blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

When you think of a brewer, you don’t normally associate him or her with a sparkling literary career. But when you think of a brewer, you may not think of Brooklyn Brewery's brewmaster and author Garrett Oliver either.

For Oliver, beer is something more than a fizzy, alcoholic beverage we pull from the back of the fridge after a hard day at the office, or something we guzzle on Sunday afternoons while watching our team battle it out against a rival opponent. Beer is his life’s work and the subject of numerous essays, articles, and two highly-regarded books on the history and styles of beer, The Brewmaster’s Table, in 2003, as well as the uber-comprehensive, encyclopedic The Oxford Companion to Beer in 2011.

Today she’s known as the “doyenne” of Irish literature and a respected elder stateswoman of arts and letters throughout the English speaking world. Her awards are numerous and accolades esteemed, but when Edna O'Brien broke onto the international literary stage in 1960 with the publication of her novel The Country Girls, she was a struggling devotee of James Joyce working as a reader for a London-based publishing house.

For some, it may be years since they’ve heard it recited. Others, on the other hand, may have never had the chance to hear the classic Christmas tale from start to finish. But this doesn’t mean The Night Before Christmas is in any way a relic of Christmas past—a poetic ghost clinging to some kind of existence in this world rather than passing on to another.

In fact, as families gather together this Christmas season, the references and allusions to this 1823 work may be more prevalent than you think.

Though often referred to as the Second City, Chicago is second to none in terms of its rich cultural heritage, iconic architecture, sports fandom, and inventive takes on comfort food staples like the pizza hotdog and the red hot. But The Windy City is also home to a literary tradition rivaled by very few cities across the country, with some of America’s most renowned writers calling Chicago their home.

Memoir? Science fiction? Fantasy? Sure, these genres of writing present their own unique challenges. But ask any number of writers about the most troublesome and potentially problematic genre and you’ll hear the same response time and time again: biography.

Setting about the task of capturing the life and essence of an individual in a few hundred pages is daunting, especially the more complicated, convoluted, and complex the subject. Biographers are often faced with a number of difficult decisions in terms of what events and moments are crucial to the biography, and those that can be discarded in service of painting a compelling and accurate portrait.

As a great song is covered once and again by a multitude of bands spanning musical genres and aesthetics; a great story is illustrated time over time by a variety of visual artists, each imbuing the work with their sensibilities and vision. Nothing short of a true classic can inspire generations of artists to revisit a piece—to dig deep into its inner workings in an attempt to unearth some hidden meaning glossed over by previous editions or iterations.

And this principle is most certainly true with Oliver Goldsmith’s Victorian novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, first published in 1766, which has since seen numerous editions and reissues and artist interpretations by some of the English world’s most highly-regarded illustrators.

A snapshot of 19th Century children’s literature and one of modern day children’s literature would make for a very interesting before-and-after photo. In the time before children’s lit giants like Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, or Shel Silverstein, children’s literature often defaulted to mortality or cautionary tales designed to teach children the dangers of greed or gluttony—think of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, as their takes on Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast are far afield from the Disney versions.

While these tales relied heavily on the use of irony, sardonic humor, grim imagery, and violence, forays into the sinister—particularly through the vehicle of deception—were commonplace as both thematic strains and devices to advance plot and character. Whether at the expense of the reader or the characters themselves, the use of sinister elements such as deception are most prominent in the following three classic examples of 19th Century children’s literature. Each removes the kid gloves when it comes to setting up expectations and then subverting those expectations for deeply-felt, visceral results.

Whether you fancy the trick or the treat, Halloween may perhaps be the most polarizing holiday. Ask any Halloweener why they’re not quick to don a pirate get-up or nurse uniform and the answer is usually the same: "I don’t know what to dress-up as."

Mummy? Cowboy? Prisoner? Political figure of the day? For a reader with a voracious imagination, these well-worn paths offer very little appeal and only heighten the anxiety about choosing the best costume to wow friends at your Halloween party.

But this year, literary Halloween-goers can rest easy and indulge in a little more candy or that second cup of punch as below you’ll find some DIY costume ideas inspired by some of the most well-known characters across a wide spectrum of American letters that will be the envy of the most ambitious of the costumed kind, but will also be great conversation starters as you gab with party-goers about your favorite books and the characters that populate them.

One could say Evelyn Waugh was something of an early 20th Century Anthony Bourdain. A novelist, essayist, biographer and travel writer, Waugh (1903-1966) was a renowned world traveler and played witness to some of the more seismic events of his era: the fall of the British Empire throughout South America, World War II, the struggles of a post-war Europe, and the emergence of the United States as a world superpower. All of these things Waugh maintained strong views upon and chronicled in his writings, both fictive and non. Perhaps his most well-known endeavor, Brideshead Revisited, is our subject today.

The dream version of Babe Ruth that appears to Benny in the 1993 film The Sandlot said it best: “There’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die...” While such a reference might not seem entirely applicable to a discussion of American poetics, there’s a profound truth to the sentiment that rings clear throughout the annals of poetry. The truth of the matter is, it’s impossible to identify which poets will leave an indelible mark on their craft and which will merely be but a footnote in discussions of poetic tradition. 

That said, if we take a cue from The Babe, we can put a finger to a number of lesser-known-yet-still-influential poets who played major — albeit less heralded — roles in the evolution of the poetic arts. Here are just a few examples of notable poets who flew slightly beneath the radar during their heyday but found latter day success and prominence as true practitioners of their craft.