Today is the birthday
… of the poet laureate of the United States, W.S. Merwin. He’s 83 today. W.S. is for William Stanley.
He won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for his collection The Carrier of Ladders and the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for The Shadow of Sirius (published in 2008). He also won the 2005 National Book Award for Migration: New and Selected Poems.
He started writing poems when he was four or five years old, he said — at first, they were mostly hymns to give to his father, a Presbyterian minister. He studied literature and Romance languages at Princeton, gained the admiring attention of W. H. Auden, and published his first book of poems, A Mask for Janus, the year he turned 25.
. . .He lives in Hawaii on the lip of a dormant volcano in Maui, on what used to be a pineapple plantation. He’s devoted to cultivating endangered palm trees and reforesting his land with native Hawaiian plants. He’s deeply interested in Buddhism.
… of Angie Dickinson. “Pepper” is 79 today.
… of Johnny Mathis. Chances are the singer is 75 today.
… of Barry Williams. Greg Brady is 56 today.
… of Fran Drescher, 53. (Really, only 53?)
… of Dharma. Jenna Elfman is 39.
… of Faheem Rasheed Najm. T-Pain is 25.
Truman Capote was born in New Orleans on this date in 1924.
Mr. Capote’s first story was published while he was still in his teens, but his work totaled only 13 volumes, most of them slim collections, and in the view of many of his critics, notably his old friend John Malcolm Brinnin, he failed to join the ranks of the truly great American writers because he squandered his time, talent and health on the pursuit of celebrity, riches and pleasure.
Yup, Truman Capote should have lived the life of Ebenezer Scrooge and forsaken that celebrity, riches and pleasure shit.
James Dean was killed on this date 55 years ago at the junction of California Highways 41 and 46. He was 24.
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