#poetry book special

[heartsoundslikelove]

Happy Bookiversary to Aariona Harris

A year on, we celebrate Aariona Harris and her poetry collection’s success. Congratulations to Aariona and what a great way to both close and open up Black History Month! As one who believes that Black History doesn’t stop at the end of February, this is the day to transition to continuous devotion to Black creatives, just like Aariona Harris. Let’s start off today with a Kindle Special Deal!…

[sunshinesere]

Philippe Besson - Lie With Me

[uispeccoll]

Happy #MiniatureMonday!

In 1983, Roger Middleton and the London Midsummer Press published Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh’s poem, “Wishes of an Elderly Man at a Garden Party, June 1914” for the first time in miniature book format. Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh was an English scholar, poet, author and Cambridge Apostle, best known for his position as Oxford’s first professor of English literature and many scholarly essays. 

The poem reads in full:

I WISH I loved the Human Race;

I wish I loved its silly face;

I wish I loved the way it walks;

I wish I loved the way it talks;

And when I'm introduced to one

I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

Smith Miniatures Collection   PN1435 .W81 1983

--M Clark, Instruction Graduate Assistant

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Feral Friday! 

This week we’re taking a peek at Poetry Comics: from the Book of Hours by Bianca Stone. Published in 2016 in Warrensburg, Missouri by Pleiades Press, this 79-page collection of Stone’s work stretches the comic medium in a series of intimate and emotionally raw illustrations and panels. Poetry comics (a hybrid, experimental form of both mediums that can be seen in the work of artists such as Julie Delporte, Sommer Browning, and Anders Brekhus Nilsen among others) draw "from the syntax of comics, images, panels, speech balloons, and so on, in order to produce a literary or artistic experience akin to that of traditional poetry." As an unvarnished autobiographical comic with feminist undertones, it is in the lineage of artists like Aline Kominsky-Crumb. But Stone’s poetic approach, which informs her artistic style as well as her writing, injects an unruly tone of existential grappling that echos the illustrations and text of artists more akin to William Blake. 

Pleiades Press is based at the University of Central Missouri. Bianca Stone's work has been published in magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Nation. Her poetry collection What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022) won the 2023 Vermont Book Award in Poetry. Her other books include The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018) and Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014). In 2012 she collaborated with Anne Carson to illustrate her translation of Antigonick.

View more Feral Friday posts.

View more Poetry posts.

View more Comics posts.

--Ana, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[starrynightsxo]

okay but HOW was Holly Black able to make a poem from Charlotte Mew, a poet from the 19th and 20th Century, work SO INCREDIBLY well in a story of faerie fiction???

[jstor]

Lest we be accused of losing our focus on research by posting photos of (adorable!) cats, here is Dunigan's tortoise-shell cat, or, The life of Queen Tab and her kitten, a fully illustrated 8-page chapbook from McGill Library’s Chapbook Collection on JSTOR, which features nearly 1,000 chapbooks published in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the US in the 18th and 19th centuries. And yes, they're all free to read and download!

[unfinishedmurmurs]

Whisper to the moon

In the mild light of the moon,

The clouds move with the soft breeze.

I see the mountains far away—

Perhaps something is calling me.

But all I can do is stare from my window.

When the curtain shifts,

I catch a dream with my eyes open.

Is it too much to wish—

To long for the moment when my feet touch the grass?

These narrow, fleeting doors are never enough.

Bless my eyes so I can feel it as if it were real.

If I could talk to the moon, I'd ask,

"Can you stay with me just a little longer?"

[blabbershere]

[desdemonas-intellectual-nonsense]

Me doing a little dance in the thrift store because I found a first edition of this book

[noelcollection]

An American Voice

Since the events of 2020, we have attempted to be more active and reach out to LSU Shreveport campus. This action of outreach is meant to help student, faculty, and campus personnel be aware of a rare and unique resource that is available to them, and any visiting persons to the campus. We have just started our 2024 J.S. Noel Collection Pop-up Exhibits, we aim to highlight a vary small section of the James Smith Noel Collection that might interest various research. This time we focused on one person, Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in June in 1872 after the United States’ Civil War, his parents were former slaves. He was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio; and started writing from a young age. He wrote is first poem at the age of 6 and read it aloud at the age of nine for a local church congregation, “An Easter Ode.” Dunbar was 16 when he published two poems in the Dayton’s newspaper The Herald; “Our Martyred Soldiers” and “On the River” in 1888. A few years later he would write and edit Dayton’s first weekly African-American newspaper, The Tattler. Paul L. Dunbar worked with two brothers that were his high-school acquaintances to print the paper that lasted six weeks. Those brothers were Wilbur and Orville Wright, the fathers of American aviation. Dunbar was the only African-American student at Central High School in Dayton.

Dunbar’s parents had been slaves in Kentucky, following the emancipation, his mother moved to Ohio, and his father escaped before the Civil War ended. Joshua Dunbar went to Massachusetts and volunteered with the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. His parents, Matilda and Joshua, were married on Christmas Eve and Paul L. Dunbar arrived six months later. His parents had a troubled union, they separated after the birth on Paul’s sister; but his father would pass away in August in 1885 when Paul was only 13 years old. His mother played a key role in his education, she hoped her son would become a minister. He was elected president of his high school’s literary society which lead to him to become editor of the school newspaper and debate club member.

Paul Laurence Dunbar finished school in 1891 and took a job as an elevator operator to earn money for college where he hoped to study law. Dunbar had continued to write and soon a collection of poems he wanted to publish. He revisited the Wright brothers, but they no longer had a printing faculty and lead his to the United Brethren Publishing House in 1893. Oak and Ivy was soon published and he busied himself selling copies as he operated the elevator. The book contained two sections, Oak with its traditional verse; and Ivy was written in dialect.

His literary talents were recognized and Attorney Charles A. Thatcher offered to pay for college; however, his interest in law had shift to his writing. Dunbar had been encouraged by the sell of his poetry, and Thatcher helped by arranging for Dunbar to do readings in a nearby city. Psychiatrist Henry A. Tobey also took an interest and assisted in distributing Dunbar’s first book. The two contained to support Dunbar through the publication of his second collection of verse, Major and Minors, in 1896. While he was consistent at publishing, he was a reckless spender resulting in debt. He was a traditional struggling artist as he tried to support himself and his mother.

There was hope in the summer of 1896 when his second book received a positive review in Harper’s Weekly, William Dean Howells brought national attention to his poems; calling them “honest thinking and true feeling” and praising his dialectic poems. There was a growing appreciation for folk culture and black dialect. His popular works were written in the “Negro dialect” that is commonly associated with the antebellum South; though he also wrote in the Midwestern dialect that he grew-up hearing. Dunbar would write in various styles, including conversational English in poetry and novels. He is considered to be the first important African American sonnet writer. His use of the “Black dialect” in writing has been criticized as pan-handling to readers.

Dunbar was a diverse writer, he experimented with poetry, short stories, novels, plays, and a musical. He even ventured beyond the lens of the lives of African Americans and attempted to explore the struggles of a white minister. The Uncalled, Dunbar’s first novel, held similar names and themes of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and was not well favored. It was with his venture into novel writing that he dared to cross the “color line” with his first novel which focused solely on white society. He continued to try to capture white culture but the critics found them lacking.

He moved past novel writing and began to work with two composers, Dunbar wrote the lyrics for the first musical that would be preformed by an all African-American cast on Broadway; In Dahomey. Beyond his writing career, Dunbar was also active the early civil rights movements happening in 1897. He married after a trip to the United Kingdom in 1898, Alice Ruth Moore was also a poet and teacher from New Orleans. She also published a collection of short stories, and they wrote companion poems together. There was a play in 2001 based on their relationship.

Dunbar had taken a traditional job with the Library of Congress in D.C. and with his wife in tow they moved there. However, with his wife’s urging, he left his job to focus on his writings and his public readings. This also allowed him to attend Howard University for a time. However, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1900 and his doctors suggested that drinking whisky would alleviate the symptoms. They also moved to the cold dry mountains of Colorado for his health. This resulted in trouble in Paul and Alice’s marriage, they separated in 1902 but never formally divorced.

Dunbar returned to his hometown of Dayton, Ohio in 1904 to be with his mother, his health continued to decline and depression consumed his mind. Paul Laurence Dunbar died from tuberculosis at age 33 on February 9, 1906 and was interred in Dayton.

Dunbar did not become one of the forgotten poets of literature, his use of dialect in his poetry allowed for his works to remain relevant and important in poetic criticism. We of the James Smith Noel Collection at LSU Shreveport are proud to retain and maintain a small collection of his works and show case their importance.

[riesenfeldcenter]

At our last monthly open house of the semester, we pulled a few items with poetry for National Poetry Month. In our copy of Ballads En Termes de la Ley, we stumbled upon a poem about the 1892 Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company case, which many students recognized from their 1L contracts class.

A notable case in terms of contracts within advertisements, Carlill v. Carbolic involved the company's advertisement stating that buyers who found the product didn't work after using it as instructed could claim £100 (the equivalent of $20,186 USD today). When Louisa Carlill contracted influenza after using the smoke ball three times daily for nearly two months, she went to claim her reward. Carbolic claimed it wasn't a serious contract, but the court held that there was a fully binding contract.

"Mrs. Carlill has sniffed the Carbolic

Smoke Ball--nasty thing--thrice a day;

Fits of neuralgia, the gout and the colic,

To such pains would be simply child's play.

And yet, after all's said and done,

Influenza has held her in thrall"

[uispeccoll]

#MiniatureMonday

First Snow / Marvin R. Hiemstra.

First Snow is a beautifully bound book published in 1993, made with a Japanese binding technique that was first created during the Heian period (794-1185 CE). Originally published as part of a four-season series, this poetry book contains several delightful poems with stunning artwork that aides the story wonderfully!

-- Adair J.

[saggwrites]

My dearest, you are such a light in my life. Every day, I find more reasons to love and admire you. When I think of how far we've come, my heart swells with happiness. You make everything feel brighter and more meaningful, and I cherish every moment we share.

Even when we’re apart(so distant )my feelings only grow stronger. I miss the simple things: your laughter, your smile, the way you look at me. It’s those small details that make me fall for you all over again. You are my constant inspiration, pushing me to be the best version of myself.

I want you to know just how special you are to me. You have a way of making even the toughest days easier, and I'm grateful for your love and support. No matter where life takes us, I promise to stand by you and hold you close in my heart. I long for the day when we’ll be together again, creating more beautiful memories. I miss you more than words can express.

This is for my princess 👑❤️

[hexjulia]

can't really put into words how cute this thing my bird does is where she runs to my shoulder from something slightly above it, and instead of flying just lets herself drop like a big potato. She just trusts she'll land the way she means to. Birds are full of air and weigh next to nothing so it doesn't hurt but you never feel her weight more than when she does that little potato drop. It's so adorable. Plop.

[blabbershere]

[thedevilshere]

i wish the sun and rainbows for you

i wish for you

the sun at dawn

for you will smile too

when the sun shines bright

i wish for you

rainbow after a storm

for you will learn

to love yourself

despite the chaos inside

i know the stars are beautiful too

but i dont wish the twinkling night sky upon you

cause i know the hurt you go through

so i dont need the stars to keep you alive

they are already dead

i dont want them in your life