Puppet master Vit Horejs of the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre performed an afternoon of his artistry for young and old at the Ottendorfer Branch Library in the East Village Wednesday. An audience of 40 children and their parents and others gathered in the polyglot neighborhood near St. Mark’s Place for a colorful show.

The puppet master dressed in an exotic patchwork storyteller’s robe from Europe, manipulating his marionettes in full view of the audience. He adroitly handled the controls and strings of his 100-year-old hand-carved figures, bringing these inert figures to life. Charmingly, one of Mr. Horejs’s marionettes controlled its own tiny marionette.

As Mr. Horejs’s artful hands pulled on the strings of his marionettes, he pulled on the audience’s heartstrings as well.

Children and adults sat upright in awed engagement while Mr. Horejs controlled up to seven of his characters at one time. He asked the children, “Do you know the difference between marionettes and puppets?” Mr. Horejs answered his own question, “All marionettes are puppets, but not all puppets are marionettes.”

Mr. Horejs has been in America 26 years perfecting his puppetry. His work is documented in the recently published book “Puppetry: A World History” (Abrams), by theater historian Eileen Blumenthal.

The stories performed at the Ottendorfer Library held morals for the ethical consideration of all, such as the benefits of sharing and generosity. “All the tales performed by my marionettes are well-known to all Czech children,” he later told the Knickerbocker.

One tale featured a water spirit, another a devil; often the master puppeteer would step into the rows of children nestled up front and let the figures fly over their heads, eliciting shrieks of happiness from the thrilled children and applause from their parents.

In one puppet play number, a group of figures in Czech folk attire danced to Mr. Horejs’s own singing of Czech folk songs. The puppets’ small feet pattered on the table that served as a stage for the puppets. At times, children were seen standing on the tops of their seats – so captivated were they.

In attendance were Ottendorfer children’s librarian Thea Osborn, and art critic and author Jean-Louis Bourgeois, who is an African clown from Mali.

***

WHITMAN ANNIVERSARY “I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?” the prophetic poet Walt Whitman once asked. These words begin the preface of a bilingual tribute to this American bard, “Walt Whitman hom(m)age 2005/1855” (Turtle Point Press and Editions Joca Seria). In the book, poets gathered their own leaves, and join in a trans-Atlantic expression of humanity.

Poets read from this new anthology as they gathered Thursday at the Strand Bookstore to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first edition of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” This reading in America was the counterpart of one that had taken place in France in July.

Turtle Point Press publisher Jonathan Rabinowitz wore a pumpkin colored jacket with stripes that complemented the book cover design by Trevor Winkfield.

The evening featured poetry read by John Ashbery; Macgregor Card, who co-edits The Germ: A Journal of Poetic Research; Tom Devaney, a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania; Marcella Durand, who is co-editing an anthology of contemporary French-American poetry to be published next year from Talisman House; the publications director at Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Chris Edgar; Peter Gizzi; Robert Kelly; Lisa Lubasch, who has recently translated work by Paul Eluard; Lytle Shaw, who co-edits Shark, a journal of art and writing; Elizabeth Willis, author of “Turneresque” (Burning Deck). Francine du Plessix Gray, sitting on a windowsill overlooking 12th Street, got up between speakers to read passages from their works in French.

Seen in the audience were Strand arts books manager Richard Lilly, who recently returned from three weeks in China, and Kenneth Soehner, chief librarian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“We are here to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of ‘Leaves of Grass.’ And, of course, to celebrate ourselves while celebrating Walt Whitman,” said the master of ceremonies, Frederic Tuten, greeting attendees that evening. “While this may smack a bit like disguised self-promotion, nothing would be more familiar to Walt than the exercise of such self advertising. Walt, as we know, not only wrote his poems but pseudonymously reviewed them in newspapers and sent the reviews, along with copies of his book, to prospective reviewers. When Emerson wrote Walt a personal letter intended for his eyes only, Walt had the praise printed in the next 1856 edition – without Emerson’s knowledge and to his chagrin.”

***

BRET’S BOOK A crowd jammed Coliseum Books last week to hear Bret Easton Ellis read from his new novel, “Lunar Park” (Knopf), which contains a protagonist who is a writer named “Bret Easton Ellis.”

During the question-and-answer session, he described how he works. He does heavy outlining in longhand before writing the text. The outlining includes dialogue, scenes, riffs, much of which he later folds into his fictional text line by line. “And I write slowly, something I’m sure my worst critics won’t believe.”