With Wednesday’s announcement of Juan Felipe Herrera as the Library’s 21st Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, hundreds of articles and spotlights appeared–more than any one person could go through! Of course, the best place to start finding out about Juan Felipe is on the Library’s website–here’s his LC Web Guide, courtesy of fellow “Catbird” blogger …
Every year or two, I have a day like this: when the new Poet Laureate is announced. There’s a lot of build-up–from the many months that go into the selection process, and the weeks of publicity-related work after the Librarian of Congress has made his decision. We even do a “Laureate Orientation,” with the Laureate-to-be, …
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819. Although From the Catbird Seat just highlighted a “lost” Whitman poem recently discovered at the Library, we decided that Whitman’s multitudes should not be contained by a single post, or even two posts, in the lead-up to his birthday. The best way to honor Whitman, we thought, …
Tonight is one of the biggest nights of the year for us. Back in September, a standing-room-only crowd filled the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium to mark the beginning of Charles Wright’s term as the 20th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry; tonight we will gather in the same room to mark the end of Wright’s term. He …
Yesterday we posted a blog about the launch of the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. We are also excited about press publicity for the archive in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, and Open Culture. For this post we want to give you a behind-the-scenes sense of how the archive came to be. Below are …
Listen: Robert Frost interview with Randall Jarrell, May 19, 1959. From the Catbird Seat is excited to announce the online launch of a selection of recordings from the Library of Congress’s Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, a series of audio recordings of renowned poets and prose writers reading from their work. Available as …
April is a big month for poetry programming at the Library of Congress. Patricia Smith, winner of the 13th Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, will be reading at the Library on April 6th. And on April 30th, Charles Wright will conclude his term at the 20th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by holding …
Finding it hard to scratch that poetry itch during the lead-up to National Poetry Month? We’ve got the balm you need! The March/April issue of Library of Congress Magazine (LCM), released online today, shines a spotlight on the Library’s poetry-related activities, services, and collections. Among the topics of the articles and features in the poetry-themed …
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 …