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Archive: February 2015 (6 Posts)

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Fighting For Literacy, Through Poetry

Posted by: Robert Casper

Every season, the Poetry and Literature Center’s calendar includes one or more programs we’ve never tried before. The first such program of the spring will take place next Tuesday, with a symposium on poetry and literacy. It is the latest effort by the Library’s Literacy Awards Program, which for the two years has given three …

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To Phil

Posted by: Robert Casper

In mid-January, I got a call from Charles Wright to let me know that Philip Levine had cancer. I was shocked–less than a month before, my wife and I had our annual end-of-year get-together with the Levines. We went over to their Brooklyn Heights apartment–Phil’s wife Franny made dinner, and we brought over our usual …

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“Wild to be loved”: The Poetry of President Warren G. Harding

Posted by: Peter Armenti

When most of us consider the relationship between U.S. presidents and poetry, we’re likely to conjure up scenes of poets reading at presidential inaugurations or of presidents quoting lines of verse in public speeches and addresses. Few of us, however, give any thought to the achievement of presidents as poets. Yet a look at the biographies …

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Capitol Hill Lit Report: Terrance Hayes on Liquid Modernity

Posted by: Matt Blakley

The following guest post is by Yvonne French, webmaster for the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. In the latest installment of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on poetics, on January 22 in the Whittall Pavilion, poet Terrance Hayes gave a 40-minute slide-studded lecture, “Ideas of Influence: Poetry and a Poet through …

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“This is My Story”: Getting to Know Patricia Smith

Posted by: Matt Blakley

Next week, Patricia Smith will come to the Library of Congress as the 13th Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize in Poetry recipient. In advance of her opening reading for the Presidents Day Open House and her evening Prize reading, the Poetry and Literature Center conducted an e-mail interview, below: This is the second award Shoulda …