Explore Poetry
Not sure where to start? Who to listen to? What to read? The links below will help you - simply search below using names or key words to explore all our poetry recordings, texts, interviews and a huge range of other materials.
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Poet
August Kleinzahler
B. 1949
A reckless tumble of words mixing the high and the low, like a rummage sale after the death of someone who adored both Shakespeare and smut. Norman Mailer
Poet
Jane Hirshfield
B. 1953
Hirshfield's poems renew, reaffirm the power of language to move deeply, to articulate experience precisely. - The Antioch Review
Poet
Poet
Louise Bogan
B. 1897 D. 1970
Louise Bogan's art is compactness compacted. Emotion with her, as she has said of certain fiction, is 'itself form, the kernel which builds outward form from inward intensity.' Marianne Moore
Poet
Gwendolyn Brooks
B. 1917 D. 2000
I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black. . . Gwendolyn Brooks
Poet
Allen Tate
B. 1899 D. 1979
A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all. Allen Tate
Poet
Li-Young Lee
B. 1957
His poems are made from his life with his life; his poems are earned. He dares to be simple. And he is surely among the finest young poets alive. - The American Poetry Review
Poet
Yvor Winters
B. 1900 D. 1968
There's no one like him for making a simple declarative sentence crackle under your eyes like a burning apple-bough. Such magnificent wrath... - Hayden Carruth on Yvor Winters
Poet
Elizabeth Bishop
B. 1911 D. 1979
All her poems have written underneath - 'I have seen it.' - Randall Jarrell
Poet
Yusef Komunyakaa
B. 1947
My father could only sign/His name, but he'd look at blueprints/& say how many bricks/ Formed each wall - My Father's Letters, Yusef Komunyakaa
Poet
Ted Kooser
B. 1939
I try to honor my reader's patience and generosity by presenting what I have to say as clearly and succinctly as possible. - Ted Kooser
Poet
Robert Hass
B. 1941
Poetry is a way of living...a human activity like baking bread or playing basketball. - Robert Hass