Steps
A portal into 1950s New York City, Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems” have the feel of playing hooky: of roaming from museums to Central Park and sneaking into cinemas. Choreographer …
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Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
Long before he won the National Book Award, Martín Espada worked after school in a factory making legal pads. Espada, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, economists Natasha …
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The Emperor of Ice-Cream, Motive for Metaphor
Modernist poet Wallace Stevens balanced his long career as an insurance executive with a thrilling life of the imagination. Actor Murray Bartlett, ice cream maker Gus Rancatore, cognitive scientist …
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Hill Country
God drives down from the mountains behind the wheel of a Jeep, in this poem by Tracy K. Smith, former U.S. poet laureate. Smith illuminates the ambrosial bounty of …
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July in Washington
Against the backdrop of 1964 Washington D.C., Robert Lowell wrote this timeless reflection on the contradictions between American idealism and American policy. Journalists Andrea Mitchell and Justin Worland, political …
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Mushrooms, Weakness and Doubt
Poems by Sylvia Plath and Kay Ryan take the peripheral status of the fungal kingdom as an invitation to consider the scientific knowns and unknowns, and cultural significance, of …
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Six Years Later, Epitaph for a Centaur
Russian-born poet Joseph Brodsky wrote about the centaur as a Cold War self-portrait: a divided global refugee, created by a geopolitics of shifting borders and cultures. Theater of War …
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Phillis Wheatley: To the University
In 1770s Boston, Phillis Wheatley was at the same time enslaved and an international celebrity: a writer who mastered the most persuasive rhetoric of the day to publish enduring …
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Poetry in America Season 4 Trailer
Eight new half-hour episodes of Poetry in America will premiere in April 2024 for National Poetry Month. Episodes focus on unforgettable American poems, which guests read and discuss with …
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Poetry in America Season 3 Trailer
Eight new half-hour episodes of Poetry in America will start airing in January 2022 and continue through the spring. Like previous seasons, the episodes focus on unforgettable American poems, …
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The Wound-Dresser
Explore Walt Whitman’s “The Wound-Dresser,” set in the battlefield infirmaries and operating theaters of 1860s Washington, D.C. Actor David Strathairn, playwright Tony Kushner, composer Matthew Aucoin, opera star Davóne …
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Looking for The Gulf Motel
Richard Blanco’s poem “Looking for The Gulf Motel” transports readers to 1970s Florida, recalling a Cuban-American family’s vacations on the sparkling sands of Marco Island. Blanco and international superstar …
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Cascadilla Falls
Picking up a hand-sized stone near a rushing waterfall, the speaker of A.R. Ammons’s poem “Cascadilla Falls” is catapulted into the cosmos. Planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, composer DJ Spooky, …
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you can say that again, billie
Billie Holiday’s haunting song “Strange Fruit” winds beneath the unsettling, satiric humor of Evie Shockley’s poem “you can say that again, billie.” Shockley, jazz singer Cassandra Wilson, historian Robin …
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Mending Wall
Do good fences really make good neighbors? Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” asks surprising questions about the role of walls in civil society. Host Elisa New gathers Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, …
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The Language of the Brag and The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters
Sharon Olds’s “The Language of the Brag” and Bernadette Mayer’s “The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters” are exuberant, boisterous tributes to motherhood. Both poets join host …
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Bear Fat & Rabbits and Fire
Two poems, by Linda Hogan and Alberto Ríos, follow wolves, jackrabbits, and other animals across the harsh Great Plains and Sonoran Desert. Both poets join wildlife biologist Jeff Corwin, …
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Sonnet IV; I shall forget you presently, my dear
In 1920s Greenwich Village, Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote Shakespearean sonnets that toppled clichés of love and romance. To probe this unsentimental break-up poetry, host Elisa New speaks with …
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Poetry in America Season 2 Trailer
Season 2 of Poetry in America returns with eight new episodes that will air on public television stations nationwide and on the World Channel starting this April, National Poetry Month. Check your local listings for air times!
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Urban Love Poem
Join poet Marilyn Chin, memoirist Maxine Hong Kingston, investor Randy Komisar, and Bay Area residents to discuss Chin’s love poem to San Francisco.
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One Art
Host Elisa New, journalist Katie Couric, media leaders Sheryl Sandberg and Yang Lan, musician Mary Chapin Carpenter, poet Gregory Orr, and psychiatrist Richard Summers discuss Bishop’s masterpiece on loss.
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The Fish
In this environmental science episode, Vice President Al Gore, poet Jorie Graham, and scientists from Conservation International dive into Moore’s portrayal of the always-changing ocean, and its future in …
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This Your Home Now
Host Elisa New explores Mark Doty’s meditation on love, the AIDS crisis, aging, and home with Doty, psychologist Steven Pinker, choreographer Bill T. Jones, fashion commentator Simon Doonan, and …
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Finishing the Hat
In this musical theater episode, Broadway stars Raúl Esparza, Melissa Errico, Donna Lynne Champlin, Kerry O’Malley, Andrew Arrow, and writer Adam Gopnik contemplate Stephen Sondheim’s singular ability to blend …
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You and I Are Disappearing
Yusef Komunyakaa, Senator John Kerry, director Julie Taymor, composer Elliot Goldenthal, and Vietnam War veterans discuss the awful mix of beauty and horror in war.
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This Is Just to Say
Join actor John Hodgman, poet and physician Rafael Campo, poet Jane Hirshfield, and couples, young and old, as they unpack William Carlos Williams’s plum of a poem.
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Leaves of Grass
Celebrate Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday with Justice Elena Kagan, playwright Tony Kushner, music legend Nas, composer Matthew Aucoin, baritone Davóne Tines, poets Joshua Bennett, Marilyn Chin, Linda Hogan, and …
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I cannot dance opon my toes
“I cannot dance opon my Toes – ” Emily Dickinson writes, “No Man instructed me.” Join host Elisa New, actor Cynthia Nixon, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, dancer and choreographer Jill Johnson, and poet Marie Howe in an exploration of the challenges of art and audience across time, space, and artistic medium.
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Fast Break
Join poet Edward Hirsch, host Elisa New, NBA players Shaquille O’Neal, Pau Gasol, and Shane Battier, and a group of pick-up basketball players as they read Hirsch’s “Fast Break” and use basketball to understand poetry—and poetry to understand the game of basketball.
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Those Winter Sundays
President Joe Biden, poet Elizabeth Alexander, and psychologist Angela Duckworth join host Elisa New and a chorus of fathers and sons to reflect on Robert Hayden’s moving poem “Those Winter Sundays.”
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Hymmnn and Hum Bom!
Joined by rock star Bono, former US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, and by a chorus of clergy and religious practitioners, host Elisa New tackles two of Ginsberg’s most emotionally transporting poems, the “Hymmnn” from Kaddish, and the anti-war chant “Hum Bom!”
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Skyscraper
Host Elisa New considers the rise of the skyscraper–and the emergence of the modernist poem–in an episode featuring celebrated architect Frank Gehry, Chinese visionary and real estate developer Zhang Xin, poet Robert Polito, and student poets from around the United States.
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Harlem
President Bill Clinton, pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, poet Sonia Sanchez, and students from the Harlem Children’s Zone interpret Langston Hughes’s most iconic poem, “Harlem,” with series host Elisa New.
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Musée des Beaux Arts
Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, journalist and ethicist David Brooks, and poet, professor, and painter Peter Sacks join Elisa New to ponder W.H. Auden’s World War II-era reflection on suffering: “Musée des Beaux Arts.”
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Shirt
At New York Fashion Week, host Elisa New catches up with fashion designer Johnson Hartig, Bergdorf Goodman’s Betty Halbreich, shoe designer Stuart Weitzman and with fashion and poetry students from the New School to discuss Robert Pinsky’s poem on labor, craft, and the threads that connect us. Back in Boston, Robert Pinsky joins New on camera to reflect on his poem.
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To Prisoners
Senator John McCain, playwright and activist Anna Deavere Smith, poets Reginald Dwayne Betts and Li-Young Lee, and four exonerated prisoners discuss poetry’s special resonance for those behind bars.
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The Gray Heron
In this environmentally-themed, visually splendid episode, Elisa New is joined by evolutionary biologist E.O Wilson, poet Robert Hass, environmental photographer Laura McPhee, naturalist Joel Wagner, and children at a Mass Audubon Society summer camp on Cape Cod in a wide ranging discussion of Galway Kinnell’s “The Gray Heron.”
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N.Y. State of Mind
Learn alongside host Elisa New as hip hop artist, Nas, music executive Steve Stoute, scholar Salamishah Tillett, and a chorus of rappers and fans break down the breakbeats–and explore the searing vision–of Nas’s iconic track “N.Y. State of Mind.”
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The New Colossus
Host Elisa New rediscovers the freshness and the still-potent charge of Emma Lazarus’s iconic sonnet of immigration alongside singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, activist and co-founder of United We Dream Cristina Jiménez, President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten, financier and philanthropist David Rubenstein, and poet Duy Doan.
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