Today: "Molly the Brave" by Jim Harrison
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016
Molly the Brave
by Jim Harrison
Molly was the bravest
In April she would swing out
over the river on a rope
tied to an elm branch. There was still
ice along the bank and one day
her body was found down by the weir
with a bruised head, which meant she hit ice.
One summer evening she hugged me in her wet
black bathing suit after I brought her a milk shake.
My blood became hot and moved in all directions.
When we caught frogs to eat their legs
she said, We are animals. And on the hill
by the river we illegally picked trillium.
All the boys wanted to marry her.
We kept putting the wildflowers she loved
on her grave. More than sixty years
later I see dearly-that no one gets over anything
least of all Molly by the river,
swinging up through the air
a bird.
"Molly the Brave" by Jim Harrison from Dead Man's Float. © Copper
Canyon Press, 2016. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
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It's the birthday of writer and story collector Wilhelm Grimm (books by
this author), born in Hanau, Germany (1786). He spent his life
researching and writing with his older brother, Jacob; together they
became known as the "Brothers Grimm." The brothers complemented each
other: Jacob was quiet, a better scholar than his brother, and
preferred to be alone; Wilhelm was an imaginative storyteller who loved
music and the company of friends. In 1825, Wilhelm married a
pharmacist's daughter, and although Jacob never married, they all
continued to share a house. The brothers went off to the University of
Marburg to study law together, where one of their professors inspired
in them a passion for linguistics and cultural history. They decided to
study folklore, which they considered a pure form of national
literature. Both brothers found positions as librarians, and although
they didn't make much money, the jobs were flexible, and they had time
to pursue their own scholarship.
The Grimms were interested in the stories of common people, but despite
how they are portrayed these days, they didn't actually wander through
the German countryside collecting fairy tales. Instead, they asked
people to come to their homes and recite stories. Most of these
storytellers were educated, middle-class people, many of them young
women. The brothers asked their visitors to recite stories they had
read, or that had been told to them, so often they were stories that
servants had shared. One family of three young women provided the
Grimms with many stories they had grown up hearing, and since the
family was French, the Grimm brothers ended up with a lot of stories
that were actually French in origin. The brothers edited the stories to
make them clearer, more logical, and more appropriate for children.
They also added in phrases and language to create what they believed
was an authentic rustic sound. Their Children's and Household Tales
(1812), commonly known asGrimm's Fairy Tales, went through seven
editions in their lifetime, and each time they changed the stories. The
brothers taught at the university in Berlin, and spent the final years
of their lives attempting to create a comprehensive dictionary of the
German language.
It's the birthday of artist Winslow Homer, born in Boston (1836). His
father had a series of failed business ventures, and when Homer
graduated from high school he was determined to find a steady job.
Since he was a talented artist, he signed up as an apprentice with
Bufford's, a commercial lithographer. He spent two years printing
lithographs, from politicians' portraits to title pages for sheet
music. He hated the work and left on his 21st birthday. He moved to New
York City, where he opened a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building
and made a living as an illustrator for periodicals. The new magazine
Harper's Weekly offered him a salaried position, but he turned them
down. He said later: "The slavery at Bufford's was too fresh in my
recollection to let me care to bind myself again. From the time I took
my nose off that lithographic stone, I have had no master, and never
shall have any."
Harper's Weekly agreed to hire him as a freelancer, and they sent him
to the front lines of the Civil War, where he drew scenes of camp life
and ordinary soldiers. Back in New York, he worked on oil paintings
based on his sketches, and began to focus more on painting instead of
drawing. He also shifted subjects, from city scenes to nature or
country landscapes, especially the ocean. The novelist Henry James
wrote: "We frankly confess that we detest his subjects - his barren
plank fences, his glaring, bold blue skies [...] his freckled,
straight-haired Yankee urchins, his flat-breasted maidens, suggestive
of a dish of rural doughnuts and pie. He has chosen the least pictorial
features of the least pictorial range of scenery and civilization." In
1884, after spending 18 months in an English fishing village, Homer
moved permanently to a small town in Maine, where he spent the last 25
years of his life painting ocean landscapes. It wasn't until the last
decade of his life that he made enough money from his paintings to feel
financially stable.
It's the birthday of "The Flying Dutchman," baseball great Honus
Wagner(John Peter Wagner), born in Carnegie, Pennsylvania (1874).
Wagner was a sensational hitter, a brilliant base runner, a flawless
fielder, and an outstanding shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates,
hitting 101 home runs between 1897 and 1917. One of the first five
players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame (1936), he is
still considered by many people to be baseball's greatest player. There
are only about 50 original prints of his baseball card still in
existence. In July of 2000, a mint-condition card sold at auction to an
anonymous bidder for $1.1 million.
Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo received its premiere on this date
in 1607, in Mantua, Italy. It told the story of Orpheus, who descends
into Hades to retrieve his dead wife, Eurydice. Around this time,
musical theater consisted largely of orchestral interludes between the
acts of straight plays, but some composers were experimenting with
including music in the action of the play itself. L'Orfeo was the first
fully developed works of the new genre in which all the actors sang,
and people liked it.
It's the birthday of Jane Hirshfield (books by this author), born in
New York City (1953). She went to Princeton, where she was in the first
graduating class to include women, in 1973. She published her first
poem not long after, then went off to northern California to study
Buddhism for the next eight years, during which time she didn't write
at all. She said: "I don't think poetry is based just on poetry; it is
based on a thoroughly lived life. And so I couldn't just decide I was
going to write no matter what; I first had to find out what it means to
live." Her latest collection, The Beauty (2015), came out last year.
She said, "One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully
read - in such a moment, anything can happen."
It's the birthday of Irish novelist George Augustus Moore (books by
this author), born Ballyglass, Ireland (1852). Moore said growing up he
was "the boy that no schoolmaster wants." His father was a member of
Parliament and owned racehorses. He had wanted Moore to become a
military man, but after his father died in 1870, Moore inherited some
money and was free to move to Paris and live out his life as an artist.
Up until 1876, Moore had planned on being a painter, and he studied at
French art academies. He was good, but not good enough. He once said,
"The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to
understand." Moore decided to educate himself by reading as much as he
could, especially philosophy, while sitting in Paris cafés. He had to
leave Paris for Ireland when his father's estate went into financial
ruin, but the money problems taught him a lot about business and
politics.
He would eventually become very anti-British in his views, and he
became more active in the Irish Revival. He worked with Yeats and the
early days of the Abbey Theatre. He also focused on bringing back the
popularity of the Gaelic language.
Moore's family estate, Moore Hall, was burned by rebels in 1923 after
the establishment of the Irish Free State, but by that time he was
again living in London.
Moore is known for introducing realist fiction to England with his
bookEsther Waters (1894). He also wrote confessions and memoirs, such
as theHail and Farewell trilogy (1911-14) and Confessions of a Young
Man (1888).
Moore's public persona was very vain and arrogant, and he was known for
referring to his own works as "great books." Moore said, "A great
artist is always before his time or behind it."
He said, "A man travels the world in search of what he needs and
returns home to find it."
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®
