Emmanuel Library's Blog

Explore the New Library Web Site

emmanuellibrary — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:25:19 +0000

Explore the New Library Web Site from emmanuellibrary on Vimeo.

Observing Memorial Day

emmanuellibrary — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:43:21 +0000

Explore the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans.

Search the United States Department of Veterans Affairs Nationwide Gravesite Locator for burial locations of veterans and their family members.

Attend the 66th annual Boston Memorial Day Service, Saturday May 26 11am-1pm at Sgt. Charles A. MacGillvary Veterans Memorial Park.

On Writing:

emmanuellibrary — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:29:16 +0000

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human.”

~Richard Wright (1908-1960), American Writer

Wright, Richard. (1977). American Hunger. New York: Harper & Row. p.135.

Who was Richard Wright? Check out his profile in Gale Biography in Context or in Encyclopedia of African-American Writing (Credo Reference).

American Hunger is a continuation of Wright’s critically-acclaimed autobiography Black Boy, and begins with his departure for the North and subsequent experiences as a writer. He is named “a major literary figure of the 1930s and ‘40s” and his writings described as “a departure from those of the Harlem Renaissance School” (“Richard Wright” 1993). To see titles by Richard Wright at our library, as well as critical reception and interpretation of his works, click here.

“Richard Wright.” Contemporary Black Biography. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale, 1993. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 8 May 2012. [Access through Gale Biography in Context.]

Word of the Week: Numinous

emmanuellibrary — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:24:14 +0000

As in: “To hear the unembodied call of a place, that numinous voice, one has to wait for it to speak through the harmony of its features-the soughing of the wind across it, its upward reach against a clear night sky, its fragrance after a rain.”

Lopez, B. H., & Gwartney, D. (2010). Introduction. In Home ground: Language for an American landscape (p.xviii). Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com/lib/emmanuel/docDetail.action?docID=10492532&p00=numinous

Explore definitions at the library’s E-Ready Reference Resources site using the Dictionaries listed on Research Guide: Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, etc.
Explore Music and the Numinous by Richard Elfyn Jones [E-Book].
View numinous art at Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University.

Posted by the Reference Department

Word of the Week: Sere

emmanuellibrary — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:51:10 +0000

As in: “The Sonoran Desert, sere and zipping past, could have enhanced that idea, certainly.”

Finnegan, W. (2008, September 29). The Last Tour. The New Yorker, 84(30), 71.

Explore definitions at the library’s E-Ready Reference Resources site using the Dictionaries listed on Research Guide: Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, etc.
More about aspects of desert life at these sites:
- an Online Exhibits: The Desert Biome from the University of California Museum of Paleontology;
- more detail about the Biological Soil Crust from the U.S. Geological Survey Canyons Land Research Station;
- visit the Joshua Tree National Part: A Desert Park;
- explore The Art of Being Taureg: Sahara Nomads in the Modern World, from the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian.

Posted by the Reference Department

Reminder

emmanuellibrary — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:00:54 +0000

Don’t Forget…

…to return or renew your Library books before you leave campus for the semester!

View your Library account online by clicking the My Account Link

Writers and reading according to Priscilla Long:

emmanuellibrary — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:47:57 +0000

~ “. . . our quintessential tool, is to learn craft from models of virtuoso writing. We read because we are readers, but we reread because we are writers. We scrutinize sentences, beginnings, deep structures, ways of bringing characters onstage.”

~Priscilla Long (1943 – )
American Writer
(Excerpt from The Writer’s Portable Mentor, p. 7)

For some prize winning writing, see these resources:

Film criticism by Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe, 2012 Pulitzer for Criticism (Select the Works tab to see his entries).
Creative nonfiction from the three 2010 winners of the Yale School of Nursing Creative Writing awards. This award was recently renamed the Griswold Special Home Care Creative Writing Awards; an archive of winning entries is available at the Yale School of Nursing site.
Science fiction winners are listed on the 2012 Hugo Awards site.

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Long, P. (2010). The writer’s portable mentor: A guide to art, craft and the writing life. Seattle, WA: Wallingford Press.

Join the Library in celebrating National Poetry Month

emmanuellibrary — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:31:22 +0000

Discover information about Joyce Peseroff and her poetry as part of the Library’s Poetry Month celebration!

Search Humanities International Complete for other of Peseroff’s poems and information on her poetry.
Check out a video of Peseroff reading her poem “The Hardness Scale,” this week’s featured poem, compliments of Mass Poetry through Vimeo.

To celebrate National Poetry Month 2012, the Emmanuel College Library will present poems and discussion questions from Mass Poetry’s second volume of Common Threads, “a celebration of poets and poetry with ties to our great state of Massachusetts.”

Join the Library in celebrating National Poetry Month

emmanuellibrary — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:22:37 +0000

Join the Library’s discussion of:

“The Hardness Scale”

Joyce Peseroff

Discuss the importance of science and scientific information in this poem. How does science reveal the theme of the poem? What about its juxtaposition with popular culture?
Peseroff begins with number 7 on the hardness scale, and adds an 11th element to it, creating five “sections” within the poem. How does each item work to illustrate the narrative literally, figuratively, and metaphorically?
Peseroff makes strong use of enjambment, end‐stops, and word choice to start or end a line. Discuss the crafting of the poem and how it serves to evoke the title and bring metaphor alive.

Word of the Week: Haptic

emmanuellibrary — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:14:06 +0000

As in: “The haptic eye becomes a point of reference for poets and artists who look closely at their territory, who discern its size and scale; who carefully draw the lines defining nooks, edges, and crannies and relief of its surface; who follow the roads and rivers cutting and winding through it … who touch the lairs and recesses inspiring the fantasies that mark what they see and what, in turn we observe before our eyes.”

Conley, T. (2011). Introduction. In An errant eye: Poetry and topography in early modern France (p. 2). Retrieved from http://site.ebrary.com/lib/emmanuel/docDetail.action?docID=10442226&p00=haptic

Explore definitions at the library’s E-Ready Reference Resources site using the Dictionaries listed on Research Guide: Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, etc.

Posted by the Reference Department