The Main and the Robert Crown Branches of EPL will be closed Dec. 24th & Dec. 25th. We will reopen Dec. 26th for regular library hours.
April 22, 2010
Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car by Dan Pagis here in this carload I am eve with abel my son if you see my other son cain son of man tell him i Yom Hashoah, the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, took place on April 11th this year. This poem was selected by Jeff B. […]
April 22, 2010
If after waking this morning you noticed a palpable buzz in the air, fear not for your senses do not deceive you and your coffee is not to blame. Today is simply a big day. As you are almost certainly aware after three weeks of non-stop poetic feasting, National Poetry Month is still going strong. […]
April 21, 2010
A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches […]
April 20, 2010
Zhao Mengfu, a 14th century Chinese government official, was wondering how his wife, Guan Daosheng, might react to his thoughts about getting a concubine. A revered painter and poet, he wrote her this lyric poem: I’m a scholar-official and you are the official wife. Haven’t you ever heard that scholar-official Wang had Peach Leaf and […]
April 19, 2010
Everything in Its Place by Arthur Guiterman The skeleton is hiding in the closet as it should, The needle’s in the haystack and the trees are in the wood, The fly is in the ointment and the froth is on the beer, The bee is in the bonnet and the flea is in the ear.
April 18, 2010
Class Picture, 1954 by Billy Collins I am the third one from the left in the third row. The girl I have been in love with since the 5th grade is just behind me to the right, the one with the bangs. The boy who pushes me down in the playground is the last one […]
April 17, 2010
Excerpted from Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law by Adrienne Rich Well, she’s long about her coming, who must be more merciless to herself than history. Her mind full to the wind, I see her plunge breasted and glancing through the currents, taking the light upon her at least as beautiful as any boy or helicopter, poised, […]
April 16, 2010
Quarantine by Eavan Boland In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking north–they were both walking–north. She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put […]
April 16, 2010
Jeff Tweedy wrote one. Billy Corgan and Jewel did too. 2Pac and Jim Morrison have posthumous collections, and Bob Dylan’s began as an underground bootleg. What, you may ask, is the connection between this diverse group of musical artists? The answer may surprise you. Believe it or not, all of the aforementioned rockers and rappers have a published […]
April 15, 2010
I Knew A Woman by Theodore Roethke I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew […]
