Tag: National Poetry Month
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A Song of Spring
It is the last Friday in National Poetry Month, and it is a rainy one at that … here is a poem by Mamie A. Jones in 1880. She is one of many hidden “poets” who we discover as we process collections in the Special Collections Processing Center. Mamie’s handwriting, though pretty, is nearly illegible…
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Yad Aharon: Hebrew poetry and the number 14
In honor of Poetry Fridays, I want to show the volume “Yad Aharon”, a fascinating little book of poems and homilies. The volume was printed in Thessaloniki, Greece, in the Hebrew year 5599 (1838 or 1839). The author, Aharon Tsevi Ashkenazi, is only identified as being an elderly poet in Thessaloniki. Ashkenazi creatively wrote his…
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Sex, Drugs, and … Law Books?
People write things in books: that’s a given. Usually it’s just their name or some notes on the content; sometimes, though, it’s art. Reproduced above is a poem penned on the blank verso of the last leaf of one of Penn’s incunables, a slim volume titled Oratio Dicta a Petro Marso in Funere Illustrissimi Hieronymi…
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“Have Your Kerchief Ready”
It is National Poetry Month … and today, we have both a poem and a timely suggestion for keeping healthy during a pandemic. Clem Winston, one of my all time favorite people (I may have a bit of a crush on him), was an economist who worked at the National Recovery Administration from 1933 to…
Unique at Penn 