1. ask-ri: “I always felt, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK.” - Maya AngelouIf for some reason you can’t get to your local library but still want helpful answers, go to AskRI.org to call, email, or chat with a reference librarian.

    ask-ri:

    “I always felt, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK.” - Maya Angelou

    If for some reason you can’t get to your local library but still want helpful answers, go to AskRI.org to call, email, or chat with a reference librarian.

  2. therumpus: On Reading by Cynthia Cruz “On Saturdays when I was a young girl, my mother would drive me downtown to the Santa Cruz Public Library. Often, she would drop me off; leave me there for hours. And I was completely content to wander aimlessly, pulling books from the endless shelves. I would get myself into a small spell, walking and gathering books. Then, I’d find myself a quiet corner to sit and there, I would lose myself inside the portal of a book. “Years later, I am, again, in the library, this time, the Aptos Public Library. I am in the children’s reading room kneeling before a round wooden table upon which sits a fake board game, The Phantom Tollbooth. Here is how the game goes: I pick up a card, and whichever book is listed on its backside, that is the book I will read. I spend a week inside the kingdom of this book and then, when my mother returns me to the library, the next Saturday, I tell the librarian which books I’ve read, and she takes me by the hand and escorts me back to the magic round table, back to the board game. She disappears for a moment and then returns with a form with my name on the top. She adds the books I read that week to the long list, instructs me to spin the spinner and then I pick up a new card, and flip it over. “The pretty librarian takes my hand and leads me across the room to a shelf where she pauses, leans into the books and pulls out a beautiful red book with a black horse’s face on it. Black Beauty. “She hands me the book, the key, and I open it, and then I drop under as I enter the beautiful kingdom again.”

    therumpus:

    On Reading by Cynthia Cruz

    “On Saturdays when I was a young girl, my mother would drive me downtown to the Santa Cruz Public Library. Often, she would drop me off; leave me there for hours. And I was completely content to wander aimlessly, pulling books from the endless shelves. I would get myself into a small spell, walking and gathering books. Then, I’d find myself a quiet corner to sit and there, I would lose myself inside the portal of a book.

    “Years later, I am, again, in the library, this time, the Aptos Public Library. I am in the children’s reading room kneeling before a round wooden table upon which sits a fake board game, The Phantom Tollbooth. Here is how the game goes: I pick up a card, and whichever book is listed on its backside, that is the book I will read. I spend a week inside the kingdom of this book and then, when my mother returns me to the library, the next Saturday, I tell the librarian which books I’ve read, and she takes me by the hand and escorts me back to the magic round table, back to the board game. She disappears for a moment and then returns with a form with my name on the top. She adds the books I read that week to the long list, instructs me to spin the spinner and then I pick up a new card, and flip it over.

    “The pretty librarian takes my hand and leads me across the room to a shelf where she pauses, leans into the books and pulls out a beautiful red book with a black horse’s face on it. Black Beauty.

    “She hands me the book, the key, and I open it, and then I drop under as I enter the beautiful kingdom again.”

  3. mollitudo: Today is Poem in Your Pocket day (yes, really), an occasion I would have let pass by totally unrecognized if not for my colleagues. My poem? Fellow native Washingtonian Thomas Sayers Ellis’s “Roll Call,” a poem about names—one of my favorite subjects. Your LJ tumblrer’s poem today, currently stuffed in the her back pocket of her jeans.

    mollitudo:

    Today is Poem in Your Pocket day (yes, really), an occasion I would have let pass by totally unrecognized if not for my colleagues. My poem? Fellow native Washingtonian Thomas Sayers Ellis’s “Roll Call,” a poem about names—one of my favorite subjects.

    Your LJ tumblrer’s poem today, currently stuffed in the her back pocket of her jeans.

  4. SLJ’s Shelley Diaz came by my desk with a surprise!

    SLJ’s Shelley Diaz came by my desk with a surprise!

  5. poetrysince1912: “What is it to be human?” from the POETRY app from the Poetry Foundation. Please vote for us to win a Webby Award! Read the rest of the poem here. When I first saw this, I thought it was a poem by our Fiction Editor, Wilda Waldo! You can find her on Tumblr at willywaldo.tumblr.com.

    poetrysince1912:

    “What is it to be human?” from the POETRY app from the Poetry Foundation. Please vote for us to win a Webby Award! 

    Read the rest of the poem here.

    When I first saw this, I thought it was a poem by our Fiction Editor, Wilda Waldo! You can find her on Tumblr at willywaldo.tumblr.com.

  6. Our latest edition of The Reader’s Shelf (LJ’s readers’ advisory column) features letters from poets: Selected by editor Emily Fragos, LETTERS: EMILY DICKINSON (Everyman’s Library. 2011. ISBN 9780307597045. $13.50) offers significant glimpses into the poet’s engagement with the natural world. Arranged by topic and then chronological order, the slim volume (part of the “Pocket Poets” series) traces Dickinson’s occupations and time line. These lyrically written, sometimes elliptical letters to her family and friends are vividly descriptive, include snippets of poetry, and depict Dickinson’s innermost thoughts and feelings. The collection serves as a basic introduction to Dickinson’s life from her school days in 1845 to the last four words sent to her cousins just before her death in May 1886.

    Our latest edition of The Reader’s Shelf (LJ’s readers’ advisory column) features letters from poets:

    Selected by editor Emily Fragos, LETTERS: EMILY DICKINSON (Everyman’s Library. 2011. ISBN 9780307597045. $13.50) offers significant glimpses into the poet’s engagement with the natural world. Arranged by topic and then chronological order, the slim volume (part of the “Pocket Poets” series) traces Dickinson’s occupations and time line. These lyrically written, sometimes elliptical letters to her family and friends are vividly descriptive, include snippets of poetry, and depict Dickinson’s innermost thoughts and feelings. The collection serves as a basic introduction to Dickinson’s life from her school days in 1845 to the last four words sent to her cousins just before her death in May 1886.

  7. Recommended poetry from The Horn Book →

  8. Lullabies, skate punks, video games, black Southern roots. The fierce cat within, the fierce journey without. All-powerful queens and time-eating spiders. All in language brightly accessible or twistingly different. That’s what I found with colleague Annalisa Pesek when we went hunting for spring poetry publications, beyond what we are able to review in the magazine, that we believe really matter. Read these poets now, watch them for tomorrow.

    — Celebrate National Poetry Month with 30 New Books That Will Help You Rediscover Poetry | Library Journal

  9. John Ashbery Selects Chris Hosea as 2013 Walt Whitman Award Recipient

    The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce that Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Ashbery has selected Chris Hosea as the recipient of the 2013 Walt Whitman Award, the Academy’s prestigious first book prize. 

    As the winner of the Whitman Award, Hosea’s manuscript, Put Your Hands In, will be published by Louisiana State University Press in 2014 and the Academy of American Poets will purchase and distribute thousands of copies of the book to its members. Hosea will also receive $5,000 and a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center.

  10. ala-idea-exchange:

    During National Poetry Month, put up poster board or a big white board. Invite people to write haikus.

    Great idea! (And check out ALA’s Idea Exchange tumblr, if you haven’t yet—it’s great.)

  11. classicpenguin: “No doubt anyone with an interest in Marcel Proust will be grateful for Penguin’s new dual language edition of The Collected Poems, incisively edited by Harold Augenbraum and drawing on the work of 20 translators. But devotees of David Foster Wallace, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Jean Rhys—even Kenneth Burke—will also be enthralled: if an infinite book has no beginning or end, then surely this is one. Augenbraum’s introduction and hugely entertaining notes help make the volume at least three books, really. Palimpsest or holographic to the poems, Augenbraum’s given us a biography of Proust as well as an engrossing cultural history, a cubist portrait of the writer’s milieu and his most intimate friendships.” Part of a wonderful write-up on Huffington Post about our new Collected Poems of Marcel Proust, now out for Poetry Month and also to celebrate 2013 as the 100th anniversary of Swann’s Way More Poetry Month happiness at Penguin Classics! Proust’s Collected Poems were also featured in the most recent Classic Returns column over at LJ! This year is the sesquicentennial of Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s epic (and extraordinarily lengthy) novel, In Search of Lost Time. To help commemorate the occasion, Penguin has gathered up all of the novelist’s poems—sonnets, snippets, and lengthier verse—into this handsome collection. With translations by Lydia Davis (who translated Swann’s Wayfor Viking in 2003 to great acclaim) and poets Richard Howard, Susan Stewart, and Rosanna Warren, among others, this collection of just over 100 poems (with French on facing pages) leans in a more romantic, more traditional direction than his gargantuan modernist novel. In his introduction, translator Harold Augenbraum says that, for Proust, “writing poetry was akin to taking a busman’s holiday from literature,” and his poems are certainly more immediate than his obsessively revised fiction. An essential title for Proust completists.

    classicpenguin:

    “No doubt anyone with an interest in Marcel Proust will be grateful for Penguin’s new dual language edition of The Collected Poems, incisively edited by Harold Augenbraum and drawing on the work of 20 translators. But devotees of David Foster Wallace, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Jean Rhys—even Kenneth Burke—will also be enthralled: if an infinite book has no beginning or end, then surely this is one. Augenbraum’s introduction and hugely entertaining notes help make the volume at least three books, really. Palimpsest or holographic to the poems, Augenbraum’s given us a biography of Proust as well as an engrossing cultural history, a cubist portrait of the writer’s milieu and his most intimate friendships.”

    Part of a wonderful write-up on Huffington Post about our new Collected Poems of Marcel Proust, now out for Poetry Month and also to celebrate 2013 as the 100th anniversary of Swann’s Way

    More Poetry Month happiness at Penguin Classics!

    Proust’s Collected Poems were also featured in the most recent Classic Returns column over at LJ!

    This year is the sesquicentennial of Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s epic (and extraordinarily lengthy) novel, In Search of Lost Time. To help commemorate the occasion, Penguin has gathered up all of the novelist’s poems—sonnets, snippets, and lengthier verse—into this handsome collection. With translations by Lydia Davis (who translated Swann’s Wayfor Viking in 2003 to great acclaim) and poets Richard Howard, Susan Stewart, and Rosanna Warren, among others, this collection of just over 100 poems (with French on facing pages) leans in a more romantic, more traditional direction than his gargantuan modernist novel. In his introduction, translator Harold Augenbraum says that, for Proust, “writing poetry was akin to taking a busman’s holiday from literature,” and his poems are certainly more immediate than his obsessively revised fiction. An essential title for Proust completists.

  12. And then the public libraries. Without the public libraries, serious writers, unfashionable serious writers like me, really wouldn’t have a chance. Again, I hear from people, “I was wandering around the library and saw the title Plant Dreaming Deep. It caught my attention … now I’m reading everything you’ve written.” It’s wonderful to have this happen at the age of seventy.

    — Paris Review - The Art of Poetry No. 32, May Sarton

  13. peepswitch: (via Twitter / erik_kwakkel: Wow, 1500 followers: thank …) Ink cat pawprints in a 15th c. book. I was just wondering today if calligraphers of the past had problems with cats walking across wet ink and ruining things. This reminds me of the 9th century Old Irish poem, “Pangur Bán,” about a monk working in a scriptorium and his cat, the eponymous Pangur Bán. Translation here is Seamus Heaney’s: Pangur Bán and I at work, Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:        His whole instinct is to hunt,        Mine to free the meaning pent. More than loud acclaim, I love Books, silence, thought, my alcove.        Happy for me, Pangur Bán        Child-plays round some mouse’s den. Truth to tell, just being here, Housed alone, housed together,        Adds up to its own reward:        Concentration, stealthy art. Next thing an unwary mouse Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.        Next thing lines that held and held        Meaning back begin to yield. All the while, his round bright eye Fixes on the wall, while I        Focus my less piercing gaze        On the challenge of the page. With his unsheathed, perfect nails Pangur springs, exults and kills.        When the longed-for, difficult        Answers come, I too exult. So it goes. To each his own. No vying. No vexation.        Taking pleasure, taking pains,        Kindred spirits, veterans. Day and night, soft purr, soft pad, Pangur Bán has learned his trade.        Day and night, my own hard work        Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.

    peepswitch:

    (via Twitter / erik_kwakkel: Wow, 1500 followers: thank …)

    Ink cat pawprints in a 15th c. book. I was just wondering today if calligraphers of the past had problems with cats walking across wet ink and ruining things.

    This reminds me of the 9th century Old Irish poem, “Pangur Bán,” about a monk working in a scriptorium and his cat, the eponymous Pangur Bán. Translation here is Seamus Heaney’s:

    Pangur Bán and I at work,
    Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:
           His whole instinct is to hunt,
           Mine to free the meaning pent.
    More than loud acclaim, I love
    Books, silence, thought, my alcove.
           Happy for me, Pangur Bán
           Child-plays round some mouse’s den.
    Truth to tell, just being here,
    Housed alone, housed together,
           Adds up to its own reward:
           Concentration, stealthy art.
    Next thing an unwary mouse
    Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.
           Next thing lines that held and held
           Meaning back begin to yield.
    All the while, his round bright eye
    Fixes on the wall, while I
           Focus my less piercing gaze
           On the challenge of the page.
    With his unsheathed, perfect nails
    Pangur springs, exults and kills.
           When the longed-for, difficult
           Answers come, I too exult.
    So it goes. To each his own.
    No vying. No vexation.
           Taking pleasure, taking pains,
           Kindred spirits, veterans.
    Day and night, soft purr, soft pad,
    Pangur Bán has learned his trade.
           Day and night, my own hard work
           Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.

  14. Today, on the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death, the Academy of American Poets is honoring the poet’s life and work with her letters, journals, and poems. Discover 10 things that Sylvia Plath loved, including sun bathing, Marilyn Monroe, and The Joy of Cooking at poets.org. Also, to mark the occasion, we have digitized archival letters from Sylvia that are a part of her years-long correspondence with the Academy of American Poets, where they are now available to the public for the first time. From the Academy Archives: Letters from Sylvia

    Today, on the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death, the Academy of American Poets is honoring the poet’s life and work with her letters, journals, and poems. Discover 10 things that Sylvia Plath loved, including sun bathing, Marilyn Monroe, and The Joy of Cooking at poets.org.

    Also, to mark the occasion, we have digitized archival letters from Sylvia that are a part of her years-long correspondence with the Academy of American Poets, where they are now available to the public for the first time.

    From the Academy Archives: Letters from Sylvia

    (Source: Flickr / faberandfaber)

  15. embroiderypoems: “This City runs on intern blood.” #lifeblood @postcrunk @IvivaOlenick  Iviva Olenick is collecting and embroidering Twitter “poems.” Tweet her @IvivaOlenick or @EmbroideryPoems, and your pithy insights may end up in stitches.

    embroiderypoems:

    “This City runs on intern blood.” #lifeblood @postcrunk @IvivaOlenick 

    Iviva Olenick is collecting and embroidering Twitter “poems.” Tweet her @IvivaOlenick or @EmbroideryPoems, and your pithy insights may end up in stitches.