Today’s temperamental weather was well-suited for Chicago’s 10^th Annual Poetry Fest. Snugly tucked away in the basement rooms of Harold Washington Library, Poetry Fest’s schedule included morning meetings, a reading by Pulitzer Prize recipient Rita Dove, and Poetry Cram: An Open Mic.

I attended Poetry Cram, which operates under the objective of including as many poets into the two-hour performance as possible.  Poets present represented a kaleidoscope of local presses, including (but not limited to) Free Lunch, After Hours, and Third World Press and was emcee’d by ChicagoPoetry.com founder C.J. Laity.  In case you missed it, the Cram was recorded for WBEZ: Chicago Public Radio, air-date unknown.

here's Chicago poet Tara Stringfellow and her 1st published book. Congrats to all participants on some great work!

Are you tired of perusing your bookshelves and coming up with gems you’ve known and loved? Finally worked your way through Infinite Jest and are probably never going to read it again? Don’t have the dinero to spend on a new book collection and would rather trade with some good folks over good drinks? Then mark your calendar for next Wednesday, April 29 and pack up fifteen of those gently used oldies but goodies.  The Chicago Reader is presenting its annual book swap at the Bottom Lounge from 6-9 p.m. Must be 21 to attend.

There will be loot – Chicago Public Library is sponsoring and will give free totes to the first 100 attendees. Steppenwolf tickets and other prizes will be given away as the night goes on. Powered by Open Books. Click here for volunteer information.

Bookworms, unite, for a FREE and fun event! Oh, and did we mention the rooftop deck?

Here are some of the reasons why Fanny Howe rules and why we will totally make a fanzine for her as soon as we re-find that ol’ longarmed stapler: 1. She has a huge, strange, and thoughtful body of work, ranging from poems (back to those in a sec) to gloriously collaged essays to novels and wicked sharp short stories. 2. She grapples with topics like interracial love and gnosticism and utopia. 3. She writes young adult novels. 4. She has three children, including novelist Danzy Senna, and six grandchildren. 5. When she was seventeen, she left her home in Boston and moved to California. 6. She won a Guggenheim. 7. She wrote this about desire: “When you still desire a thing, its time has not yet come. And when you have what you desired, you will have no more desire, instead you will have time. Weak desires protect you from disappointment. But nothing keeps you safer than being a visible ruin.” 9. She writes lyrically and passionately about history. 10. Her poems just won the 2009 Ruth Lilly Prize, which is presented by the Poetry Foundation and, at $100,000, one of the largest lit prizes in the U.S. (Past winners include David Wagoner, John Ashbery, W.S. Merwin, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Lucille Clifton.) Howe will accept the cheque at the Pegasus Awards Ceremony in Chicago on Tuesday, May 19th — this gives us just under a month to find that stapler.

“A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.”
Umberto Eco

Earlier this week, Evanston resident Judith Krug, a librarian who co-founded Banned Books week, passed away.  She championed library service as, “based on the concept of intellectual freedom, of providing all pertinent information so a reader can make decisions for himself.”

Ms. Krug was a proponent of our First    Amendment rights even into the digital era, fighting internet censorship as well.

So next time you pick up a copy of “Mein Kampf” or “Huckleberry Finn,” give a nod to this amazing lady who helped make your freedom to read possible.

“Some day there will be no State Police, or any other police, to obstruct the free play of the waking dreamers! Some day the Halsted Street bus will reach Florida, and will set out from there to new destinations! From Halsted Street to Easter Island to the Garden of Eden!”
- Franklin Rosemont, Arsenal

With sadness, we report that Franklin Rosemont died at the University of Illinois Medical Center last Sunday, of unexplained causes. In 1966, Franklin and his wife, Penelope, started the Chicago Surrealist Group – a big deal, as the group was into both weirdo dreamy word salads and the way Surrealism can invert, subvert, address routine and injustice and routine injustice. It critiqued the world but it lived in it too.

Franklin worked with everyone from Haymarket anarchists to the Wobblies to the Beats and Anti-Beats. Hung out on Maxwell and at Gallery Black Swan and in Bughouse Square, with Breton, Terkel, Carrington, St. Clair. Along with Penelope, he hitchiked thousands of miles across the US, revitalized Kerr Press, and kept the Dil Pickle Club sharp. A mentor, a historian, a poet, a student, the world’s best pen-pal, and many more things that don’t fit into pixels. Rest in peace, sir.

I am not Cornel West/I am Cornel West Side

Chicagoan Lupe Fiasco has established a reputation as one of Hip Hop’s most promising young talents. After his first two albums received near-unanimous adulation from both mainstream and independent critics, Fiasco has become the intellect’s MC, consistently displaying his cerebral lyrics, dynamic flows, and tight productions. And along the way, a brilliant intellect has emerged alongside the artwork. Fiasco’s debut album functions on a metaphorical level, articulating his vision of a world torn between good and evil, between conflicting desires to build up and to tear down, in his words, between “your food and your liquor.” His second album dissects the established notion of “Cool,” looking at how inner city archetypes such as the thug and the gangbanger have been popularized and questioning if “there’s a heaven for a G.”

Fiasco’s vision is complex and conflicted and garnered him a spot on Kanye West’s “Glow in the Dark Tour,” as well as gigs on Letterman and at last summer’s Lollapalooza. Just short of being a household name, Fiasco seems on the verge of making a lasting mark on the culture he so eloquently dissects. So it should come as no great surprise that on April 3rd, the illustrious scholar Dr. Cornel West interviewed Lupe Fiasco at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The two covered subjects ranging from the nature of finding a voice through an invocation of past voices to the legacy of an artist once (s)he has passed away, and mapped out connections between Jazz and Hip Hop as well as between Hip Hop and Punk. For us, the highlight of the interview is an exchange about the nature of existence and being true to a self that might ultimately be corrupted in which Dr. West draws a correlation between Fiasco and soul-singer Marvin Gaye, proclaiming that we can:

“Go back to Marvin Gaye’s album “What’s Goin’ On?” [and find that] he’s got some deep truth there. But [on] “Let’s Get It On” he’s got some deep truth there. “I want Ya,” Troubed Man,” we can go on and on. Marvin’s being true to himself, when he looks at himself he’s sees a lot of what is inside of all of us, what Samuel Beckett called ‘mess.’ Being in time and space and the death sentence in time and space, no one is in time and space a lie. You got a mess – I got a mess. Being true to that mess, couldn’t you still be misleading?”

Fiasco replies with a discourse on “the makeup of self,” explaining that he sees a stark contrast between the “initial self [which is] simplicity achieved…nothingness. When you were first born, you came out simple. The basic, most primitive urges of hunger and affection,” but goes on to note that over time the self becomes much more dynamic. Based on the lessons we draw from others, our notions of self become a “corrupted concept” that Fiasco sees banging against the world around it in a quest for clarity and actualization only to find that “There’s nothing pure about self in society.” Using Dr. West’s explanation of Beckett’s ‘mess,’ Fiasco brings his point home by proclaiming that “The world is a mess. We are products of the world, the world is not a product of us. The world is built from the chaos of the universe. It is more proof to me that there is a god. When I look up and see the chaos of the sky at night, I look at myself and think I am chaotic too.”

The hour-long talk winds up with a lively Q & A between the audience, Dr. West, and Lupe Fiasco, ending with Fiasco explaining what he wants from his audience. Sadly the performance following the interview is not available currently.

For those less familiar with Lupe Fiasco, and for those convinced that Hip Hop is littered with inarticulate misogynistic types, this interview will come as a pleasant surprise. For fans of Lupe Fiasco, like the staff here at Literago, it will serve to strengthen love of the self-proclaimed “Chi-Town Rivera.” Anyone interested in listening to the full audio of the interview can download it here. More photos from the evening can be viewed here

(The below is posted by Katie Hartsock, new Literago contributor. Look for more of her posts and a bio soon!)

What: Poetry Off the Shelf with Elizabeth Alexander
When: Wednesday, April 8th, 6 PM
Where: Rubloff Auditorium, Art Institute of Chicago, 280 South Columbus Drive, FREE ADMISSION, (Enter on Columbus at Monroe)

Elizabeth Alexander is not only poised, intelligent, and insightful (like her poetry), she’s also one of the few poets to have appeared on The Colbert Report, where she delightfully explained to Steven why poems don’t have to be “true.” (“Truthy,” maybe?) Alexander read her poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” at Obama’s inauguration, and while the poem itself received a range of reactions, it certainly serves as an invitation to the rest of her work, which deservedly earned her the invitation to read at one of the most anticipated public events in our country’s history.

After watching her on television, I’m looking forward to seeing her in person next week, presented by the Poetry Foundation (disclosure: I’m the PF media assistant) and the Art Institute of Chicago. It will also be a homecoming reading of sorts, since she taught at U of Chicago through most of the nineties. If you don’t know any of her work besides “Praise Song,” check out some samples at her website. I love her poem, “Apollo,” which describes watching the moon landing in a diner where nobody pays attention to the fact that Alexander’s is the only black family there, because

This talking through

static, bounces in space-
boots, tethered
to cords is much
stranger, stranger

even than we are.

A front-page article from today’s Boston Globe reports that independent bookstores are thriving in an otherwise dismal retail market. The piece focuses on the Brookline Booksmith, an independent that put the Barnes and Noble down the street out of business. (For those of you who don’t know, this is where I direct events since my relocation to Boston last fall.)

This is such an encouraging piece! See for yourself:

“I do think there’s a swing back to valuing local and independent,” said Booksmith manager Dana Brigham. “Small and local can be good places to do business and very healthy for your community.”

I’m happily shocked that in the midst of countless newspaper/magazine foldings and massive publishing layoffs, independent bookstores are whupping some ass. May this trend continue. (P.S. Fuck Kindle)

Here is an April Fool’s Day email from Newberry Library HR (much needed after that super- depressing article Kelly linked to):

To: All Newberry Staff
Date: 04/01/09 12:10
Subject: Newberry Staff News Update

Dear Colleagues:

Many of you have read or heard about Dewey — The Small-Town Library Cat — a true tale about an orange kitten who was dropped in the book box of the Spencer Library in Iowa. In fact, in recent weeks the staff suggestion box included this very idea that the Newberry consider the benefits of cat adoption. After much consideration, the administration of the Newberry has decided to follow in the tradition of the Spencer Library and open its doors to a furry feline friend.

The Spencer Library’s cat was called Dewey Readmore Books, but he was generally known as Dewey, as in the Dewey Decimal System. Every morning Dewey greeted the staff at the front door, and the staff librarians swear he waved to them as they entered. Library patrons were amused and charmed by his antics, which included riding through the library on the carts pushed by staff, napping in the stacks and visiting most of the groups that used the meeting rooms

Dewey sat on laps and draped himself over the left shoulder of his favorite visitors. The Spencer librarians said he didn’t bother anyone who didn’t like cats or who didn’t want to be bothered by him. Over the years Dewey’s fame spread, starting with the hometown newspaper, then spreading to the Des Moines Register and beyond. By the time Dewey died, his story had appeared in newspapers, magazines and television shows around the world. (Learn more by reading Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World.)

The Newberry’s “yet-to-be-named” charmer will keep you company in the lunch room, while you are cataloging books, or simply by sitting on your lap at the reference desk. We believe the adoption of a kitten will add to our general awareness in Chicago and will help bring in more readers and subsequent donors. The kitten will reside in the president’s office but will be available for visits to the reading rooms and other offices (especially during grant writing projects). As an added benefit, the Conservation staff have offered to help train our “Dewey” in pest control, which should lead to lower pest counts in the future.” Finally, “Dewey” will give the Newberry a less stuffy and more welcoming, even “warm and fuzzy,” feel, adding to our efforts to refine our brand.

Please drop your suggestion for names in the staff suggestion box and we will have a vote on the kitten’s name at the next staff meeting. We expect to bring our “Dewey” to the Library early this summer.

Have a wonderful day.

P.S. Please inform HR as soon as possible if you have a severe allergy to cats.
P.P.S. We are looking for litter box duty volunteers. Please send a note if you are interested. Thank you.

The Arlington Heights public library is featured prominently in a New York Times article discussing how the current economic climate is affecting libraries.   Libraries are popular these days for obvious reasons (I’m happily trading Netflix for CPL’s DVD collection myself), but many have also seen sharp patron increases in the form of job seekers using library resources for research and resume writing, and also homeless people looking for shelter.  As a result, librarians find themselves dealing with depressed, anxious, and generally stressed out people…nothing new, but certainly on a scale not seen before.  Crime has also become a problem, as theft of personal property and even library fines has escalated, and violent incidents have forced some libraries to increase security.  It’s probably not a coincidence that the Arlington Heights library’s security manager is profiled on their website right now.