Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas dies at age 93.

Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas, regarded as one of Latin America's greatest modern writers, has died in Santiago at the age of 93, his family has announced.

He won numerous literary prizes, including the 2003 Cervantes Prize, the top award for Spanish-language literature. Rojas was forced into exile for some years after the 1973 military coup led by Gen Augusto Pinochet.

Rojas had been in a serious condition since suffering a stroke in February.
His death was a "great loss for Chilean literature", Education Minister Joaquin Lavin was quoted as saying.

Rojas produced a huge body of work, with his poems translated into several languages. His works included The Misery of Man, Against Death, Dark and On Lightning.

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Well-deserved recognition to...

Reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, just down I-95, who just won a Pulitzer for their incisive story on genetic sequencing and a young boy fighting for his life.

More than 2,400 entries are submitted each year in all categories in the Pulitzer competition... and only 21 awards are normally made. This, then, the culmination of a year-long process beginning w/the appointment of 102 distinguished judges who serve on 20 separate juries and are asked to make three nominations in each of the 21 categories.

In the major literary and book Pulitzer awards (a few a bit surprising)...

FICTION - "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan (Alfred A. Knopf)

DRAMA - "Clybourne Park" by Bruce Norris

HISTORY - "The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery" by Eric Foner (W. W. Norton & Company)

BIOGRAPHY - "Washington: A Life" by Ron Chernow (The Penguin Press)

POETRY - "The Best of It: New and Selected Poems" by Kay Ryan (Grove Press)

GENERAL NONFICTION - "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner).

Caroline Kennedy opens up with new book of poems

CAROLINE KENNEDY READS FROM SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

◆ 7:30 tonight

◆ Barnes and Noble, 55 Old Orchard Center, Skokie, IL.

Caroline Kennedy’s She Walks in Beauty: A Woman’s Journey Through Poems (Voice, $24.99) has been compared to a vase filled with flowers. With poems carefully picked by Kennedy and arranged into sections that go through the phases of a woman’s life, the book is a lyrical exploration of love and life, friendship, marriage, motherhood, work, joy, grief, middle age and growing old. Indeed, images of flowers grace the cover, end papers and pages. Each section is eloquently introduced by Kennedy, providing rare insights into the heart and mind of one of the most private members of the famous family.

The range of poets and styles is richly varied, and includes Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christopher Marlowe, Rudyard Kipling, Queen Elizabeth I, W.H. Auden, Dorothy Parker, W. B. Yeats, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop and Gwendolyn Brooks.

“In a funny way, poems are suited to modern life,” Kennedy was quoted as saying in an interview Tuesday at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. “They’re short, they’re intense. The biggest problem is people are afraid of poetry, think they can’t understand it or that it will be boring. So I tried to pick poems that I responded to, and hopefully others will, too.”

Poetry has been important in the Kennedy family, the finding and sharing of poems with family members. Kennedy traces the tradition to her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and notes “obviously my father cared a lot about words and language and ideas and how to express them, and invited Robert Frost to the inauguration, which we just celebrated the 50th anniversary of."

The process of gathering poems for this book began when Kennedy turned 50 in 2007, and this collection is an outgrowth of prior works that contained poems from her childhood and family.

Thought for the day...

"What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers." - Logan Pearsall Smith