Word: poet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Japan's Emperor Hirohito, a sometime poet (TIME, Jan. 14) and marine biologist, was hailed for a pioneer bit of research in his scientific pursuits. A clam shell sent to him last fall from the Amami-Orshima Islands (between Japan and Okinawa) was painstakingly identified by the Emperor as none other than a Benishibori-Minomushi bivalve. Significance: never before, claimed the Imperial Palace, had this clam been found so far north. Japan's news agency gave an unrestrained banzai: "Through his personal keen interest in marine biology, His Majesty turned up a new discovery on the living habits...
...Manhattan's St. Patrick's Cathedral, a solemn pontifical Requiem Mass was offered by Cardinal Spellman (though Toscanini had never been noticeably religious). His body will be taken to Milan for burial. Arturo Toscanini's epitaph might best be expressed in words spoken by the Austrian poet Grillparzer at Beethoven's grave: "Whoever comes after him will not be able to continue; he will have to begin again, for his predecessor ended only where art itself must...
...Poet Jean Cocteau gave it as his considered opinion that she was not a little girl but "an 80-year-old dwarf." A critic in Le Figaro said that her lines sparkled "with spontaneous sensations, new tingling images." Elle, France's biggest women's weekly, denounced her as a fake. They were all talking about nine-year-old Minou Drouet, whose poems launched a major cultural rhubarb in Paris (TIME, Nov. 28, 1955). Since then, Minou (a French pet name for "kitten") has fought back. When a critic sniffed that she should go back to her dolls, Minou...
English-speaking readers now have a chance to see what the controversy was about, with the publication in Britain of Minou's First Poems, translated by Poet-Biographer Margaret Crosland (Hamish Hamilton, London). There is nothing in the 20 poems to suggest that they could not have been written by a very precocious child, and at the same time nothing to keep them from being judged as poetry rather than child's play. The verses are set in the serpentine typography that Minou believes necessary because "I reread better written like this." Typical was Tree that I Love...
...festival in Taormina and had an audience with the Pope. Said Minou to His Holiness: "I have gone into many churches looking for God, but all I find are stained-glass windows and pillars." It is not recorded what the Pope replied to this, but later he asked the poet for a copy of her book. Whereupon Minou asked archly, "Haven't you read it yet?", and promised to send...