Events this Week

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Family Movie Night

Wednesday August 5th
6-8:30pm at the Douglas Library

Come meet some of the STARS from the STAR program! The young actors will talk about what it’s like working on Annie, The Lion, Witch and The Wardrobe, and a new play based on the land otter men. After the presentation, we will watch the classic 1982 musical version of Annie. Snacks and a simple craft project are provided by the library. All ages welcome. Question: Amelia 586-5303

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Storybox with Brett Dillingham and Ishmael Hope

Sunday August 9th
7pm at the Downtown Library

Storybox – a highly entertaining evening of sophisticated humor and stories at the downtown library for families and adults.   For more information call Carol 586-0434.

In The Stacks

In celebration of National Poetry Month, today’s column highlights works of poetry new to the Juneau Public Libraries.  And if you’ve already got a poem niggling at you, try using Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry, which contains over 50,000 poems available in full-text representing a wealth of supplemental information with over 1,100 commentaries, over 500 biographies, and definitions for 200 poetic terms, to find it.   Head over to JPL Podcasts to hear an audio sampling of some master poets at work.

Behind My Eyes by Li-Young Lee. Lee is the Keynote Speaker at this summer’s Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference in Homer.  Behind My Eyes, Lee’s fourth critically acclaimed collection, explores identity through family, memory, exile, loss, and questionable virtue.  Lee’s humor is at times subtle, at times sharp as his insight into the unforgettable magic of childhood: “Whenever I talk, my wife falls asleep./ So, now, when she can’t sleep, I talk./ It’s like magic”.  The reader falls into the boring husband’s engrossing conversation with his sleeping wife debating the positioning of lovers in the physical and romantic world; “It isn’t that lovers always speak together in a house by the sea/ or a room/ with shadows of leaves and branches/ on the walls and ceiling/…It’s that such spaces emerge/ out of the listening/ their speaking to each other engenders.”  His style is entirely his own, alternating between narrative quatrains and unrhymed couplets often in the form of lines of dialog or image speak reminiscent of Paz.  It washes over you, leaving you in that blissful moment between sleeping and waking, “What do the past lives of the color blue have to do/ with the fate of words and the future of wishing?”

Seven Notebooks: Poems, by Campbell McGrath. McGrath’s latest collection explores agriculture, civilization, language, luxury and the cosmos.  Ranging in form from haiku to panoramic, in-flight prose observations, McGrath’s verse is rich in texture, historical reflection and careful attention to the unnatural order of human existence invading nature’s myriad disorder.  Set in the agricultural remnants of south Florida, “vanishing order endangered as the legendary panther,” McGrath’s Florida is an Eden-like backdrop full of bloom and rot.   Images linger, in particular from “Time”, an ode to our futile efforts to elude time described as “the match strike / of consciousness enacting its doomed insurgency / against the dark mountain’.  Or the “Ode to a can of Schaefer beer”, which artfully extracts marketing text from the label of a discarded can, “it wears its heart on its sleeve / like a poem / laid out like a poem / with weak line endings and questionable / closure” and leaving on your tongue the distinct flavor of cheep beer, “Thin, rice-sweet, tasting of metal / and crisp water”.

One Secret Thing: Poems, by Sharon Olds. From intense portraits of war taken from unusual perspectives, to judgment and eventual forgiveness of family and their indoctrination, Olds’ latest collection rings out with lyrical precision and energy (light and dark).  Much of the work feels inspired by old photographs, almost an exercise in giving voice to the voiceless, those whose lives were skirted or entirely re-routed by war.   In “Free Shoes” evacuated children prepare to receive new shiny shoes while the old ones are disposed of, the shoes analogous to their new lives away from the war, “This life that has been given them like a task!  This life, this / black bright narrow unbroken-in shoe”.  If you value family, but also value speaking critically about family, you’ll enjoy this collection.  There are some very controversial poems worth checking out, in particular, “Last Words, Death Row, Circa 2030”.

Bikeman: An epic Poem, by Thomas F. Flynn. This collection inspired by 9/11 will leave you squirming, which, depending on your tastes, is either the mark of great poetry or difficult subject matter.  Flynn accurately captures the awkwardness of the subject, “I am witness to this and embarrassed./ I am an intruder on the most private moment/ of her life: her death”.   An award winning television writer/producer, Flynn makes his first foray into poetry in order to document the very personal, yet universal aftermath of the World Trade Towers’ collapse.  Through observations both passive and judgmental, the verse shines when turned upon the arc which the lives of those affected by great loss will travel, “He, a banker from India on a temporary work visa/ is praying for the wife and son/…His widow,/ without a visa, will be deported,/ leaving her New Jersey home for India,/ where she becomes an outcast/ with her fatherless American-born/ baseball-loving blue-jean wearing son”.  The introduction describes the narrator as one who “did not live through it” but “just did not die” alluding to the survivor’s guilt fueling the narrative. Plow through this one in one sitting to avoid 9/11 overload and you’ll walk away with a new perspective on loss and survival.

“Coraline” is coming back to Juneau this week – check the schedule at the Gold Town Nickelodeon for showtimes, and at our blog, for presentation and puppet workshop times and more.

35th Alaska Folk Fest

Well it’s time for the 35th annual Alaska Folk Festival in Juneau.  Festivities kick of tonight at 7 pm at Centennial Hall, all shows are free.  Get the full day by day schedule here.   If you can’t make it down to the Hall, listen live on KRNN- Rain Country Radio.

Check out Elias Antaya (JPL Blog book reviewer) and his fellow 5th graders for a set of humor driven folk complete with witty between-song stage banter.

Monday 4/13 7pm
Alaskan Travelers • Juneau, Alaska
Elias Antaya, Max Blust, Robert Newman.
Legos, root beer and comic books – not necessarily in that order.

And don’t miss:

Bingo Schmingo Storytime
with singer/songwriter Kathleen Rushing
April 16, 11am – noon Douglas Library
April 17 11am – noon, Valley Library
Kathleen is here to help us celebrate Folk Fest. Enjoy this interactive musical entertainment for all ages.

American Experience “We Shall Remain”

Monday evenings at 8pm April 13th through May 11th UAS will host a big screen broadcast of the PBS series “We Shall Remain” in the Egan Library. Each broadcast will be followed with an informal discussion. Please contact Wendy Girven (wjgirven@uas.alaska.edu) with any questions or visit the show’s website.