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Archive: November 2013 (3 Posts)

The word

A Thanksgiving Poem for Lincoln

Posted by: Peter Armenti

On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation that declared “the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” Lincoln’s famous Thanksgiving Day proclamation was in large part undertaken at the urging of  Sarah Josepha Hale—poet, novelist, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, and, lest we forget, author of the …

The word

W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten

Posted by: Peter Armenti

On Friday, one of our sister blogs, the Music Division’s In the Muse, marked the hundredth birthday of British composer Benjamin Britten. Highlighting some of Music Division’s important Britten holdings, the post references a recording of Britten’s collaborator Peter Pears reciting W. H. Auden’s sonnet “The Composer” as part of a 1980 program at the …

The word

A Mushaira with the Parents

Posted by: Robert Casper

The following is a guest post from Samia Khan, who works as a classification assistant in the Library of Congress Office of Workforce Acquisitions. When Rob Casper asked me to write a post about my personal experience with poetry and literature, I was initially clueless. A History major in college, I hadn’t really read or …