“The Power of the Butterfly:†How Books Have Changed Our World–War and Peace, Civil and Human Rights, and Environmental Law
Ink is dripping from the corners of my lips—there is no happiness like mine—I have been eating poetry! That’s Mark Strand in a library, when he was poet laureate of the United States for the Library of Congress, founded by Thomas Jefferson who started it with his own library, and what he called HIS “canine appetite†for reading—arrrgh–and this is Professor Barbara Mossberg, as Pacific Grove’s Poet in Residence, speaking for the Pacific Grove Friends of the Library—I’m giving a Grovian, groovy, dripping and barking lecture called The Power of the Butterfly—how books change the world, October 7, 7pm, at the Library. We know that in history when a group wants to destroy freedom it first bans and burns books—closes libraries—shuts down literacy–writers are banned and burned—what? These marginal wise guys and wild guys and drooping spinsters and scandalous ladies, scratching on clay, trembling in attics, so powerful? Really? That’s my story and I’m sticking to it: October 7! I’m going to talk about books’ role in civil and human rights, environmental laws, and war and peace! It’s a tale of movers and shakers of our world, heroism, courage, heartbreak, inspiration on epic and nano scales, as writers use their moral imaginations to give us a vision of possibility, a brave new world, conscience and consciousness. So bring that canine appetite of yours down to the library. Join me at Pacific Grove Public Library, October 7, 7 pm, it’s free, like the best things of life, there’s food, for thought and literally! I’m Barbara Mossberg, your host of KRXA 540AM’s The Poetry Slow Down, and I’m looking forward to seeing you then, for what’s at stake in libraries for each of us, civic life and death! I’m just sayin. October 7, 7 pm, I’ll see you there!
