Our #TBT, William Carlos Williams, pictured here with Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Algren, and Ralph L. Rusk, at the first National Book Awards Ceremony in 1950. Williams won the Poetry Award for both his Selected Poems and part 3 of his opus Paterson. On our online exhibition of #NBAwards Poetry Winners , poet Ross Gay writes: “Maybe Paterson is Williams’ dream of democracy, of freedom. His attempt at being free. Can a poem be that?”
See more posts like this on Tumblr
#Lit #Poetry #William Carlos Williams #NBAwards #TBT
#NBAwards Finalist Adrian Matejka Brings Jack Johnson and The Big Smoke to Bronx Students
While in NYC for a reading at McNally Jackson books, Adrian Matejka, author of the 2013 National Book Awards Poetry Finalist, The Big Smoke, paid a visit to the Bronx’s Hyde Leadership Charter School. Matejka shared rare film footage and archival imagery of the legendary boxer Jack Johnson who inspired The Big Smoke and read his poems for a rapt audience of high-school students.
We learned that Matejka has been a fan of boxing since he was a small child and was introduced to the sport by his mother. Matejka recalls hearing the fight announcers repeatedly say: “He’s no Jack Johnson.”
An avid fan of 80s rap music, Matejka’s dreams of becoming an MC didn’t work out, but it brought him to poetry writing.
“Write what you care about,” Matejka told the students, “Figure that out first and then you can work at getting better at it.”
Our 2013 Innovations in Reading Prize Winner City National Bank/Reading is the Way Up provided copies of The Big Smoke for all the students. We are thrilled City National arranged for Matejka to visit Hyde Leadership. It was a great afternoon!
From our youngest #NBAwards Poet to our oldest. Stanley Kunitz was 90 years old when he won the #NBAward for #Poetry for Passing Through: The Later Poems. The eponymous poem of the collection was written on the poet’s seventy-ninth birthday. In accepting his #NBAward a little over a decade later, Kunitz said: “The craft that I admire most manifests itself not as an aggregate of linguistic or prosodic skills, but as a form of spiritual testimony, the sign of the inviolable self, consolidated against the enemies within and without that would corrupt or destroy human pride and dignity.”
Color photo: Chester Higgins, Jr
#ThrowbackThursday!
The 1950 National Book Award Poetry judges– meet to decide the Winner of the first National Book Award for Poetry. Gathered at the table: Louis Untermeyer, Louise Bogan, Babette Deutsch, W.H. Auden, Horace Gregory, and moderator William Cole. William Carlos Williams was named the Winner in 1950. Who will be this year’s Winner?
Sharing the news that the seriously funny @DanielHandler will be hosting this year’s #NBAwards reminded us of another brilliant humorist who served as Master of Ceremonies. Steve Martin, pictured here at the 50th Anniversary National Book Awards with Ceremony attendee Bill Cosby, emceed the National Book Awards in 1999, 2000, and 2002. #TBT #NBAwards #SteveMartin #LetsGetSmall #KingTut #banjos! #ShopGirl #LAStory #FatheroftheBride #FatheroftheBride? #YesWeLikedThatMovie #PicassoattheLapinAgile #SteveMartinPrizeforExcellenceinBanjoandBluegrass
W.H. Auden, Winner of the 1956 National Book Award for #Poetry leads our second week of featured #NBAwards authors for #NationalPoetryMonth. The symphonic three-part collection was written in the aftermath of WWII and reflect the poet’s profound concerns with suffering and indifference. In the NBF Poetry blog dedicated to past #NBAwards Winners, poet Megan Snyder-Camp writes: “The poems in this collection are insistently tied to their day, with references ranging from politics to literature to ephemera, but these tethers are often then shaken, or shrugged, as that dense, sodden mass of what feeds the days, and words, of this work blanches in unaccustomed light. ”
Poetry watches life with affection.
A handful of poets have been twice-honored with #NBAwards for Poetry, but Alan Dugan is the only poet to be honored for both his first and last collections of #poetry. His first collection, simply titled Poems, won the #NBAward for Poetry in 1962, as well as many other honors. His last collection, Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry, published at age 78, won the #NBAward in 2001. Writing for our blog dedicated to the Winners of the #NBAward for Poetry, poet and critic Katie Peterson says Dugan’s poem are often described as “tough talking” and “urban.” But if Dugan’s poems are hard on others as well as himself ( “an aging phony, stale, woozy, and corrupt /from unattempted dreams and bad health habits.”), the pain is worth the pleasure. Dugan, says Peterson,“writes love poems where intimacy has all the brutality and wordlessness of animal instinct…His lines are tense and govern expectation by making you so pleasurably anxious you feel compelled to continue to read.”
Can you guess which major American artist contributed the cover art for our 2011 National Book Awards program book? Hint: he currently is the subject of a huge retrospective at the @whitneymuseum!
#tbt #NBAwards #books #bookstagram #art #painting #?
This week, we were thrilled to announce the Longlists for the 2019 National Book Awards. These titles in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature represent some of the best writing of the year. The Finalists will be announced October 8, all in the lead up to the 70th National Book Awards on November 20.
alwaysbringabookwithyou
all-these-paperback-dreams
Barnes and Nobles is gonna start serving food and alcohol.
Everybody’s cracking jokes about how it’s a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the age of Amazon.
But you know what? Props to them. This is exactly what Blockbuster didn’t do. At no point was Blockbuster like “Hey, movie rentals aren’t the lucrative enterprise they once were. Perhaps it’s time we become known for our cheesy garlic bread.”
that’s a fantastic plan, honestly? i would 100% go sit at a bookshop, buy a glass of wine, and pick up the newest biography. 50/50 i’d decide to buy it after a couple chapters, and even if i don’t, that’s still money i spent at B&N!
They could host book clubs with food and drinks where one of the employees shares their experiences with a book of their choice and tries to convince the guests to buy it.
Barnes and noble realizing the only reason people go to brick and mortar stores is for the experience and access to an enjoyable physical space they can socialize in (sure isnt for the price) and capitalizing on that is a stroke of genius and a really refreshing approach to the dilemma of competing with online stores
