Poetry

Lloyd Schwartz on poet Elizabeth Bishop and how he saved a poem of hers from obscurity. It's called "Breakfast Song." Lloyd is the editor of Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art (University of Michigan Press). The poem will be published in the upcoming issue of The New Yorker.

He is one of New York's most notable spoken-word artists. He blends lyrics of urban dwelling with music. Born in Harlem, Sundiata is a professor of English literature at The New School for Social Research. He's released CDs of spoken word including The Blue Oneness of Dreams and Urban Music. This week, Sundiata premieres his new one-man show blessing the boats. It's about the year his kidney failed, he went into dialysis and then had a kidney transplant.

Poet Sharon Olds. Her new collection of poems is The Unswept Room. She has a number of previous collections, including Satan Says and The Dead and the Living. Olds was the New York State Poet Laureate from 1998 to 2000. She teaches poetry workshops in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University.

Performance poet Sekou Sundiata. He is one of New York's notable spoken word artists, blending lyrics of urban dwelling with music. Born in Harlem, he is a professor of English Literature at The New School for Social Research. He's released several CDs of his work, including The Blue Oneness of Dreams and Urban Music. He's published a new journal (in pamphlet form), Heart: Human Equity Through Art.

We remember the poet Kenneth Koch, who died Saturday.

Poet Donald Hall returns to the show to discuss his new collection of poetry, The Painted Bed, much of it written in mourning for his late wife, poet Jane Kenyon. Hall received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in poetry for his collection, The One Day, and the 1990 Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America for Old and New Poems.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Poetry Speaks (Sourcebooks) a collection of poems by 42 English speaking poets, along with biographical and critical essays, as well as three CDs featuring the poets reading their own work.

Paul Muldoon reads: Ode ii-10 (to Licinius) (23 B.C.) by Horace; A Normal Day by Dorothy Muldoon; September 1, 1939 (1940) by W.H. Auden

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reflects on what music he has and hasn't been listening to.

Our new U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. His new collection of poems is Sailing Alone Around the Room (Random House). His other collections include Picnic, Lightning (Univ of Pittsburgh), The Art of Drowning (Univ of Pittsburgh Press), and Questions about Angels (William Morrow & Co). John Updike says of Collins' poetry, "Billy Collins writes lovely poems...

Former poet laureate Robert Pinsky reads a poem that he has turned to at this time.

Former poet laureate Robert Hass also reads a poem.

Poet Billy Collins has just been appointed the next Poet Laureate. His books include Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press), The Art of Drowning, (University of Pittsburgh Press), and Questions about Angels (William Morrow & Co.), which was selected as a winner of the National Poetry Series Competition in 1990. John Updike says of Collins' poetry, "Billy Collins writes lovely poems...

Poet Billy Collins reads his poem This Much I Do Remember.

Our classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz joins us to talk about his new book of poems, “Cairo Traffic.” (University of Chicago Press) Lloyd is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and writes about classical music for the Boston Phoenix. In 1994, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai (ya-HOO-da AH-muh-kye, rhymes with pie) died Friday at the age of 76, and we feature a 1991 interview from the archives. Amichai was a celebrated poet whose subjects were love and loss, and more recently, aging and mortality. The New York Times wrote that he had a “gift for poeticizing the particular: the localized object or image in everyday life.” (originally aired 2/27/91)

Our classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz turns off the turntable and reads us a poem from his new book, Cairo Traffic.

Associate curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Russell Ferguson He curated the exhibit “In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art,” (there’s also a companion book). Frank O’Hara was part of a small group of poets in New York City in the 1950s and 60s, influenced by the Abstract Expressionist painters of that time, including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. O’Hara died in 1966 after being struck by a jeep. Also, poet David Lehman (“LEE-man”), author of “the Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets” (Anchor Books)

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz is also a poet. He reviews “The Voice of the Poet” (Random House) a collection of poets reading their own work on audio tape.