Casey Jones (1863-1900)

On this day in 1900, according to the Associated Press, "engineer John Luther "Casey" Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad died in a train wreck near Vaughan, Mississippi, after staying at the controls in a successful effort to save the passengers."

To read more about Casey Jones, click here.

John Luther "Casey" Jones

(1863-1900)

THE SATURDAY AFTERNOON POST: THE COUNTRY PARSON

Read THE SATURDAY AFTERNOON POST: THE COUNTRY PARSON: "Recently, while paging through some old, old newspapers I had saved, I had the pleasure to rediscover a simple, one panel comic strip I used to follow during the mid to late 1960s in my local newspaper called 'The Country Parson.'" So begins Jack Jodell's commentary on the syndicated, daily cartoon for which Frank A. Clark wrote all the captions. To continue reading that commentary, click on the link above.

Found Poem from Two Letters by Emily Dickinson

Here is a found poem from two letters by Emily Dickinson in Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd. The original edition of that book was first published by Roberts Brothers, Boston, in 1894.


How can one be fatherless
who has a father's friend
within confiding reach?

Who could be motherless
who has a mother's grave
within confiding reach?

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

American poet

"Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats

On this day in 1934, according to the Associated Press, "Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first published in book form after being serialized in Scribner's Magazine." Fitzgerald borrowed the title of that novel from the fifth line in the fourth stanza of the poem "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats.

To read more about F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender Is the Night, click here.

To read the poem "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats, click here.

John Keats (1795-1821)

English poet

About The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

So begins American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby. On this day in 1925, according to the Associated Press, "the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby was first published by Scribner's of New York." To read more about that novel, click here.

F. Scott Fitzgerald circa 1921 

"A Storm in April" by Richard Wilbur

Read the poem "A Storm in April" by the great American poet Richard Wilbur.

Watch a video of Richard Wilbur introducing and reading his poem "A Storm in April."

Richard Wilbur (1921-2017)

Richard Wilbur - Poetry readings: 'A Storm in April' (71/83)

Anonymous Japanese poem: "If only when one heard"

On my birthday this year I turned sixty-seven. I remember how I looked forward to birthdays when I was a child; how I counted the months, the weeks, the days, the hours until I was finally another year older. What the heck was I thinking? Here is an anonymous, untitled, twentieth-century Japanese poem about the coming of Old Age.

If only when one heard
That Old Age was coming,
One could bolt the door,
Answer "Not at home,"
And refuse to meet him!

Source of poem: Great Short Poems from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (Dover Publications, 2011), edited by Dorothy Belle Pollack

"The Garden" by Belle F. Owens : Christ in Poetry

The final song in Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, is "John Nineteen: Forty-One." In the Bible, John 19:41-42 (Good News Translation) reads: "There was a garden in the place where Jesus had been put to death, and in it there was a new tomb where no one had ever been buried. Since it was the day before the Sabbath and because the tomb was close by, they placed Jesus' body there." Here is a poem by Belle F. Owens about resurrection, a subject that Jesus Christ Superstar does not deal with.


THE GARDEN

The garden now is sealed and dead,
But, lo! a crocus lifts its head;
This is the tomb of Love, we feel,
But here an iris breaks the seal.
This is not death but wonted birth,
But resurrection of the frost-bound earth;
The silver rain unseals the crust
And through the sod green spears will thrust
Returning spring, renew our faith,
For he is risen as he saith.


Source of poem: Christ in Poetry (1952), an anthology compiled and edited by Thomas Curtis Clark and Hazel Davis Clark