The BOOK WORLD section of this past weekend's Washington POST offers the program for The Library of Congress National Book Festival that will occur next Saturday, September 1, 2018 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The festival has a Poetry Stage and two of the poets who will appear have been featured in past postings in this blog. The posting on August 2, 2018 featured "American Arithmetic" by Natalie Diaz and back on June 14, 2017 was posted a section of "Life on Mars" by Tracy K. Smith. (Smith is Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress, currently in her second term in that position.)
Numbers can be powerful in describing hardships of poverty -- as in this stanza from "Theft" -- a poem that appears (pages 57-62) in Tracy Smith's collection duende (Graywolf Press, 2007).
from Theft by Tracy K. Smith
We have rules:
Don't flush
Unless necessary
And only four squares
Of tissue a day--
Two in the morning
Two at night or
All at once
But just four
And someone
Is counting
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