Archive for April 2017 (23 posts)

Pic of the Week: Poet Laureate Celebration

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Juan Felipe Herrera, center, dances on stage in the Coolidge Auditorium with Tylana Enomoto, left, and Martha González, right, members of the band Quetzal. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The Library hosted a day of festivities on April 26 to honor Juan Felipe Herrera as he concluded his second term as poet laureate consultant in poetry.

Titled “Speak the People/the Spark/el Poema,” the celebration began with a choral performance by the Fresno State Chamber Singers from Fresno, California, Herrera’s home town.

In the evening, a panel discussion took place about the emergence of Latino American culture and its influence on the nation. In addition to Herrera, the panelists were Martha González, lead vocalist for the Grammy Award-winning East L.A. rock bank Quetzal; Hugo Morales, the founder and executive director of Radio Bilingüe; and Louie Pérez, singer-songwriter with the band Los Lobos. Rafael Pérez-Torres, an English professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, moderated the discussion.

Immediately following the panel, a concert by Quetzal closed out the celebration.

A video recording of the celebration is available on the Library’s YouTube site.

 

 

New Online: Iconic Recordings, Presidential Papers and a Civil War Diary

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The following is a guest post by William Kellum, manager in the Library’s Web Services Division.  Since the last installment in this blog series, published in mid-March, quite a few new offerings have been added to the Library’s website. Women’s History Month March was Women’s History Month, and we updated the site we maintain in collaboration […]

Happy 100th Birthday, I. M. Pei

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This is a guest post by Mari Nakahara, curator of architecture, design and engineering in the Prints and Photographs Division. Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei celebrates his 100th birthday today, April 26. The Library of Congress is fortunate to have original design sketches by I. M. Pei as well as thousands of his manuscript papers. […]

Free to Use and Reuse: Travel Posters

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Faraway states, natural wonders and beautiful beaches—these are the settings that often come to mind as we start to plan our summer vacations. They also form the backdrop of hundreds of travel posters in the Library’s collections, including an assortment featured this month on the Library’s home page. The featured posters are U.S. government works, […]

Join the Celebration: Library to Livestream Events Honoring Poet Laureate

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The Library of Congress will honor Juan Felipe Herrera, who is concluding his second term as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, with celebratory events on Wednesday, April 26. The events will be streamed live on the Library’s Facebook page and its YouTube site. Titled “Speak the People/the Spark/el Poema,” the celebration will kick off at noon with a […]

World War I: The Library of Congress Memorial Tree

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This is a guest post by Cheryl Fox, Library of Congress archives specialist in the Manuscript Division. The Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building is bordered by a number of impressive trees. One of them, a Japanese elm at the southwest corner of the building, was planted on Dec. 17, 1921, in memory of four Library of […]

Inquiring Minds: African-American Soldiers in World War I

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The following is an article from the March/April 2017 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine, in which Adriane Lentz-Smith discusses her research at the Library of Congress into the experiences of African-American soldiers in World War I. Lentz-Smith is an associate professor at Duke University, author of “Freedom Struggles: African-Americans and World War […]

National Poetry Month: New Recordings Uploaded to Recorded Poetry and Literature Archive

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The following is a guest post by Anastasia Nikolis, a graduate student intern in the Poetry and Literature Center and a doctoral candidate in the English department at the University of Rochester. Happy National Poetry Month! I hope you are all as excited to celebrate as we are here at the Poetry and Literature Center. […]