The Writer's Almanac

Today's Poem and Literary Notes

• The Writer's Almanac
  Monday's Poem: "Mother Night" by Jim Harrison from Saving Daylight. Monday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of the man who has been called "the father of nonsense," Edward Lear, born in London, England (1812). He was the twentieth of his mother's twenty-one children, almost half of whom had died in infancy. He was raised by his sister Ann, who taught him at an early age how to paint birds and flowers. He went to school only briefly, and then, as a teenager, began to support himself painting shop signs for local merchants and sketching diseased patients for medical textbooks.