It's the birthday of artist Georgia O'Keeffe, born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin (1887). She's particularly well known for her giant paintings of flowers, though she once said, "I only paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move." On a trip to Taos, New Mexico, O'Keeffe grew to love the desert, which she called "the faraway." She felt that the thin, dry air enabled her to see farther, and she was awed by the seemingly infinite space that surrounded her. She would devote much of the rest of her career to painting desert scenery.
O'Keeffe said: "I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life — and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."
O'Keeffe said: "I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life — and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."
It's the birthday of Marianne Moore (books by this author), born in Kirkwood, Missouri (1887). Her father was an engineer and inventor who had spent his life trying to build a smokeless furnace. When his business failed, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an institution for the mentally ill. Marianne Moore was born just after her parents had separated, and she never met her father.
She went to Bryn Mawr College, where she hoped to study English literature, but after a professor wrote a disparaging comment on one of her papers, she switched to biology. Working in a laboratory had a profound effect on her writing. She said, "Precision, economy of statement, logic [...] drawing and identifying, liberated [my] imagination."
After college, Moore got a series of jobs teaching typing and bookkeeping, and she contributed poems to Bryn Mawr's alumni magazine. Then, in 1915, she published two poems in The Egoist, an influential literary magazine that was also publishing the early work of James Joyce at the time. Her work caught the attention of modernist poets — T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and others — and she moved to Greenwich Village to join the literary scene there. She became friends with poets such as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens. She went to parties every night and attended art shows and exhibitions, even though she went on living with her mother and read the Bible every day.
Her first collection, Poems (1921), was published without her knowledge by the poet Hilda Doolittle, who admired her work. She said, "Anyone could do what I do, and I am, therefore, the more grateful that those whose judgment I trust should regard it as poetry." Her Collected Poems (1951) won the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize.
She went to Bryn Mawr College, where she hoped to study English literature, but after a professor wrote a disparaging comment on one of her papers, she switched to biology. Working in a laboratory had a profound effect on her writing. She said, "Precision, economy of statement, logic [...] drawing and identifying, liberated [my] imagination."
After college, Moore got a series of jobs teaching typing and bookkeeping, and she contributed poems to Bryn Mawr's alumni magazine. Then, in 1915, she published two poems in The Egoist, an influential literary magazine that was also publishing the early work of James Joyce at the time. Her work caught the attention of modernist poets — T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and others — and she moved to Greenwich Village to join the literary scene there. She became friends with poets such as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens. She went to parties every night and attended art shows and exhibitions, even though she went on living with her mother and read the Bible every day.
Her first collection, Poems (1921), was published without her knowledge by the poet Hilda Doolittle, who admired her work. She said, "Anyone could do what I do, and I am, therefore, the more grateful that those whose judgment I trust should regard it as poetry." Her Collected Poems (1951) won the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize.
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