On March 5, 2007, in the bloody midpoint of the Iraq War, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, ripping through booksellers, cafes, and tea shops - including the Shahbandar coffeehouse, a meeting place for generations of Iraqi writers and intellectuals - killing 30 people and wounding more than 100, for which no group ever claimed responsibility. Thankfully, Bombs cannot destroy ideas. San Francisco poet and artist Beau Beausoleil and British scholar Sarah Bodman responded to the devastation by asking artists and poets from around the world to create artists' books as a show of solidarity with those slain and injured. The response - the national traveling exhibit "Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here" with more than 50 works from the original collection - can be seen at Collins Memorial Library at through October.
"AL-MUTANABBI STREET STARTS HERE," daily through Oct. 31, Collins Memorial Library, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N. Warner, Tacoma, free, 253.879.3675

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