For his birthday, Elton John has rare music for fans

NEW YORK >> Elton John celebrated his 74th birthday on Thursday — and he’s sending fans a very rare present.

Six deep cuts have been made available on streaming and digital formats for the first time, including the tune “Scarecrow,” which began John’s legendary songwriting partnership with Bernie Taupin in 1967.

The other songs are: “Holiday Inn,” “Keep It a Mystery,” “Smokestack Children,” “Two of a Kind” and “Conquer the Sun.”

“Scarecrow” marks the first time Elton put his music to Taupin’s lyrics.

“‘Scarecrow’ will always have a very special place in my heart, and I know that Bernie feels the same way too. It’s the song that started it all,” John said in a press release.

The six songs will be added to the digital version of the collection “Elton: Jewel Box,” which was first released in November and contains more than 100 rare songs spanning 1965 to 2019.

O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’ wins book critics award for fiction

NEW YORK >> Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet,” an imagined take on the death of Shakespeare’s son from the bubonic plague, has won the National Book Critics Circle prize for fiction.

“Hamnet,” an unfortunately well timed story for the current pandemic, explores the impact of the boy’s illness and death on his family. He was Shakespeare’s only son, and scholars have long speculated about his influence — if any — on “Hamlet,” which Shakespeare worked on in the years following Hamnet’s death.

Tom Zoellner’s “Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire” won for nonfiction, and Amy Stanley’s “Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World” was the winner in biography.

The autobiography award went to Cathy Park Hong for “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning.”

Oprah Winfrey, left, and Amanda Gorman

Poet Amanda Gorman revisits inaugural triumph with Oprah

LOS ANGELES >> Amanda Gorman revisits her inauguration day poetry reading that wowed observers, among them Oprah Winfrey, in the Apple TV+ series “The Oprah Conversation.”

The 23-year-old Gorman “stepped into a moment in history with enormous grace and dignity,” Winfrey said in a statement. “I was enthralled by her youthful spirit from the first moment we met, and very much looked forward to hearing her unpack all that has happened to her the past few months.”

The interview debuted Friday on the streaming service.

The first National Youth Poet Laureate and the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, Gorman recited “The Hill We Climb” for the Jan. 20 swearing-in ceremony for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a wide-ranging interview with Winfrey, Gorman discusses how she approached the poem’s creation; the literary figures who inspire her; personal stories that shaped her past, and her hopes for the future, the streaming service said in a release Thursday.

“It felt meaningful, not only for me but in a broader sense,” Gorman said of her poem in a clip from the interview.

She describes the work as “something that the world needed to hear and that I needed to write. Very rarely do you get that type of luxury as a poet, in which your words aren’t just meeting the moment, but making the moment in history.”

Winfrey is used to making moments, most recently with her CBS interview in which Britain’s Harry and Meghan, his wife, detailed why they left their royal duties.