American poet Ada Limón
Credit: Shawn Miller, Library of Congress

March is Women’s History Month, an annual observance of women’s achievements and contributions to society. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature woman pioneers in a variety of areas.

Pioneers venture into unknown territories and uncharted waters. A genuine poetry pioneer, Ada Limón has found new ways to interact with readers and big emotions. Limón was named poet laureate of the United States in 2022. The poet laureate is appointed by the librarian of Congress and works to increase the national appreciation and awareness of poetry. Limón, who is of Mexican American heritage, was the first Hispanic American woman chosen for the position. She succeeded the American poet and musician Joy Harjo, who was the poet laureate from 2019 to 2022.

Limon’s style is melodic and accessible. The images in her poetry often embrace the natural world, in which she frequently finds a sense of wonder. The librarian of Congress Carla Hayden praised Limon’s poems for exploring “the beauty and heartbreak that is living, in ways that help us move forward.”

Limon’s first poetry collections were Lucky Wreck and This Big Fake World: A Story in Verse (both 2006). Her third collection, Sharks in the Rivers (2010), considers the possibility of embracing change and finding beauty in a risky, ever-changing world. Bright Dead Things (2015) deals with carrying on and preserving one’s identity in the face of loss and alienation. Her poetry collections also include The Carrying (2018) and The Hurting Kind (2022).

Ada Limón was born on March 28, 1976, in Sonoma, California. She completed a B.A. degree in drama at the University of Washington in 1998. She earned an M.F.A. degree in creative writing from New York University in 2001. She worked in marketing for magazine firms in New York City, before she began writing full time in 2010.

In 2014, Limón began teaching in the M.F.A. program of Queens University of Charlotte, in North Carolina. She often gives readings of her poetry. In 2021 and 2022, she was the host of the poetry podcast called “The Slowdown,” which offers a few moments of reflection through the reading of a poem each weekday. The podcast was launched in 2019 by the poet Tracy K. Smith during her term as poet laureate of the United States.

American poet Amanda Gorman
Credit: © Kathy Hutchins, Shutterstock

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas.

American poet Amanda Gorman performed at the presidential inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden in 2021. She read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at a pivotal time in United States history. She became the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration. The poem, composed for the occasion, included references to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, just two weeks before the inauguration. In the attack, rioters supporting outgoing President Donald J. Trump stormed the building in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won. As a twenty-two-year-old Black woman, Gorman spoke for millions of people who were scared, frustrated, and distraught over the recent events. Gorman quickly gained widespread attention after the inauguration as a symbol of hope and a gifted poet.

Amanda Sarah Chase Gorman was born March 7, 1998, in Los Angeles, California. Her twin sister is the filmmaker Gabrielle Gorman. Growing up, Amanda was challenged with a speech impediment that involved difficulty pronouncing some speech sounds. She shares this struggle with President Biden who overcame a childhood stutter. In 2014, at age 16, she was named Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate. In 2017, she was named the first National Youth Poet Laureate in the United States by the youth writing program Urban Word. She earned a B.A. degree in sociology from Harvard University in 2020. Gorman’s work includes themes of feminism and racial oppression.

Gorman’s writings have been published in a number of newspapers and periodicals. She also has written and presented poems for a variety of special events. Such events include the Library of Congress ceremony held when the writer Tracy K. Smith began her term as U.S. poet laureate in 2017, and the inauguration of a new university president at Harvard in 2018. Gorman’s first published collection of poetry was The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough (2015). A special collectible edition of her poem “The Hill We Climb” was published in March 2021.

In Gorman’s first children’s book, Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem (2021), a girl with a guitar invites other children to join a musical journey on which they discover ways to help people in their community. The book was illustrated by the American author and illustrator Loren Long.

Call Us What We Carry: Poems was also published in 2021. It includes the poem “The Hill We Climb” as well as a collection of new poems in which Gorman explores struggle and hope both in the past and during current events.

Christopher Robin plays with Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet in this illustration by the English artist Ernest H. Shepard for Now We Are Six , (1927), a poetry collection by the English author A. A. Milne. 
Credit: © Fototeca Gilardi/Marka/SuperStock

Gather your friends, we are going for a picnic in the Hundred Acre Wood to celebrate. Today is A. A. Milne’s birthday! Milne was an English author who wrote Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). While he wrote other stories and poems, his books about the legendary Pooh Bear are considered masterpieces of children’s literature. Have you ever read about Pooh and his friends and misadventures?

A. A. Milne
Credit: © Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Milne based the characters in the Pooh stories on his son, Christopher Robin, and the young boy’s stuffed animals. Milne’s stories describe the adventures of Christopher Robin and his animal friends in a forest called the Hundred Acre Wood. Some of the characters in the Pooh stories include Winnie-the-Pooh, a bear; Piglet, a small pig; and Eeyore, an old donkey. In his autobiography, It’s Too Late Now (1939), Milne told how his son’s stuffed animals led to the creation of the characters in the Pooh stories.

In addition to the Pooh stories, Milne wrote two classic collections of children’s poems, When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927). He wrote the children’s play Make-Believe (1918) and adapted Kenneth Grahame’s children’s book The Wind in the Willows into a play, Toad of Toad Hall (1929). Milne also created novels, short stories, and plays for adults. He wrote a famous detective novel, The Red House Mystery (1922), and a book of short stories called A Table Near the Band (1950). His comic plays include Mr. Pim Passes By (1919), The Truth About Blayds (1921), and The Dover Road (1922). He also wrote his Autobiography (1939).

No, his full name wasn’t A. A.! Alan Alexander Milne was born on January 18th, 1882, in London. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1903. From 1906 to 1914, he served as assistant editor of Punch, a humor magazine. Milne contributed many comic essays and poems to the magazine. He died on January 31st, 1956.

Author Jason Reynolds visits the Build Series to discuss his novel “Look Both Ways” at Build Studio on October 08, 2019 in New York City.
Credit: © Gary Gershoff, Getty Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas. 

When you check out the new releases section of your library or bookstore, you are bound to see several colorful and eye-catching books by Jason Reynolds. Reynolds is an American author of novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade readers. His works explore a variety of topics from a young person’s perspective. Such topics include the Black American experience, as well as such issues as gun and gang violence.

In 2020, the librarian of Congress appointed Reynolds National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. The position involves traveling and speaking to groups of children, parents, and teachers to promote the joy of reading. Although normally a two-year position, the term was extended to three years for Reynolds because the COVID-19 pandemic (worldwide epidemic) interrupted his speaking schedule.

Reynolds was born on Dec. 6, 1983, in Washington, D.C. He grew up in neighboring Oxon Hill, Maryland. Reynolds graduated from the University of Maryland in 2005 with a degree in English.

Reynolds became interested in poetry at a young age. An interest in rap music inspired him to explore literature. He advocates using rap and comic books as nontraditional ways to reach young readers. Reynolds’s first book, When I Was the Greatest, was published in 2014. It tells the story of three Black teenage boys growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, in New York City. Reynolds often chooses Black teenagers—particularly teenage boys—as his subjects. He portrays the uncertainty or fear many of the boys feel, to encourage young male readers to express their own emotions.

Reynolds is best known for such books as Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Long Way Down (both 2017) and the “Track” series, which began with Ghost (2016). His other books include The Boy in the Black Suit (2015); All American Boys (2015, with Brendan Kiely); As Brave as You (2016); Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks (2019); Stuntboy, in the Meantime (2021); and Ain’t Burned All the Bright (2022).

Reynolds also wrote Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020). The book is an adaptation, for middle-grade and teen readers, of the award-winning book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016), written by the historian and activist Ibram X. Kendi. The books show ways in which past ideas and practices have embedded assumptions about race into modern thinking, and how people can identify racist thinking in their own lives in order to change it.

Reynolds has won many awards for his works, including the 2015 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe New Talent Award for When I Was the Greatest. Pick up one of Reynold’s award-winning books today, you may not be able to put it down!

Poet Laureate of the United States Joy Harjo
Credit: Shawn Miller, Library of Congress

April is National Poetry Month, an annual celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet.

National Poetry Month promotes the appreciation and awareness of poetry. So, too, does Joy Harjo, the poet laureate of the United States. The poet laureate is the official poet of a state or nation. Harjo is a writer, a musician, and a member of the Muskogee (also spelled Muscogee or Mvskoke) Creek Nation. In 2019, she became the first Native American chosen to be poet laureate of the United States.

Harjo was born Joy Foster in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951. Her father was Muskogee Creek, and her mother was of Cherokee and European ancestry. At age 19, Joy became a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation and took the last name of her father’s mother—Harjo—a common last name among the Muskogee. Harjo earned a B.A. degree in creative writing from the University of New Mexico in 1976 and an M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1978. She has since taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico and at universities in several states.

In 1975, Harjo published her first collection of poems in a short book called The Last Song. Her first full-length volume of poetry was What Moon Drove Me to This? (1979). Her poetry became well known with such collections as She Had Some Horses (1983), In Mad Love and War (1990), and The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994). Her forceful, intimate style draws on both natural and spiritual influences. Her poems often incorporate elements of Native American mythology and imagery. Harjo’s later collections include A Map to the Next World (2000), How We Became Human (2002), Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), and An American Sunrise (2019). She has won many awards for her work.

Harjo also wrote The Good Luck Cat (2000), a children’s picture book about a girl who worries about her lucky cat, who has used up eight of his nine lives. A poetic picture book for young adults called For a Girl Becoming (2009) celebrates the birth of a baby girl and the girl’s path to adulthood. Harjo’s memoir, Crazy Brave (2012), describes her own youth and her discovery of her creative voice.

Harjo has written screenplays for television and contributed, as a writer or narrator, to several documentaries on aspects of Native American culture. As an accomplished musician and saxophone player, she has released several recordings. She also is an activist for Native American and other causes.

Statue of the haiku poet Basho in Iwate, Japan
© beibaoke, Shutterstock

April is National Poetry Month, an annual celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet.

Haiku (pronounced hy koo) is a popular form of Japanese poetry. In Japanese, a haiku consists of 17 syllables arranged in three unrhymed lines. The first and third lines have 5 syllables, and the second line has 7 syllables. A haiku typically tries to create an impression or mood. Haiku themes are generally simple and deal with everyday situations and sensations. However, the poet tends to hint at them rather than treat them in a plain, direct manner.

According to Japanese tradition, each haiku must contain a kigo—that is, a word that indicates the season in which the poem is set. Some kigo are obvious, such as snow to indicate winter. Others are less obvious. For example, the word balloon can indicate spring.

Haiku originated in the 1600’s as the first three lines, called hokku, that served as the opening stanza of a longer poem. From the late 1600’s to the early 1800’s, the Japanese poets Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa composed classic hokku. Basho composed the following lines during the late 1600’s:

Temple bells die out.

The fragrant blossoms remain.

A perfect evening!

In 1892, the poet and journalist Masaoka Shiki published rules that established haiku as an independent form of poetry rather than a part of a longer work of verse.

You can try writing your own haiku! In many parts of the world, spring has arrived. You could write a haiku about the blossoming flowers in a park or the chirping birds outside your window. When you’re done, read your poem to your musical bird friends!

Credit: © metamorworks, Shutterstock

April 1 marks the first day of National Poetry Month in the United States, a celebration of this unique form of literature. Each week, Behind the Headlines will feature the art of poetry or a famous poet.

Throughout history, poetry has been used for many purposes. People have used poetry in religious rituals, to praise and celebrate remarkable individuals, and to express intense emotions, from love to rage. Various social groups have also used poetry to record events and stories. Such poems include lessons that are important for the group to remember and pass down from generation to generation.

The basic feature of poetic language is rhythm. Rhythm is the repetition of sounds in a particular pattern. All human beings enjoy rhythm. Children may clap their hands or rock their bodies to match the rhythm of nursery rhymes, with the rhythm helping the words stick in their memory. Adults may detect more subtle patterns in poems and find that such patterns deepen their response to the meanings and emotions conveyed by the words.

Poetry began in prehistoric times, as an oral (spoken) tradition. After the development of writing, poetry gradually became an important written art. In all languages throughout history, human beings have created poems, remembered them, recited them, and found deep meaning in them. There are times in life when every human being wants to say exactly the right thing in exactly the right words. That is what poets try to do. For people who do not write poetry, it can be a moving discovery to find a poem that expresses feelings or experiences for which they cannot find the words.

Poetry has come to seem strange to many people. Yet, we still discover poetry in many places in our world. Popular songs feature such poetic innovations as regular meter and rhyme. Nursery rhymes and children’s verse remain popular. At important events in life—a wedding or a funeral, for example—people may recite poetry to express their feelings and to mark the significance of the event.

People still turn to poetry to express romantic feelings, whether reciting well-known poems or writing their own. Poems remain not only among the most enjoyable uses of language but the most precise and significant as well. In some cultures, poetry remains highly valued, and many people have memorized numbers of poems.

Not every poem is well-written or memorable. But among the countless poems that have been written throughout the ages, every individual will find at least some that strike a deep and resonant chord.

American poet Amanda Gorman
Credit: © Kathy Hutchins, Shutterstock

On January 20, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. On the west front of the United States Capitol, musicians performed, religious leaders prayed, and a new president delivered an inaugural address. Among the many speakers was the American poet Amanda Gorman. A 22-year-old Black woman, Gorman became the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration.

The poem, titled “The Hill We Climb,” was written for the occasion and referenced the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, just two weeks before the inauguration. In the attack, rioters supporting outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the building in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won. Gorman’s poem read in part:

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed,

It can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith, we trust.

For while we have our eyes on the future,

history has its eyes on us.

Many observers described Gorman’s performance as extremely moving, bringing the poem’s beautiful, powerful words to life. Her expressive voice guided listeners through the past, present, and future of the United States. The poem and her performance were met with much acclaim.

Gorman was born in 1998 in Los Angeles, California. She struggled with a speech impediment as a child. Gorman studied at Harvard University. She had her first published collection of poetry with The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough (2015). Her work includes themes of feminism and racial oppression. In 2017, she was named the first U.S. National Youth Poet Laureate by the youth writing program Urban Word NYC in cooperation with the Library of Congress.

Gorman became one of only a few of poets to perform at a presidential inauguration, joining such legends as Maya Angelou and Robert Frost. In 1993, Angelou performed the poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton. Frost recited his poem “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

September 18, 2019

Tomorrow, September 19, writer Joy Harjo will become the first Native American poet laureate of the United States. The poet laureate, appointed by the librarian of Congress, works to increase the national appreciation and awareness of poetry. Harjo is a member of the Muskogee (also spelled Muscogee or Mvskoke) Creek Nation. Harjo will succeed the American poet Tracy K. Smith, who has served in the position since 2017.

Native American writer Joy Harjo will become poet laureate of the United States on Sept. 19, 2019. Credit: Shawn Miller, Library of Congress

Harjo was born Joy Foster in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 9, 1951. Her father was Muskogee Creek, and her mother was of Cherokee and European ancestry. At age 19, Joy became a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation and took the last name of her father’s mother—Harjo—a common last name among the Muskogee. Harjo earned a B.A. degree in creative writing from the University of New Mexico in 1976 and an M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1978. She has since taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico and at universities in several states.

In 1975, Harjo published her first collection of poems in a short book called The Last Song. Her first full-length volume of poetry was What Moon Drove Me to This? (1979). Her poetry became well known with such collections as She Had Some Horses (1983), In Mad Love and War (1990), and The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994). Her forceful, intimate style draws on both natural and spiritual influences. Her poems often incorporate elements of Native American mythology and imagery. Harjo’s later collections include A Map to the Next World (2000), How We Became Human (2002), Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), and An American Sunrise (2019). She has won many awards for her work.

Harjo also wrote The Good Luck Cat (2000), a children’s picture book about a girl who worries about her lucky cat, which has used up eight of its nine lives. A poetic picture book for young adults called For a Girl Becoming (2009) celebrates the birth of a baby girl and the girl’s path to adulthood. Harjo’s memoir, Crazy Brave (2012), describes her own youth and her discovery of her creative voice.

Harjo has written screenplays for television and contributed, as a writer or narrator, to several documentaries on aspects of Native American culture. As an accomplished musician and saxophone player, she has released several recordings. She also is an activist for Native American and other causes.

May 31, 2019

Today, May 31, is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the American poet Walt Whitman in 1819. Whitman is most famous for writing Leaves of Grass, a collection of poems that is considered one of the world’s major literary works. Whitman’s poems sing the praises of the United States and of democracy. The poet’s love of America grew from his faith that Americans might reach new worldly and spiritual heights. Whitman wrote: “The chief reason for the being of the United States of America is to bring about the common good will of all mankind, the solidarity of the world.” Whitman died on March 26, 1892.

Walt Whitman was born 200 years ago today on May 31, 1819. Credit: © Thinkstock

To mark the poet’s 200th birthday, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries Kislak Center and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage have organized a celebration called “Whitman at 200.” The celebration’s events are scheduled throughout 2019, but “Whitman at 200″ is especially busy from May 24 through June 9, around Whitman’s birthday. The celebration’s artistic commissions, exhibitions, performances, and programs are mostly in Camden, New Jersey, Whitman’s final home city, and across the Delaware River (and the Walt Whitman Bridge) in Philadelphia. Bicentennial events are also taking place at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Walt Whitman Initiative in New York City, the Brooklyn Public Library, and at Whitman’s birthplace in Long Island, New York.

Whitman grew up in Brooklyn and worked as a schoolteacher, printer, and journalist in the New York City area. He wrote articles on political questions, civic affairs, and the arts. Whitman loved mixing in crowds. He attended debates, the theater, concerts, lectures, and political meetings. He often rode on stagecoaches and ferries just to talk with people.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Whitman was a government clerk. He was also a volunteer assistant in the military hospitals in Washington, D.C. (Whitman’s younger brother George was wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg while serving in the Union army.) After the war, Whitman worked in several government departments until he suffered a stroke in 1873. Partly paralyzed, he spent the rest of his life in Camden, where he continued to write poems and articles.

Whitman may have begun working on Leaves of Grass as early as 1848. The book’s form and content were so unusual that no commercial publisher would publish it. In 1855, he published the collection of 12 poems at his own expense. In the preface, Whitman wrote: “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.” Between 1856 and 1892, Whitman published eight more revised and enlarged editions of his book. He believed that Leaves of Grass had grown with his own emotional and intellectual development.