This post looks at the history and meaning of the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty." It considers several popular origin stories for the rhyme, including that it is about Richard III of England, or about a siege engine in the English Civil War. It points out that these stories constitute "metafolklore," or folklore about folklore, and traces their history. It also considers how the rhyme works as a riddle, whose solution is "an egg." It includes many unusual versions of "Humpty Dumpty," many fun stories, and many classic illustrations!
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo continues to earn praise for her work in the position. On October 26th at its annual convention, the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries., and Museums (ATALM) presented one of its Guardians of Culture and Lifeways International Awards to the Library of Congress and Harjo for “Living Nations, Living Words,” her signature project as the nation’s first Native American poet laureate. Her project features a sampling of work by 47 Native American poets through an interactive Story Map and a newly developed Library of Congress audio collection. Each location marker reveals a Native poet and features an image, biography and link to hear the poet recite and comment on an original poem. Read more about it in this blog post!
“From Conflict to Creativity: Veteran Artists Showcase” ~ June 28-30, 2022 Join the Veterans History Project (VHP) as we recognize Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS) Awareness Month with a three-day Veteran Artists Showcase focused on living with, managing and raising awareness of PTS and Military Sexual Trauma. Hosted in collaboration with Uniting US, this series of creative …
Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean. Puerto Rican migration to the mainland United States has largely been driven by economic necessity, whether of individuals’ needs to earn more to support themselves and their families, or large scale economic events such as the Great Depression and other …
The latest Roots in the Archive column is about "Colorado Morton's Ride" (sometimes known as "Colorado Morton's Last Ride"), a poem written by a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Montana cowboy, and recited at a migrant worker camp in 1941, where it was recorded by Library of Congress folklorists Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin. We first told the story here on the blog back in 2014. More recently, we featured it on the Folklife Today podcast. In doing the podcast research I turned up a few more facts about the cowboy author Rivers Browne, so the story over at No Depression has a couple more details than the previous written version. So if you're curious how a Pulitzer Prize winner from Rhode Island met up with a Buckaroo from Montana (who happened to have been born in India as the son of a British Army General), and if you wonder how the poem and its reciter were connected to the great photographer Dorothea Lange and the novelist John Steinbeck, it's time to surf on over to this link at No Depression!
Hello to potential explorers of the Veterans History Project (VHP) archive! We’re so excited that you’re considering taking part in the American Folklife Center’s newest version of the Archive Challenge. VHP’s collections are nothing if not inspirational, and you are sure to find a wealth of material–everything from epic poems to wartime love letters and …
Members of the Washington, D.C. Youth Slam Team of Split This Rock performed poems inspired by recordings, photographs and field notes from the American Folklife Center archives on June 08, 2019 in an event co-sponsord by the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center. The video of these remarkable young poets is now available. This …
On the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, land, sea and air power ceased and the Great War finally concluded. Whether you know it by the original name of Armistice Day, or as Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, or Veterans Day, as it is known in the United States, November …
The following is a guest post by Anastasia Nikolis, a graduate student intern in the Poetry and Literature Center and a PhD candidate in the English department at the University of Rochester. It originally appeared on the Poetry and Literature Center’s blog, From the Catbird Seat. Somehow it is the last week of April, which …
