Library in the News: June Edition

Leading the news headlines in June was the announcement that Natasha Trethewey would return for a second term as U.S. poet laureate.

“Natasha Trethewey likened her most recent poetry reading at the Library of Congress to a church revival in the South, complete with tents and believers making enough noise to make nonbelievers come in and listen,” wrote Deborah Barfield Barry for Gannett News Service. “Trethewey marked the end of her first year as the nation’s poet laureate last month with a personal and emotional lecture about why poetry matters to people in their everyday lives. She isn’t done spreading the word.”

“Her signature project will involve filming a regular feature on the PBS NewsHour Poetry Series, in which she and NewsHour senior correspondent Jeffrey Brown travel the country for a series of on-location specials that examine societal issues through a poetic lens,” announced Washington Post reporter Monica Hesse on Trethewey’s second-term plans.

Trethewey spoke with Entertainment Weekly’s Adam Carlson about her appointment and project with PBS.

“Because I’m a younger laureate, it seemed important to me to do something, not to just accept the honor of the position but actually make it useful,” she said in the interview. “Deciding to put a personal slant on it seemed to be what I might be good at. NewsHour is very interested in poetry, but they’re also interested in not just that something’s cute to add on at the end of their programming, but something that actually is integrated into the news.”

Also running an announcement was the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and the Associated Press.

Also in the news were stories on the Library’s week-long Teacher Institutes promoting the use of primary sources in the classroom. Community newspapers far and wide ran stories of local teachers who participated in the program. Teachers came from Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Virginia, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Missouri and California to name a few.

For a final piece of interesting news, the National Journal ran several historic photographs from the Library’s collections on baseball, specifically the Congressional baseball game.