Sunday
Aug. 25, 2002
Yes, They Had No Tomatoes
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Poem: "Yes, They Had No Tomatoes," by David Citino from Broken Symmetry (Ohio State University Press).
Yes, They Had No Tomatoes
As he carries in two hands
from noon's profusion of garden
a tomato ripe this moment,
warm as a lover's whisper
from the pendulous August sun,
breast-heavy promise of a new world,
bruiseless fruit to brood over,
he wonders again how
in the gleaming blue bowl
of the Mediterranean world
the Greeks, Etruscans, Romans
could grow wise, sloe-eyed, mighty
without knowing the tomato.
Other missing treasures
from America he understands
they could do without,
potatoes, chilies, chocolate-
stolidness, urgency, pleasure.
But a day of summer sun,
an age with no tomatoes!
August 25th is a big day in France. It's the feast day of
the nation's patron saint, Saint Louis; it's also the anniversary of the liberation
of Paris during World War Two-on this day in 1944, General Charles de Gaulle
led his Free French troops into the capital. The German commandant Dietrich
von Choltitz had ignored Hitler's order to burn the city and blow up its bridges;
instead he calmly surrendered it to the French.
It's the birthday of novelist Martin
Amis, born in Oxford, England (1949)-the son of novelist Sir Kingsley
Amis. His first novel was The Rachel Papers (1973).
On this day in 1939, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Technicolor movie The
Wizard of Oz was released. Directed by Victor Fleming, it was adapted
from L. Frank Baum's novel. Harold Arlen wrote the music; E.Y. Harburg wrote
the lyrics. Judy Garland, who played Dorothy, had turned 17 shortly before the
picture came out (MGM had wanted Shirley Temple as Dorothy, but 20th Century
Fox wouldn't loan her). Ray Bolger was originally cast as the Tin Man, but swapped
roles with Buddy Ebsen, who was to have been the Scarecrow; Ebsen then got sick
from the metal paint and was replaced by Jack Haley.
It's the birthday of poet Charles
Wright, born in Pickwick Dam, Hardin County, Tennessee (1935). He grew
up in eastern Tennessee and at a boarding school in North Carolina. He joined
the Army for four years, three of them in Italy, and later did post-graduate
work at the University of Rome (1963-64). He said, "The two poles in my
poems seem to be Italy-especially northern Italy-and my childhood in the American
South. I spent a year in Venice … and, in a way, everything I've written
since that time seems to me to be influenced by the city. It keeps coming back
in my poems, a sumptuousness the city has, like foliage."
It's the birthday of conductor and composer Leonard
Bernstein, born in Lawrence, Massachusetts (1918), the son of Russian
immigrants.
It's the birthday of cartoonist Walt
Kelly, born in Philadelphia (1913), who, for many years, drew a strip
called "Pogo." The strip was famous for the language Pogo and his
friends used: a mixture of Elizabethan English and black American dialect, spiced
with puns and Freudian allusions.
It's the birthday of humorist
Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye), born in Shirley, Maine (1850).
It's the birthday of novelist (Francis)
Bret Harte, born in Albany, New York (1836). He went west where he wrote
the story that made his reputation, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," followed
by "The Outcasts of Poker Flat."
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®
