April headlines covered a wide range of stories about the Library of Congress.
Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera continues to make the news, especially with the April announcement of his returning for a second term.
Herrera told Sara Catania of Reuters that poetry fans provided an “inspiration tsunami” during his first year in which he shepherded a crowd-sourced poem and addressed high-profile tragedies.
For his second term, he told Ron Charles of The Washington Post that he’s considering a “superhero story for children” that they would assist in writing online in addition to outreach to young people with special needs.
Speaking to his hometown newspaper the Fresno Bee Herrera said there was much more work to be done and that he was grateful and honored to be reappointed.
Mentalfloss offered 10 facts about the Poet Laureate position for Poetry Month in which they highlighted Herrera’s second term.
Also “returning” to the Library was the StoryCorps mobile recording booth, which has been on tour since 2005. The Library of Congress is the repository for the oral histories collected as part of the project, which launched in 2003. Kicking off the Library tour stop was WAMU’s Diane Rehm and her son David. Washingtonian covered the event.
The Library has certainly honored and hosted its fair share of notable individuals through the years. In April, the institution celebrated writer Mario Vargas Llosa and awarded him its Living Legend Award.
“Living, yes, I think I am living,” he told the crowd at the festivities on Monday night (as reported in the New York Times). “Not a legend.”
And, putting the spotlight on the Library of Congress itself was Ryan Cooper for The Week.
“It’s a place where you feel the weight of history pressing down,” he wrote. “‘Is this tweet really the best use of your time?’ it says. ‘Shouldn’t you be unraveling the mysteries of the universe, or writing the next great American novel?’ … “Under the dome of the Main Reading Room — as with the Capitol Rotunda — the demand to live up to the national ancestors is almost palpable.”