Emerson,Raymond Carver & Theodore Rothke – American Originals

  • 1cEmerson
    Ralph Waldo Emerson -b. May 25, 1803

    1) When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was “the infinitude of the private man.” Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of fellow Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau (via wiki )
    Walt Whitman sent a copy of Leaves of Grass to Emerson.
    Emerson was strongly influenced by the Vedas, and much of his writing has strong shades of nondualism. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in his essay “The Over-soul”:

    Quotes by Emerson

    Children are all foreigners.

    Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

    Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

    Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

    Emerson tweets
    – What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think
    – I can find my biography in every fable.

  • 1aCarverRay
    Raymond Carver -b. May 25, 1938

  • Prose as Architecture: two interviews with Raymond Carver

    Suppose I say summer,
    write the word “hummingbird,”
    put it in an envelope,
    take it down the hill
    to the box. When you open
    my letter you will recall
    those days and how much,
    just how much, I love you.
    Raymond Carver

    Dreams Are What We Wake Up From, directed by Daisy Goodwin. (Youtube)

  • Theodore Rothke 1acunninghamRothke

    b. May 25, 1908
    photo by Imogen Cunningham, 1959

    MY PAPA’S WALTZ

    The whiskey on your breath
    Could make a small boy dizzy;
    But I hung on like death:
    Such waltzing was not easy.

    We romped until the pans
    Slid from the kitchen shelf;
    My mother’s countenance
    Could not unfrown itself.

    The hand that held my wrist
    Was battered on one knuckle;
    At every step you missed
    My right ear scraped a buckle.

    You beat time on my head
    With a palm caked hard by dirt,
    Then waltzed me off to bed
    Still clinging to your shirt.

  • 5 Poems by Rothke on youtube here.