All library locations are open and fully operational today, Friday, July 5.
April 2, 2013
Happiness by Raymond Carver So early it’s still almost dark out. I’m near the window with coffee, and the usual early morning stuff that passes for thought. When I see the boy and his friend walking up the road to deliver the newspaper. They wear caps and sweaters, and one boy has a bag over […]
April 1, 2013
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well […]
April 1, 2013
If you’re anything like us, you’ve been counting down to this very day. Besides kick starting the showers that bring the flowers, April 1st officially makes it next year for the Cubs and gives you cause to unleash that new whoopee cushion. What’s most exciting, however, is that today means National Poetry Month is finally […]
March 22, 2013
This month for Poetry 365 we’re highlighting Jessica Greenbaum’s eloquent new volume The Two Yvonnes. Chosen for Paul Muldoon’s series of Princeton Contemporary Poets, the upstreet editor’s second collection employs prose-like free verse, sonnets, and a single pantoun in explorations of the urban everyday akin to Elizabeth Bishop and W.G. Sebald. Organic and unhurried, these […]
March 22, 2013
Chinua Achebe, one of Africa’s most acclaimed authors has died at the age of 82 after a brief illness. His first novel Things Fall Apart published in 1958 sold millions of copies and was translated into 45 languages. Achebe received numerous awards, including the Nigerian National Merit Award (Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement) and […]
March 21, 2013
The Library of Congress has just released a list of 25 sound recordings that will be preserved for the long term. The song Sounds of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel, written just after the JFK assassination, is included along with such iconic recordings as Chubby Checker’s energetic The Twist, the original cast album of South […]
March 20, 2013
Benjamin Alire Sáenz has won this year’s PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his short story collection, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. The judges considered more than 350 novels and short story collections by American authors published during 2012. Finalists included Amelia Gray for her novel Threats ; Laird Hunt, author of Kind […]
March 19, 2013
The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park is seeking a writer to use the renovated attic space of Hemingway’s birthplace in Oak Park, IL for a year. The foundation sees this as a chance to promote Hemingway’s legacy in a thoughtful way. It’s not intended as a substitute home, but rather as a workplace and […]
March 19, 2013
I have always had a small spot in my heart for palindromes, those strange puzzles in which the letters appear in the same order forward and backward. Example: A man, a plan, a canal: Panama. Wouldn’t you know the winners of the new Symmys contest were announced recently? Jon Agee won in the short category […]
March 14, 2013
On the hip website Flavorwire, Emily Temple offered a collection of photographs picturing 20 wonderful murals and frescoes from around the world that celebrate books and literature. This is one of my favorites–it’s the parking garage at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Enjoy all of the bookish buildings here. Barbara L.
