Nobel Prize in Literature 1936 was awarded to Eugene G. O'Neil

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1936 was awarded to Eugene Gladstone O'Neill "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy."

Eugene O'Neill received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1937. During the selection process in 1936, the Nobel Committee for Literature decided that none of the year's nominations met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel. According to the Nobel Foundation's statutes, the Nobel Prize can in such a case be reserved until the following year, and this statute was then applied. Eugene O'Neill therefore received his Nobel Prize for 1936 one year later, in 1937.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1936/summary/

The mission of the Eugene O'Neill Foundation, Tao House, is to celebrate and promote the vision and legacy of Eugene O'Neill, America's foremost playwright.

http://www.eugeneoneill.org/

The Home of Playwright Eugene O'Neill
Of all the places Eugene O'Neill called home during his restless life, Tao (pronounced "Dow") House was the one that held him longest, the refuge where he wrote his last plays. In early 1937, he and Carlotta were living in a San Francisco Hotel. "No roots. No home," Carlotta wrote as they searched for a place to live. Drawn to the privacy and climate of the San Ramon Valley, they purchased a 158-acre ranch near Danville and planned what O'Neill hoped would be his final home.

How to Visit this Unique National Park

The Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site must be accessed through a private, gated road owned by a community of neighboring residents. In order to experience the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site, therefore, visitors need to make reservations and willl be driven by a park shuttle from the Town of Danville, California. You'll receive a tour through Eugene O'Neill's "Tao House", and have time to explore the grounds before returning to Danville on the shuttle.

https://www.nps.gov/euon/planyourvisit/index.htm

I have been to the Eugene O’Neil National Historic Site many times. I love to help in the gardens.

 

[jedishrfu]

Nice place, I never knew that there was a place dedicated to Mr O'Neil. It seems from the website though that any visit will have to wait for COVID-19 to pass on by.

In NY state, there's the Roosevelt mansion that one can visit and admire how the wealthy Roosevelt family lived in the early 1900's just a hundred miles north of New York City in the town of Hyde Park NY.

https://www.nps.gov/hofr/index.htm

 

[Klystron]

Odd how dark our playwrights. Always enjoy Realism in fiction. O'Neill, his politics and political milieu came alive for me after watching Warren Beatty's film "Reds". Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Eugene O'Neill dominates the New England scenes.

After watching the director's cut of "Reds", I read Jack Reed's books and some of Louise Bryant's prose but found them dated and difficult. Watching or reading O'Neill's tragedies shed more light on the common people Reed tried to reach and describe.

Without rancor I consider Arthur Miller the equal of O'Neill as an American playwright; though no doubt O'Neill really captures classical forms and structure. Cultural proximity also helps Miller as post-WWII America seems more accessible to modern audiences.

Thanks for describing Danville. I miss the rolling brown hills and cool climate.

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

Nice place, I never knew that there was a place dedicated to Mr O'Neil. It seems from the website though that any visit will have to wait for COVID-19 to pass on by.

In NY state, there's the Roosevelt mansion that one can visit and admire how the wealthy Roosevelt family lived in the early 1900's just a hundred miles north of New York City in the town of Hyde Park NY.

https://www.nps.gov/hofr/index.htm

Well, I have the combination to the gate and get into the garden!

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

I wrote this poem “Sweet Harvest” in memory of Eugene O’Neil:

When the leaves fall from the trees

autumn breezes scatter

them throughout the landscape.

The evenings are cool and

the moon shines with an aura above

as lovers’ cross pathways.

It is as if a flute was playing

in one’s imagination

as my hound and I leave

a bouquet of rose’s at Eugene’s front door

as a barn owl hoots in the distance.

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

Thank you dear Klystron and jedishrfu~

I have written over a hundred poems over the years. Galway Kinnell was one of my favorite teachers. The Squaw Valley Community of Writer Poetry Workshop brought many poets including me.

I also like ~
Famous poet/
Eugene O'Neill
https://allpoetry.com/Eugene-O-Neill

I also have a novel that I have to finish. Thank you for sharing my life with you both. xxxooo

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

Thank you dear atyy I'm going to put up another poem of mine later. I hope everyone is healthy and staying wise ~

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

Urinating in Figurine Alley
by Mary Conrads Sanburn

In my garden
Elaborate arrays of new bulbs break ground.
What carefully planned maze of intricate beauties
can better showcase my extended family
of chipped ceramic, salt and pepper cat shakers
that grace rolling flowerbeds,
known by my homebody cats as Figurine Alley.
They purrr-fectly laugh
while urinating in the adjacent raised bed
under my handmade, tin can man
who is the watchdog of Veggieland.

In my backyard
gigantic, pastel chalk butterflies sleep on sidewalks.
A squirrel raises hell in a tree.
I have a personal relationship with an owl.
We who who near the same time every day.
I’ve pitched a snail or two
over the fence. Clorox bleached a weed.

In my backyard
I faithfully remain the Water Girl. Let the ceremony begin!
Water trees: English laurel mimosa, sequoia,
Maple, birch and magnolia.
Water pots and yard filled with flowers grown in
California.
Water the cat bowl.
Water the birdbath for the lovey doves.
Sugar water the hummers’ feeder.
There are holy water jars filled with tea and tears
to feed the tree fern, azaleas, and hibiscus.
Hard earned tears after replanting thorny JFK Perkins.

In my backyard
The world is made of peculiar things:
Plastic flamingos and slugs.
A bottle of Mr. Bubbles.
Feather droppings from angels.
Interviews with ladybugs.
A red wagon decorated with horseshoes.
CDs with glued-on aquarium marbles,
which spin from a cherry tree,
give a spectacular kaleidoscopic aquatic show,
bouncing into windows, boomeranging off eaves.

In my backyard
of wisteria, roses, and passionflowers,
rabbits under the arbor at dawn,
there is a shine that rests in the hidden places.
Where those who happen upon it find it.
No one before or after can describe it.
It just comes and leaves comes and leaves.

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

Thank you dear Klystron and atyy Today is a beautiful day ~
Love and hugs to you both ~

 

[Klystron]

Thank you dear Klystron and atyy Today is a beautiful day ~
Love and hugs to you both ~

Poems about gardens capture the essence of both forms of human creativity. Trees, bushes, flowers, stones, pottery, sand, insects, bark, birds, reptiles, soil, wood combine with natural light and shade to tell a story that we visit, traverse and inhabit. Gardens provide a system of paths, a balanced sensorium under the guiding tutelage of the planner; the planter.

The gardens grows where the water flows.

Poetry and thoughtful prose combine familiar words into shape, form and path that touch our feelings, feed our imagination and provide a mental abode that we inhabit for a brief time. The sun swings across the sky; the day journeys into night where the garden rests within the promise that the sun still shines.

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

Dear Klystron have you read:

Gaston Bachelard
On Poetic Imagination and Reverie
"No one has gone further into the nature of imagination than Bachelard. He is the founding
figure to whom all artists and thinkers, and dreamers, must return again and again."

"Imagination is always considered to be the faculty of forming images. But it is rather the faculty of deforming the images, of freeing ourselves from the immediate images, it is especially the faculty of changing images."

 

[atyy]

Do you know this, sometimes said to be the most famous Chinese poem? It reminds me a bit of the poem in post #5.

https://100tangpoems.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/thoughts-on-a-silent-night-li-bai/

https://americanliterature.com/author/li-bai/poem/quiet-night-thoughts

 

[Klystron]

Very beautiful calming and evocative poem. I have admired (but cannot read) this poem rendered in calligraphy that expresses the recursive nature of the central thought. Thanks.

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

I love this beautiful poem:

The Solitude of Night
BY LI BAI
TRANSLATED BY SHIGEYOSHI OBATA
It was at a wine party—
I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.
The blown flowers fell and filled my lap.
When I arose, still drunken,
The birds had all gone to their nests,
And there remained but few of my comrades.
I went along the river—alone in the moonlight.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52535/the-solitude-of-night

His poems are really beautiful ~
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/li-po#tab-poems

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

This is my favorite poem

WAIT
Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
###

 

[Mary Conrads Sanburn]

The Eugene O'Neill Foundation, Tao House, presents a videotaped script-in-hand performance of "Recklessness" by Eugene O'Neill. This production was recorded in the Old Barn at Tao House (Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site), in Danville, CA in August 2020.