A Tribute to November: Aldo Leopold
“The wind that makes music in November corn is in a hurry. The stalks hum, the loose husks whisk skyward in half-playing swirls, and the wind hurries on.”
Celebrating November with Art – John Atkinson Grimshaw:
“November Moonlight, 1883.”
A Poetic Tribute to November: Leonard Clark
“Fog in November”
Fog in November, trees have no heads,
Streams only sound, walls suddenly stop
Half-way up hills, the ghost of a man spreads
Dung on dead fields for next year’s crop.
I cannot see my hand before my face,
My body does not seem to be my own,
The world becomes a far-off, foreign place,
People are strangers, houses silent, unknown.
“Now our world is at the present time firmly in the grip of a mechanical monster, whose head – if you want to call it that – is the World Engineer’s Complex. That monster is opposed to us and can keep all too good a tab on us through every purchase we make with our credit numbers, every time we use the public transportation or eat a meal or rent a place to live.” – From “Necromancer,” by Gordon Dickson, award-winning Canadian-American science fiction writer, who was born 1 November 1923.
1 November 1969 – The Beatles’ album “Abbey Road” reaches the number one spot on music charts in the United States and remains there for eleven weeks.
A Poetic Tribute to November: Gwendolyn Brooks
“The Crazy Woman”
I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I’ll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.
I’ll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I’ll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.
And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
“That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May.”
Celebrating November with Art – Willard Metcalf: “November Mosaic “ (1922).
A Tribute to November: Lucy Maud Montgomery
“But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods…for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them.”
1 November 1611 – Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” is first performed at the Globe Theater in London.
1 November 1995 – “The Tempest” is performed at the Broadhurst Theater in New York City, with Patrick Stewart in the role of Prospero.
Below – A sketch of the Globe Theater; a portrait of Patrick Stewart as Prospero, painted by Elizabeth A. Adams.
A Poetic Tribute to November: Adelaide Crapsey
“November Night”
Listen. .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
Celebrating November with Art – Peter Fiore: “Fall, November – White Pine Suite: The Seasons.”
A Poetic Tribute to November: Dorothy Parker
“Temps Perdu”
I never may turn the loop of a road
Where sudden, ahead, the sea is lying,
But my heart drags down with an ancient load-
My heart, that a second before was flying.
I never behold the quivering rain-
And sweeter the rain than a lover to me-
But my heart is wild in my breast with pain;
My heart, that was tapping contentedly.
There’s never a rose spreads new at my door
Nor a strange bird crosses the moon at night
But I know I have known its beauty before,
And a terrible sorrow along with the sight.
The look of a laurel tree birthed for May
Or a sycamore bared for a new November
Is as old and as sad as my furtherest day-
What is it, what is it, I almost remember?
Below – Paul Vigne Pavi: “Le Temps Perdu Dans Le Temps.”
A Poem for Today
“Leonids Over Us,”
By Marge Piercy
The sky is streaked with them
burning holes in black space –
like fireworks, someone says
all friendly in the dark chill
of Newcomb Hollow in November,
friends known only by voices.
We lie on the cold sand and it
embraces us, this beach
where locals never go in summer
and boast of their absence. Now
we lie eyes open to the flowers
of white ice that blaze over us
and seem to imprint directly
on our brains. I feel the earth,
rolling beneath as we face out
into the endlessness we usually
ignore. Past the evanescent
meteors, infinity pulls hard.
Celebrating November with Art – Joe Mancuso: “November in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
