Woman standing in front of the Wasilla Public Library (1950s)Update: McCain Camp Assails Book-Banning Report as a ‘Smear’ via Truthdig McCain Camp Memo - Smear Machine Rolls On: Governor Palin And Library Books"Ah, the power of the internets.Following an article on the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin in Time Magazine, where mention is made of a conversation Palin had with the library on how one goes about banning books, a list of alleged banned books surfaced as a comment on the blog librarian.net and quickly spread through the book universe. Unfortunately, a few of the titles mentioned where published after...
Jeanette Winterson on the Bookshop
"I am keen to preserve what is good in life, and that is often at odds with what is most profitable in life. Leaving aside the price arguments about supermarkets, bookshops have, or should have, a special place in our culture. We need books, and books are best browsed in the energetic peace of a small store where the owner loves reading, just like we do."She goes on:"real books belong to the heart, not the pocket, and there has to be a way of letting that be. I know that the internet is great for ordering whatever it is you...
More Political Poetry – Denise Levertov and Vietnam
nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.Denise Levertov, Life at WarThe latest podcast in the alt.NPR Poetry Off the Shelf series, Battle of the Bards, focuses on Denise Levertov's poem Life at War and how her relationship with fellow poet and mentor Robert Duncan was severely strained by Levertov's anti-war activism and her related poetry.Ange Mlinko has a related piece,"Craft Vs. Conscience How the Vietnam War destroyed the friendship between Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov" at the Poetry Foundation's Online Journal.Previously on Book Patrol:A New Wave of Political Poetry
little blue books
one of the most prolific publishers in U.S. history, putting an estimated 300 million copies of inexpensive “Little Blue Books” into the hands of working-class and middle-class Americans. Selling for as little as five cents and small enough to fit in a trouser pocket, these books were meant to bring culture and self-education to working people,http://believermag.com/issues/200809/?read=article_potts
A New Wave of Political Poetry
It is difficult/to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there. -William Carlos WilliamsNeed a little reality check after bearing witness to the madness of the Republican Convention?The newly published anthology of contemporary political poetry, State of the Union : 50 Political Poems, by Wave Books might help.The compilation is edited by Joshua Beckman and Matthew Zapruder and features the work of John Ashbery, Anselm Berrigan, Lucille Clifton, CAConrad, Peter Gizzi, James Tate, John Yau, Tao Lin, Eileen Myles, Michael Palmer, Wang Ping, and many others.Heidi Broadhead has a nice...