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Archive: 2015 (64 Posts)

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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 …

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Teacher’s Corner: Using Poetry to Teach the Importance of Word Choice

Posted by: Peter Armenti

The following guest post, part of our “Teacher’s Corner” series, is by Rebecca Newland, Teacher in Residence at the Library of Congress. In my high school English classroom, we studied not only literature, but also writing. Students usually came to me competent in the fundamentals of persuasive and expository composition, but they gave little thought …

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Edgar Allan Poe and “The Raven”

Posted by: Peter Armenti

The following guest post is by Amber Paranick, a librarian in the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room. Today, January 19th, we celebrate the 206th birthday of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was an American writer, poet, and critic during the romantic era and is perhaps best known for his stories of mystery and horror. He …

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Start the New Year with a Poem a Day

Posted by: Peter Armenti

We’re barely two weeks into 2015, which means that most of us are still committed to following through on any New Year’s resolutions we made, no matter how Sisyphean they are starting to appear. While our wills remain strong, I propose adding an enjoyable resolution to our lists—let’s all try to read a poem a …

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Muriel Rukeyser and the Spanish Civil War

Posted by: Robert Casper

The following is a cross-post from the Insights: Scholarly Work at the John W. Kluge Center, from Program Specialist Jason Steinhauer. Poet and biographer Muriel Rukeyser documented and commented on the seismic events of the 20th century. In her five decades of writing, she captured her experiences as witness to racial inequality in America, the …