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May 22, 1868: The Reno Gang Makes Outlaw History
May 22, 1868. The darkness of the backcountry night has settled around a train stop where the Jefferson, Madison & Indianapolis train takes on wood and water. In this outpost near Marshfield, Indiana, seven men wait for the train. They lurk beneath trees or behind bushes. Frank Reno, the leader of the men, kneels down…
Read MoreJames Wright’s “In Ohio”
James Wright is one of the most distinguished twentieth century American poets. Born in Martins Ferry, Ohio in 1927, he attended local schools and served in the U.S. Army on Occupation duty in Japan, then returned to study at Kenyon College near Gambier, Ohio where he earned his bachelor’s degree. He studied overseas at the…
Read MoreBecoming Coherent In The World: The Extraordinary Career of Toni Morrison
February 18 is the birthday of the distinguished Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, who was born in Lorain, Ohio near Cleveland in 1931. Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford to George and Rahmah Willis Wofford, who had both moved north from the deep south to better their lot. She attended local schools, graduating from Lorain…
Read MoreWinter in Kentucky, c. 1810
I recently finished reading Robert Penn Warren’s remarkable narrative poem Brother To Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices. The poem concerns a real incident that occurred near Paducah, Kentucky—the murder of a slave by Thomas Jefferson’s two nephews in 1811. Robert Penn Warren, who was born in Guthrie, Kentucky in 1905, is the only…
Read MoreNew Toni Morrison Novel Set For Spring Publication
Nobel Prize winning author and Lorain, Ohio native Toni Morrison has a new novel coming out in April of 2015. The novel is entitled God Help The Child, and it concerns the impact of childhood traumas on several adult characters. This will be Toni Morrison’s eleventh novel. Her last novel, Home, appeared in 2012. She…
Read MorePresident Lincoln: Master of American Prose
February 12 marks the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, who is not only one of our greatest Presidents—perhaps the greatest American President—but one of the great leaders in world history. Lincoln is also arguably the greatest writer among the Presidents. All of our Presidents have left behind a body of writing, usually consisting of policy…
Read MoreClark Gable, Son of Cadiz, Ohio
Clark Gable, the legendary actor who has been called “The King of Hollywood,” was born in Cadiz, Ohio, a small town in eastern Ohio’s Harrison County, on February 1, 1901. His father, William Henry “Will” Gable was an oil well driller who later attempted farming. Gable’s mother died when he was ten months old,…
Read MoreBorn on January 6: Wright Morris and Carl Sandburg
Two important writers from the Midwest were born on January 6: Carl Sandburg in 1878 and Wright Morris in 1910. Since Morris is the lesser known of the two, I will start with him. Wright Morris was born in Central City, Nebraska. His mother died within a week of his birth. His father was a…
Read MoreRemembering Thomas Berger
The distinguished postwar American novelist Thomas Berger died on July 13, 2014 in Nyack, New York. As this was a great loss for American letters in the past year, I wanted to post an entry on this very unique and gifted writer, who will be featured in the future on this blog. Berger was a…
Read MorePublished 70 Years Ago: Thomas Merton’s “Thirty Poems”
The renowned writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton became known to the broader reading public with his famous spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain in 1948. The book struck a chord with the reading public in the aftermath of World War II and the onset of the atomic age with is persistent threat of total…
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