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American Life in Poetry: Column 208
American Life in Poetry, Reading Room Blog, Poetry
03/23/2009 - 1:06pm

by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
To have a helpful companion as you travel through life is a marvelous gift. This poem by Gerald Fleming, a long-time teacher in the San Francisco public schools, celebrates just such a relationship.

Long Marriage

You're worried, so you wake her
& you talk into the dark:
Do you think I have cancer, you
say, or Were there worms
in that meat, or Do you think
our son is OK, and it's
wonderful, really—almost

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If you like "Tweak" by Nic Sheff...
Book Match, Drugs, Meg Raymond, Reading Room Blog
03/20/2009 - 11:20am
Tweak

Thanks for contacting the Central Rappahannock Regional Library for a Book Match.  We LOVE to connect readers to the right books!

You wanted something similar to "Tweak" by Nic Sheff.  One book list you might like is called "Only When I Laugh", which has non-fiction titles about people facing life's greatest hurts - catastrophe, calamity, illness, reversal of fortune and death - with clarity, wit, and above all, humor.

 

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“Rich, and famous, and happy before I die”: Louisa May Alcott.
Author profile, LibraryPoint Blog, Scott Phillips, Reading Room Blog, unRequired Reading Blog, Literary/Classics
03/19/2009 - 9:37am

Louisa May Alcott did not write because she had the need to get the stories out. Louisa May wrote for one reason: she wanted her family to be rich.

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American Life in Poetry: Column 207
American Life in Poetry, Reading Room Blog, Poetry
03/10/2009 - 9:14am

by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

People singing, not professionally but just singing for joy, it's a wonderful celebration of life. In this poem by Sebastian Matthews of North Carolina, a father and son happen upon a handful of men singing in a cafe, and are swept up into their pleasure and community.

Barbershop Quartet,
East Village Grille

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If you like Are You There Vodka by Chelsea Handler
Book Match, Kara Rockwell, Reading Room Blog
05/31/2011 - 3:28pm
Are you there vodka?

Thanks for requesting a book match!  If you like Are You There Vodka...by Chelsea Handler, you might also like these titles and authors:

I Love Everybody, and Other Atrocious Lies: True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl by Laurie Notaro.

In side-splitting essays, Notaro describes such things as the horror of entering the corporate work force, the total gross-out of high-protein diets, and the total exhilaration--and self-consciousness--brought on by publishing her first book.  (Catalog description)

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American Life in Poetry: Column 206
American Life in Poetry, Reading Room Blog, Poetry
03/09/2009 - 8:52am

by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Ah, yes, the mid-life crisis. And there's a lot of mid-life in which it can happen. Jerry Lee Lewis sang of it so well in "He's thirty-nine and holding, holding everything he can." And here's a fine poem by Matthew Vetter, portraying just such a man.


Wild Flowers

At fifty-six, having left my mother,
my father buys a motorcycle.
I imagine him because
it is the son's sorrowful assignment
to imagine his father: there,

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The Astounding Leigh Brackett
film noir, Science Fiction, space opera, Virginia Johnson, Weekly Feature Articles, women writers, Reading Room Blog, Autobiography and Biography, Science Fiction
12/14/2009 - 10:29am
Empire Strikes Back poster

"Would it help if I got out and pushed?"
—Princess Leia to Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back

"She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up."
—Private detective Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep

From sharp-tongued space princesses to Bogey's grim gumshoe, some of Leigh Brackett's most enduring legacies are the scripts she wrote for movies that are considered among the 20th century's very best.

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American Life in Poetry: Column 205
American Life in Poetry, Ann Haley, Reading Room Blog, Poetry
03/10/2009 - 9:03am

by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Memories have a way of attaching themselves to objects, to details, to physical tasks, and here, George Bilgere, an Ohio poet, happens upon mixed feelings about his mother while slicing a head of cabbage.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

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American Life in Poetry: Column 204
American Life in Poetry, Ann Haley, Reading Room Blog
03/10/2009 - 8:53am

by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Memories form around details the way a pearl forms around a grain of sand, and in this commemoration of an anniversary, Cecilia Woloch reaches back to grasp a few details that promise to bring a cherished memory forward, and succeeds in doing so. The poet lives and teaches in southern California.

Anniversary

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If you like suspense and thrillers
Book Match, Reading Room Blog, Books and Reading
02/27/2009 - 7:06pm

Thanks for e-mailing the Central Rappahannock Regional Library for a Book Match. You did not specify a book, but you did mention that you were looking for suspense/thrillers. Since there are bunches and bunches of different kinds of suspense/thriller books, if you could give us a specific title to match, or let us know what elements you like, we can give you a better selection! As is, since your request is general, I can give you some general recommendations:

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