<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2748" dir="ltr">According to Garrison Keillor in today's Writer's Almanac (paragraph 3):</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2748" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2748" dir="ltr"><br></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; word-break: normal; hyphens: none; font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'dlig' 1; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 244);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2880"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2881">Today is the birthday</strong> of English poet and novelist <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stevie-smith" target="_blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(122, 11, 13); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2882"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2883">Stevie Smith</strong></a> (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=Stevie%20Smith&tag=writal-20&index=blended&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(122, 11, 13); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2884">books by this author</a>), born in East Yorkshire, England (1902). Smith’s birth name was Florence Margaret, and her family called her “Peggy,” but when she was a young woman, a friend said she reminded him of the jockey Steve Donoghue, and she was “Stevie” after that.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; word-break: normal; hyphens: none; font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'dlig' 1; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 244);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2885">For most of her life, Smith worked as a secretary in a British publishing house and lived with her aunt, all the while writing and publishing acerbic, witty poems and novels, like <em style="box-sizing: border-box;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2886">Novel on Yellow Paper </em>(1936), narrated by a chatty and sharp young woman named Pompey, who was basically a stand-in for Smith. At one point, Pompey says: “But first, Reader, I will give you a word of warning. This is a foot-off-the-ground novel that came by the left hand. And the thoughts come and go and sometimes they do not quite come and I do not pursue them to embarrass them with formality to pursue them into a harsh captivity. And if you are a foot-off-the-ground person I make no bones to say that is how you will write and only how you will write. And if you are a foot-on-the-ground person, this book will be for you a desert of weariness and exasperation.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; word-break: normal; hyphens: none; font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'dlig' 1; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 244);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2887">The novel took Britain by storm. No one thought an unassuming, rather dull-seeming woman like Smith could have written such a book. The poet Robert Nichols was convinced that Virginia Woolf was ‘‘Stevie Smith’’ and even wrote Woolf an odd six-page letter assuring her that <em style="box-sizing: border-box;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2888">Novel</em> <em style="box-sizing: border-box;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2889">on Yellow Paper</em> was her best by far. Smith loved all the notoriety, but wrote to a friend, ‘‘Very few in this suburb knew me as Stevie Smith, & I should like it to stay that way.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; word-break: normal; hyphens: none; font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'dlig' 1; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 244);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2890">Stevie Smith’s most famous poem is “Not Waving but Drowning,” which was voted Britain’s “second-favorite poem.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; word-break: normal; hyphens: none; font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'dlig' 1; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 244);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2891">In her novel <em style="box-sizing: border-box;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2892">Over the Frontier</em> (1938), Smith wrote, “Power and cruelty are the strengths of our lives, and only in their weakness is there love.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; word-break: normal; hyphens: none; font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'dlig' 1; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 244);" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2893">Stevie Smith died of brain tumor in 1971. She once said: “There is no reason to be sad, as some people are sad when they feel religion slipping off from them. There is no reason to be sad, it is a good thing.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; word-break: normal; hyphens: none; font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'dlig' 1; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 244);" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2893">With best wishes--</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; word-break: normal; hyphens: none; font-feature-settings: 'liga' 1, 'dlig' 1; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 16px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 244);" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505904615612_2893">Karen Levenback</div></div></body></html>