librarian

At a time when its leadership is in question and its mission challenged, the Library of Congress has named a new U.S. poet laureate, the much-honored author and translator Arthur Sze.

The library announced Monday that the 74-year-old Sze had been appointed to a one-year term, starting this fall. The author of 12 poetry collections and recipient last year of a lifetime achievement award from the library, he succeeds Ada Limón, who had served for three years. Previous laureates also include Joy Harjo, Louise Glück and Billy Collins.

Speaking during a recent Zoom interview with the Associated Press, Sze acknowledged some misgivings when Rob Casper, who heads the library’s poetry and literature center, called him in June about becoming the next laureate.

He wondered about the level of responsibilities and worried about the upheaval since President Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in May. After thinking about it overnight, he called Casper back and happily accepted.

“I think it was the opportunity to give something back to poetry, to something that I’ve spent my life doing,” he explained, speaking from his home in Santa Fe, N.M. “So many people have helped me along the way. Poetry has just helped me grow so much, in every way.”

Sze’s new job begins during a tumultuous year for the library, a 200-year-old, nonpartisan institution that holds a massive archive of books published in the United States. Trump abruptly fired Hayden after conservative activists accused her of imposing a “woke” agenda, criticism that Trump has expressed often as he seeks sweeping changes at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian museums and other cultural institutions.

Hayden’s ouster was sharply criticized by congressional Democrats, leaders in the library and scholarly community and such former laureates as Limón and Harjo.

Although the White House announced that it had named Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche as the acting librarian, daily operations are being run by a longtime official at the library, Robert Randolph Newlen. Events such as the annual National Book Festival have continued without interruption or revision.

Laureates are forbidden to take political positions, although the tradition was breached in 2003 when Collins publicly stated his objections to President George W. Bush’s push for war against Iraq.

Newlen is identified in Monday’s announcement as acting librarian, a position he was in line for according to the institution’s guidelines. He praised Sze, whose influences range from ancient Chinese poets to Wallace Stevens, for his “distinctly American” portraits of the Southwest landscapes and for his “great formal innovation.”

“Like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influences — and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space,” his statement reads in part.

Sze’s official title is poet laureate consultant in poetry, a 1985 renaming of a position established in 1937 as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress. The mission is loosely defined as a kind of literary ambassador, to “raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.”

Sze wants to focus on a passion going back more than a half-century to his undergraduate years at UC Berkeley — translation.

He remembers reading some English-language editions of Chinese poetry, finding the work “antiquated and dated” and deciding to translate some of it himself, writing out the Chinese characters and engaging with them “on a much deeper level” than he had expected. Besides his own poetry, he has published “The Silk Dragon: Translations From the Chinese.”

“I personally learned my own craft of writing poetry through translating poetry,” he says. “I often think that people think of poetry as intimidating, or difficult, which isn’t necessarily true. And I think one way to deepen the appreciation of poetry is to approach it through translation.”

Sze is a New York City native and son of Chinese immigrants who in such collections as “Sight Lines” and “Compass Rose” explores themes of cultural and environmental diversity and what he calls “coexisting.”

In a given poem, he might shift from rocks above a pond to people begging in a subway, from a firing squad in China to Thomas Jefferson’s plantation in Virginia. His many prizes include the National Book Award for “Sight Lines.”

He loves poetry from around the world but feels at home writing in English, if only for the “richness of the vocabulary” and the wonders of its origins.

“I was just looking at the word ‘ketchup,’ which started from southern China, went to Malaysia, was taken to England, where it became a tomato-based sauce, and then, of course, to America,” he says. “And I was just thinking days ago, that’s a word we use every day without recognizing its ancestry, how it’s crossed borders, how it’s entered into the English language and enriched it.”

Italie writes for the Associated Press.

Elsie Eiler runs the sole business in Monowi, Nebraska and is also the town’s only resident, as well as its mayor, librarian and postmaster. Monowi is officially the smallest incorporated town in the US

A particularly hard-working woman is the mayor, librarian, postmaster, and sole business owner of the smallest town in the US.

Elsie Eiler may be in her 90s, but she fully embraces the side-hustle culture more often associated with Gen Zs. The multi-jobbed Nebraskan has been holding down the fort as the only resident of Monowi for years.

Along with her husband Rudy, Elsie moved to the sparsely populated area about 90 miles northwest of Norfolk, near the South Dakota border, and set up the Monowi Tavern in 1971. Its nearest restaurants are more than a dozen miles away, but business was slow at first.

Rudy died in 2004, leaving Elsie to run the rest stop as a one-woman show. Slowly, over the years, the other remaining residents of the town either died or moved away until Elsie was the only one left.

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Today her business is a well-maintained iceberg in a sea of crumbling buildings. Homes are slowly tumbling over and collapsing into the snow-covered ground of Monowi.

The town’s rapidly declining population has provided a silver lining for Elsie. As officially the smallest incorporated town in the US, Monowi has become something of a tourist attraction. Nowadays, business is booming, with small-town enthusiasts coming from far and wide to meet a woman who has taken on more and more responsibilities in recent years.

Not only does she welcome around 50 guests a day, cook them a delicious feast, and keep the restaurant looking spic and span, but Elsie also serves as mayor, librarian, and postmaster.

As the only resident in town, she must advertise mayoral elections with a sign she posts on her bar and vote for herself, as well as produce a municipal plan each year. Other duties include raising taxes to keep utilities running.

“It’s a bar and grill, I would call it. I do quite a lot of cooking the last couple of years. It’s a bar and a meeting place for everybody. There’s a toy box under the TV for all of the little kids that come in, and it’s just a community meeting I guess you would say,” Elsie told Nebraska Public Media at an event at the restaurant in 2021.

One regular customer is Boyd County Sheriff Chuck Wrede, who says the tavern is a meeting place for area police officers.

“We come here once a month and kind of have an intel meeting between the counties, and invite different people to come and discuss what we need to do and what things go on,” he explained.

Jeff Uhlir, who farms 20 miles south of Monowi, meets with other agricultural workers from the area to play cards at the tavern.

Despite working so hard long after most people have hung up their working boots and retired, Elsie doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

“Each year I just renew my license and stay again. I mean, basically…I’m happy here. This is where I really – I want to be here, or I wouldn’t stay here,” she said.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has fired the nation’s top copyright official, Shira Perlmutter, days after abruptly terminating the head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the U.S. Copyright Office.

The office said in a statement Sunday that Perlmutter received an email from the White House a day earlier with the notification that “your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately.”

On Thursday, President Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to hold that position, as part of the administration’s ongoing purge of government officials perceived to oppose the president and his agenda.

Hayden named Perlmutter to lead the Copyright Office in October 2020.

Perlmutter’s office recently released a report examining whether artificial intelligence companies can use copyrighted materials to “train” their AI systems and compete in the same market as the human-made works they were trained on.

The report, the third part of a lengthy AI study, follows a review that Perlmutter began in 2023 with opinions from thousands of people including AI developers, actors and country singers.

In January, the office clarified its approach as one based on the “centrality of human creativity” in creating a work that warrants copyright protections. The office receives about half a million copyright applications per year, covering millions of creative works.

“Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection,” Perlmutter said in January. “Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine … would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.”

The White House didn’t return a message seeking comment Sunday.

Democrats were quick to denounce Perlmutter’s firing.

“Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis,” said Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee.

Perlmutter, who holds a law degree, was previously a policy director at the Patent and Trademark Office and worked on copyright and other areas of intellectual property. She also previously worked at the Copyright Office in the late 1990s. She did not return messages left Sunday seeking comment.

O’Brien writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump abruptly fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden as the White House continues to purge the federal government of those perceived to oppose the president and his agenda.

Hayden was notified in an email late Thursday from the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office, according to an email obtained by the Associated Press. Confirmed by the Senate to the job in 2016, Hayden was the first woman and the first African American to be librarian of Congress.

“Carla,” the email began. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” A spokesperson for the Library of Congress confirmed that the White House told Hayden she was dismissed.

Hayden, whose 10-year term was set to expire next year, had come under backlash from a conservative advocacy group that had vowed to root out those standing in the way of Trump’s agenda. The group, American Accountability Foundation, accused her and other library leaders of promoting children’s books with “radical” content and literary material authored by Trump opponents.

“The current #LibrarianOfCongress Carla Hayden is woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids,” AAF said on its X account earlier Thursday, just hours before the firing was made public. “It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!”

All around the government, Trump has been weeding out officials who he believes don’t align with his agenda, from the Justice Department to the Pentagon and beyond. At times, the firings come after conservative voices single out officials for criticism.

Earlier Thursday, the acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was pushed out one day after he had testified that he did not agree with proposals to dismantle the organization. Trump has suggested that individual states, not FEMA, should take the lead on responding to hurricanes, tornadoes and other crises.

At the Pentagon, more than a half-dozen top general officers have been fired since January, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr. The only two women serving as four-star officers, as well as a disproportionate number of other senior female officers, have also been fired.

The unexpected move Thursday against Hayden infuriated congressional Democrats, who initially disclosed the firing.

“Enough is enough,” said Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York, who called Hayden “a “trailblazer, a scholar, and a public servant of the highest order.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Hayden was “callously fired” by Trump and demanded an explanation from the administration as to why she was dismissed.

“Hayden has spent her entire career serving people — from helping kids learn to read to protecting some of our nation’s most precious treasures,” said Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee that oversees the Library.

“She is an American hero,” he said.

The Library of Congress, with its stately buildings across from the U.S. Capitol, holds a vast collection of the nation’s books and history, which it makes available to the public and lawmakers. It houses the papers of nearly two dozen presidents and more than three dozen Supreme Court justices.

It also has collections of rare books, prints and photographs, as well as troves of music and valuable artifacts — like a flute owned by President James Madison, which the singer and rapper Lizzo played in a 2022 performance arranged by Hayden.

The Democratic leaders praised Hayden, who had been the longtime leader of Baltimore’s library system, for a tenure that helped modernize the Library and make it more accessible with initiatives into rural communities and online. She is a graduate of Roosevelt University and the University of Chicago.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) applauded Hayden as “an accomplished, principled and distinguished Librarian of Congress.”

“Donald Trump’s unjust decision to fire Dr. Hayden in an email sent by a random political hack is a disgrace and the latest in his ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history and turn back the clock,” Jeffries said.

“The Library of Congress is the People’s Library. There will be accountability for this unprecedented assault on the American way of life sooner rather than later,” he said.

New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Senate panel that oversees funding for the library, said the firing, which he said came at 6:56 p.m., was “taking his assault on America’s libraries to a new level.”

“Dr. Hayden has devoted her career to making reading and the pursuit of knowledge available to everyone,” he said.

Robert Newlen, the principal deputy librarian, said he would serve as acting librarian of Congress “until further instruction” in a separate email seen by the AP.

“I promise to keep everyone informed,” he wrote to colleagues.

Hayden spoke recently of how libraries changed her own life, and opened her to the world.

“Libraries are the great equalizer,” she posted on X during National Library Week last month.

“And when you have a free public library in particular,” she said, it’s an “opportunity center for people all walks of life, and you are giving them the opportunity to make choices on which information, entertainment and inspiration means the most to them.”

Kim, Mascaro and Miller write for the Associated Press.

May 9 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has fired the librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, attracting swift and staunch condemnation from Democrats.

The Trump administration informed Hayden that she was fired in a two-sentence email on Thursday, a copy of which was obtained by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.

“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately,” Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel Trent Morse wrote in the email.

“Thank you for your service.”

No cause for dismissal was given.

Hayden is the first woman and first Black person to serve as the librarian of Congress, a position she has held since 2016. She was nominated by President Barack Obama and was confirmed by the Senate.

Her surprise dismissal prompted swift condemnation from Democrats who framed it as a continuation of Trump’s attack on the independence of U.S. institutions and reversal of progress the country has achieved over decades.

“Donald Trump’s unjust decision to fire Dr. Hayden in an email sent by a random political hack is a disgrace and the latest in his ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history and turn back the clock,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a statement.

“The Library of Congress is the People’s Library. There will be accountability for this unprecedented assault on the American way of life sooner rather than later.”

Heinrich, ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, praised Hayden for bringing the Library of Congress to the people through initiatives that reached out to rural communities.

“While President Trump wants to ban books and tell Americans what to read — or not to read at all — Dr. Hayden has devoted her career to making reading and the pursuit of knowledge available to everyone,” he said in a statement.

“Be like Dr. Hayden.”

During his roughly 100 days in office, Trump has used executive powers to take greater control of independent and cultural institutions as well as to attack those that have promoted beliefs that his administration has worked to erase, such as inclusion, diversity and other so-called progressive ideas.

In March, Trump signed an executive order directing the Smithsonian to eliminate “divisive” and anti-American ideology” from its museums, pointing to exhibits that “promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

He also named himself chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, seemingly in opposition to its having hosted performances he disagreed with for promoting so-called woke ideology. The move prompted many performances and performers to cancel shows.

“[Hayden’s] dismissal is not just an affront to her historic service but a direct attack on the independence of one of our most revered institutions,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said in a statement.

“This is yet another example in the disturbing pattern of the President removing dedicated public servants without cause — likely to fill the position with one of his ‘friends’ who is not qualified and does not care about protecting America’s legacy.

“This move undermines the foundational principles of our democracy and erodes public trust in our institutions,” she continued, calling on the Trump administration to provide a transparent explanation for her firing.