April 9, 2014
Poetry by Marianne Moore I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things […]
April 8, 2014
It’s Spring! by Eduard Morike Spring unfurls its blue ribbon To flutter in the air again; Sweet, familiar breezes Brush the earth with promises. Violets, already dreaming, Are eager to arrive. Listen—a harp in the distance! Yes! It’s you, Spring! I knew you were coming! This poem was selected by Laura H. (Adult Services Librarian) […]
April 7, 2014
Billy Corgan, frontman of the Chicago-based Smashing Pumpkins rock band, performed a musical interpretation of the Herman Hesse novella in Highland Park (at Madame ZuZu’s tea house) last month. The performance lasted eight hours, and attendees were rotated in groups so that all had a chance to marvel at the Chicago rock legend. How can your […]
April 7, 2014
Free-floating anxiety sounds like a pretty balloon by Bob Hicok I need a soft day, soft hour, a minute without edge or the stare of a man with homicide in his teeth. Need a cigarette you can smoke to get in shape, that sucks tension out while putting slimmer thighs in your quiver, something in […]
April 6, 2014
A Moment of Happiness by Rumi A moment of happiness, you and I sitting on the veranda, apparently two, but one in soul, you and I. We feel the flowing water of life here, you and I, with the garden’s beauty and the birds singing. The stars will be watching us, and we will show […]
April 5, 2014
“Well, write poetry, for God’s sake, it’s the only thing that matters.” — e.e. cummings
April 5, 2014
Chicago by Carl Sandburg Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders:
April 4, 2014
The 2014 PEN/Faulkner prize for Fiction was awarded to NYKaren Joy Fowler for her novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. The $15,000 prize will be presented at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington on May 10. A panel of three judges, including Madison Smartt Bell, Manuel Munoz, and Achy Obejas, chose the work from […]
April 4, 2014
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and […]
April 3, 2014
Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too by James W. Hall All my pwoblems who knows, maybe evwybody’s pwoblems is due to da fact, due to da awful twuth dat I am SPIDERMAN. I know, I know. All da dumb jokes: No flies on you, ha ha, and da ones about what do I do wit all […]
