous for his melancholia, is laughing. This light comedy of manners, Our American Cousin, has him grinning. The man who salvaged the work of Washington and brought delayed credence to the words of Jefferson laughs in his high-pitched Kentucky twang. A man of great brilliance amused by trifles. He laughs loudly as a bullet crashes into his magnificent brain.
Lincoln haunts this place not just because the suit of clothes he wore on his death night are displayed in the basement. Rather, his spirit is forced to linger here because of the nation’s unfinished business: the healing of America. Lincoln knew that neither abolition nor a 14th Amendment, guaranteeing legal equality, was sufficient to correct the injustice which was the midwife of America’s birth in 1787. He had chartered a path for racial equality. But Booth’s small bullet killed not only Lincoln, but it also gravely wounded the cause of reconstruction and racial justice which was left to lesser men. Lincoln’s ghost lingers here because the nation has not finished his and its agenda.
Across the street in the parlor of the Petersen House is the parlor where Stanton informed Mrs. Lincoln of the great man’s death the next morning. “Now he belongs to the ages,” he proclaimed. Indeed he does, and he haunts the ramparts until the racial healing will be complete. The bed in which Lincoln died seems impossibly small to accommodate the over-large President. It is not a ceremonious location to die, but Lincoln was a humble man. It would not have disappointed him that it was not a throne, though he surely deserves one. What he deserves most, though, is an end to the haunting. He deserves to rest at last, and that is up to, as Lincoln noted at Gettysburg, “us, the living.”
To continue MHC’s celebration of National Poetry Month, readers may be interested to learn more about a few more local poets and poems that have garnered national recognition for Maryland’s poetry scene:
“The Marshes of Glynn:”
Written by Peabody 1st chair flautist and Johns Hopkins University Professor Sidney Lanier in 1878, this extended lyrical homage to the salt marshes of Glynn County, Georgia celebrates the power of natural beauty to liberate us from the weight of the world.
“You Can’t Kill an Oriole:”
In 1953, Ogden Nash wrote this homage to the Orioles, who were his hometown baseball team from 1934 until his passing in 1971. Celebrating both famous members of the team from throughout its history as well as the spirit that the team was bringing back to Baltimore, “You Can’t Kill an Oriole” embodies all that it means to root for the O’s.
Linda Pastan:
Maryland’s Poet Laureate from 1991-1995, Pastan has based her work around a quiet, yet incisive perspective on domestic themes such as marriage and parenting. Pastan’s poems are “full of foreboding and acceptance, a wry unsentimental acceptance of hard truth . . . [her] signature is growth.” Twice nominated for the National Book Award (for PM/AM: New and Selected Poems [1982] and Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 [1998]), Pastan lives in Potomac, Maryland.
Michael Collier:
Michael Collier has made a reputation for himself as a poet who engages with both a love of nature and an affection for objects. Pivoting on object-references, Collier’s verses “reach for moments of truth and Clarity.” A member of the faculty of University of Maryland College Park, Collier held the post of Maryland Poet Laureate from 2001-2004. Collier’s best known work includes The Ledge (2001) and Dark Wild Realm (2006).
For more information on the early history of Maryland poetry, readers may seek out 300 Years: The Poets and Poetry of Maryland, Lokar Raley, ed., which may be found along with more recent works and resources in the Maryland Room of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.
As National Poetry Month continues, it can sometimes be tempting to look to national or international leading lights when celebrating the power of poetry in our lives. However, the importance of poetic verse is so pervasive and all-encompassing that we can’t afford to forget those poets whose local nature and focus might otherwise obscure their place in this month’s celebrations.
Such is the case with Maria Briscoe Croker, Maryland’s first poet laureate. A local poet with a career spanning several decades, Croker was commissioned as Poet Laureate by Governor J. Miller Tawes in the spring of 1959 at the age of 84. Croker was sanguine about her place as Maryland’s pathfinder Poet Laureate; when asked what the duties of the position were, she simply replied, “I have none. There’s no pay for poet laureate of Maryland.”
Croker’s work reflected her deep Maryland heritage. A relative of John Briscoe, an original colonial settler who traveled to Maryland on the Ark and Dove, Coker often waxed nostalgic about her childhood in Southern Maryland and the New York of the “Gay Nineties” (1890s). Following a ten-year stint living out of state, the poet and her husband Edward settled in Baltimore, where she became a member of several poetic and patriotic groups. Croker was a diehard Orioles fan, never missing a chance to watch them on television (her one “vice,” as she put it).
Yet her civic virtues and her love for her Orioles weren’t what characterized her work. Instead, Croker composed verses celebrating the natural beauty of the state and the importance of its history. Irrespective of the subject areas of her works, what was common to each poem was Croker’s conviction to catch the lightning of her inspiration in the bottle of her verse as quickly as she could:
When I get an inspiration to write a poem, I sit right down and write it. . . I even wrote a poem about the morning star while on the way to the hospital in an ambulance with my daughter when she had her first baby . . .
Croker tackled a variety of subjects. Among her most famous works was “The Constellation,” a poem about Baltimore’s famous warship which was first published in the Baltimore News-Post. Of her works expressing her love for nature, Croker selected On Catoctin, a celebration of God and natural beauty, as a personal favorite. It is transcribed in full below.
“On Catoctin” O lovely are the distances where peaceful valleys lie, Blue-walled by mountain ranges, lifting mist-veiled to the sky. There are corn fields, rich, abundant, and many a happy home, Green spreading trees and meadows where tranquil cattle roam. Glowing Golden in the picture are the harvest fields of grain; Nature’s bounty, gently nurtured, by God’s gifts of sun and rain. On the mountain tops, at evening, there are gorgeous tints that show In the sun’s departing splendor – a bright jeweled afterglow. There is peace upon the valleys—There is peace upon the hills, A Heaven-sent benediction that my restless spirit stills. And I know the great Creator, through the works of His own hand Speaks a message in His beauty that my soul may understand.
Though she passed away only three years into her tenure as Poet Laureate, Croker left a valuable legacy for her successors to live up to. Croker understood that irrespective of subject, poetry had a deeply spiritual impact on the soul:
[Poetry]’s a great influence for good . . . Poetry lifts you out of the sordidness of everything. My collection of books of poems transports me into a world of beauty and kindness.
More information about Maria Briscoe Croker and other local poets, both Poets Laureate and otherwise, can be found in the Maryland Room of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.
Citations
Muriel Dobbin, “Maryland’s Poet Laureate,” Baltimore Sun, May 10, 1959.
Joyce Lewis, “Poetry is Advised as Spiritual Aid,” Baltimore American, May
When asked to describe her training in etiquette by a reporter The Baltimore Sun, Emily Post declared that her education primarily “consisted of nothing more complicated than…life among people trained like herself from infancy to do the right thing at the right time in the right way.” Post was not only elaborating on her background; unwittingly, the author and Baltimorean “by birth and in heart” was also characterizing a common thread in the writing styles of several of female writers who are associated with the city.
Baltimore’s literary culture is both vast and variegated, but overall the writers associated with the city share a drive to in the words of John Updike, “…give the mundane its beautiful due.” In particular, this common purpose in examining everyday life is highlighted in the works of two of Baltimore’s best-known female writers, Lucille Clifton and Anne Tyler.
Photo courtesy of www.poetryfoundation.org
Born in Depew, New York, in 1936, Clifton was the first member of her family to graduate from high school, and later obtained a scholarship to Howard University, where she studied drama. Ultimately, Clifton decided that poetry was her main inspiration, and began publishing her poems while employed at a succession of state and federal government jobs. In 1971, Clifton began focusing on her poetry full time when she became a writer in residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore. It was during this residency that Clifton began a long, rich relationship with both the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland at large. Following the publication of her works Good News About the Earth and An Ordinary Woman, Clifton was named Maryland’s Poet Laureate in 1979, holding the position for several years. After a short stint living in California, Clifton returned to Maryland, and was a faculty member at St. Mary’s College in St. Mary’s City from 1989 until her passing in 2010.
Of her work, the poet Rita Dove noted that “…Clifton’s poems are compact and self-sufficient…Her revelations…resemble the epiphanies of childhood and early adolescence, when one’s lack of preconceptions about the self allowed for brilliant slippage into the metaphysical.” Clifton wrote in a “quiet, even woman’s voice,” telling readers truths that could be as dark and hurtful as they were luminous and uplifting.
Written in lowercase type while raising her six children, Clifton’s work was quietly, concisely resilient in the face of the adversity she experienced as an African American woman. As she said in “Won’t You Celebrate with Me,”
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman …
come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
Although she was not a contemporary of Clifton’s, Anne Tyler nonetheless shares in Clifton’s Baltimorean style of every day truth telling. Originally hailing from Minnesota, Tyler began writing short stories at an early age. She moved to Baltimore with her husband Taghi Modarressi, a child psychiatrist and fellow author, in 1965. Following a career hiatus after the birth of her two children, Tyler refocused her efforts on her writing, and in 1970 she began a prolific phase of her career that has lasted to today.
There is a clear symbiosis between Tyler and her adopted city that is evident throughout her work. Tyler has set sixteen of her novels in the city, and Baltimore’s unique culture serves as a springboard for her prose. In her novels, Tyler has preferred to focus on large themes that characterize people’s motivations rather than a plot-driven approach; the question of “how to live” undergirds her characters’ lives. Similarly to Clifton, Tyler utilizes a quiet, even voice, and the nuances of her work are bolstered with a bevy of details that animate her writing.
Tyler has been frank about her fascination with the middle class, and it’s perhaps fitting that her characters share her home neighborhood of Roland Park. However, Tyler’s novels show that her fixation on the middle class’ soul searching is far from mutually exclusive with central human struggles. Tyler is sanguine about the way in which her characters interact with those of a grittier story such as The Wire, noting in a recent interview that, in a “pocketed city” such as Baltimore, people from different backgrounds “walk the same streets, … (but) we almost don’t see each other.”
“Pocketed” as the city and their respective works may be, Clifton and Tyler’s styles speak in a style that is uniquely Baltimorean. The work of Clifton and Tyler addresses elemental truths about what is most important to people: celebration, love, and survival. Irrespective the content of their writing, both women have wrangled with the monumental basic things of life, the things that animate us to continue to struggle and to survive.
Citations
Alexander, Elizabeth. “Remembering Lucille Clifton.” New Yorker, February 17, 2010. Accessed March 15, 2015.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/remembering-lucille-clifton
Allardice, Lisa. “Anne Tyler: A Life’s Work.” The Guardian, April 13, 2012. Accessed March 15, 2015.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/13/anne-tyler-interview
Thomson, Graeme. “‘I began writing with the idea that I wanted to know what it would be like to be someone else:’ Why Anne Tyler Might Be the Greatest Novelist You’ve Never Heard Of…” The Daily Mail, January 31, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2015.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-2931435/Anne-Tyler-began-writing-idea-wanted-know-like-somebody-else.html
“Emily Post: October 27, 1873-September 25, 1960.” The Baltimore Literary Heritage Project. Accessed March 15, 2015.
http://baltimoreauthors.ubalt.edu/writers/emilypost.htm
“Lucille Clifton: 1936-2010.” Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame. Accessed March 15, 2015.
http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/educ/exhibits/womenshall/html/clifton.html
“Lucille Clifton: 1936-2010.” Poets.org. Accessed March 15, 2015.
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/lucille-clifton
(MHC) How did you research Thorpe and prepare for your performance?
(MHC) How did you research Ruth and prepare for your performance?
early electronic literature community. Among the materials are the unpublished or first-edition works of Larsen and multiple other authors.
Linda Pastan:
