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Recorded by Nicholas Christopher for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 13, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Sally Wen Mao for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 12, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Amie Whittemore for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 11, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Usha Akella for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 10, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Amy Glynn for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 9, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by David Mura for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 8, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Lauren K. Watel for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 7, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Michael Collier for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 6, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Keetje Kuipers for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 5, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Andrew Calis for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 4, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Sophia Naz for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 3, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Tomás Q. Morín for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 2, 2025. www.poets.org
A new Craftwork conversation with Maggie Smith, bestselling author of Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, available from Washington Square Press. Smith's other books includeYou Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize, and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Best American Poetry, and more. You can follow her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Recorded by Jenny Xie for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on May 1, 2025. www.poets.org
During her term as 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita, the Academy of American Poets awarded Luisa A. Igloria one of twenty-three Poet Laureate Fellowships in 2021, to support a program of public poetry projects. She is the recipient of the Immigrant Writing Series Prize from Black Lawrence Press for Caulbearer (2024), and was one of 2 Co-Winners of the 2019 Crab Orchard Poetry Prize for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, fall 2020). In April 2021, the Writers Union of the Philippines (UMPIL) conferred on her the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas lifetime achievement award in the English poetry category. In 2015, she was the inaugural winner of the Resurgence Prize (UK), the world's first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. Former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey selected her chapbook What is Left of Wings, I Ask as the 2018 recipient of the Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Poetry Chapbook Prize. Other works include The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2018), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (2014 May Swenson Prize, Utah State University Press), and 10 other books. She is lead editor, along with co-editors Aileen Cassinetto and Jeremy S. Hoffman, of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (Paloma Press, September 2023). Her poems are widely published or appearing in national and international anthologies, and print and online literary journals including The Georgia Review, Orion, Shenandoah, Cincinnati Review, The Common, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, Diode, Missouri Review, Rattle, Poetry East, Your Impossible Voice, Poetry, Shanghai Literary Review, Cha, and others. Luisa served as the inaugural Glasgow Visiting Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University in 2018. Luisa also leads workshops at The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk (and serves on the Muse Board). She is a Louis I. Jaffe Professor and University Professor of English and Creative Writing, and a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University, which she directed from 2009-2015. Since 2010, she has been writing (at least) a poem a day. www.luisaigloria.com Social Media: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/VAPoetLaureate2020 Instagram @poetslizard X/Twitter @ThePoetsLizard https://linktr.ee/thepoetslizard
Recorded by Mary Sutton and Garrett Hongo for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 30, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Karla Cordero for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 30, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Mariposa Fernández for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 29, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Noel Quiñones for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 28, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Rachel Dillon for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 27, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by staff of the Academy of American Poets for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 26, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Gabriel Ramirez for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 25, 2025. www.poets.org
Our series of Poetry Month conversations continues with Robin Walter, whose debut collection Little Mercy was awarded the 2024 Academy of American Poets' First Book Award.
Recorded by Dimitri Reyes for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 24, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Gabriel Cortez for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 23, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Barbara Jane Reyes for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 22, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Anacaona Rocio Milagro for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 21, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by staff of the Academy of American Poets for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 20, 2025. www.poets.org
Send us a textWelcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 362 - Poetry and DreamsI was looking through articles about Poe to find information for a future article regarding why do so many people read Edgar Allan Poe. And I found some great stuff and certainly will be writing an episode or two about that subject. But I found an article that said that more Americans - almost 3/4 - are familiar with Edgar Poe - more than any other poet. Shakespeare is second.Now this was the episode where I wanted to start some episodes on Bram Stoker - but it turns out there is a poetry workshop that is rather time sensitive, so I better get this out now.You see, on Thursday, April 24 there will be a free workshop from the Academy of American Poets online at YouTube - no charge at all, tho I doubt they would turn down donations. All you need to do is register, and again, it is free. I have the URL on my Buzzsprout transcript and show notes - but in case you can't remember URLS - I can't - it is https//poets.org/gala/2025 - - again, it is free - all you need to do is register in advance. The readers include people such as Christine Baranski, Stephen King, Tony Kusher, Fran Lebowitz, and Lawrence O'Donnell - among others.Just wanted to be sure that you got the info about what is called Poetry and the Creative Mind - again, to be held on Thursday, April 24.By the way, Meryl Streep is extremely active in Poetry and the Creative Mind, and has read works by Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and Walt Whitman in programs across multiple years.By the way, poets.org.gala.2025 will take you to the registration page as well.For the rest of this episode, I would like to delve into several of Edgar Poe's poems that deal with dreams. The three poems are Dreams, A Dream, and A Dream Within a Dream, and Dreamland - and boy, are they easy to mix up. So take them in order considering the number of words in the title - I know it sounds simplistic but stay with me because it makes things soooo much easier. And I am not going to include the poem Dreamland until the end of this podcast - It is (in my opinion, a poem that is in a class by yourself.)Think 1, 2, and 5 - words that is -The title of Dreams is just one word, the title of A Dream is two words, and the title of the shortest and most mature work - A Dream Within a Dream is 5 words. Dreams and A Dream were both published in 1827 and A Dream Within a Dream was published in 1849 - the year of Edgar Poe's earthly demise.Let me say that again - The title of Dreams is just one word, the title of A Dream is two words, and the title of the most mature work - A Dream Within a Dream is 5 words. Dreams and A Dream were both published in 1827 and A Dream Within a Dream was published in 1849.Thank you for experiencing Celebrate Poe.
Recorded by staff of the Academy of American Poets for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 19, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Malcolm Friend for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 18, 2025. www.poets.org
This week, discover the history of National Poetry Month, started by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, and explore its impact on readers, students, and poets worldwide. From tips on reading poetry to spotlighting U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón's work, this episode covers it all. Plus, enjoy poetry recommendations for teens and kids, featuring powerful spoken word, Shel Silverstein-inspired rhymes, and even a custom poem about the podcast! Whether you're a poetry newbie or a seasoned fan, there's something here for everyone.
Recorded by Jacqueline Jiang for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 17, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by jo reyes-boitel for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 16, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Cynthia Dewi Oka for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 15, 2025. www.poets.org
Tina Cane is the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI, and, from 2016-2024, served as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island where she lives with her husband and three children. In her capacity as poet laureate, Cane established her state's first youth poetry ambassador program in partnership with Rhode Island Center for the Book, and brought the Poetry-in-Motion program from the New York City Transit System to Rhode Island's state-wide buses. Cane is the author of The Fifth Thought, Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Books, 2016), Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books 2017), Body of Work (Veliz Books, 2019), and Year of the Murder Hornet (Veliz Books, 2022). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She was also a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Her debut novel-in-verse for young adults, Alma Presses Play (Penguin/Random House) was released in September 2021. Cane is also the creator/curator of the distance reading series, Poetry is Bread, and the editor of Poetry is Bread: The Anthology (forthcoming from Nirala Press, 2024). Her second verse novel for young readers, Are You Nobody Too? (Penguin/ Random House) was released in August 2024.Janelle Bence is a high-school English teacher with 24 years of experience teaching in Texas. Her favorite project is a Spoken Word event where freshmen support a local non-profit of their choosing. She is a longstanding member of the National Writing Project and enjoys collaborating with researchers to deepen her praxis. Currently, two projects she is working on are Transdisciplinary Civic Composing Collective (UT Austin) and Colorado State Sustainable Teaching and Learning (Colorado State University). Her writing is published in Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom (Mirra & Garcia, 2023) and Teaching for Equity, Justice, and Antiracism with Digital Literacy Practices (Edited By Meghan E. Barnes, Rick Marlatt).
Recorded by David Maduli for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 14, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by staff of the Academy of American Poets for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 13, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by staff of the Academy of American Poets for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 12, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Vincent Toro for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 11, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Leonora Simonovis for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 10, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Brittany Rogers for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 9, 2025. www.poets.org
For the second week of Poetry Month, Ricardo Maldonado of the Academy of American Poets, will read some of the poems that are resonating with him today, and explain how his organization is celebrating poetry in April. Plus, listeners share their favorite poems.
Recorded by Grisel Y. Acosta for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 8, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Yesenia Montilla for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 7, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Ed Roberson for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 6, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by staff of the Academy of American Poets for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 5, 2025. www.poets.org
Recorded by Carlos Andrés Gómez for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on April 4, 2025. www.poets.org
Poet, teacher, former Director,Academy of American Poets, the NEA, The Folger Poetry Board, and more.
As the long, exhausting march toward summer begins for many students, the wise and compassionate David Wagoner takes us to the intersection of love and weakness. Happy reading.David Wagoner was recognized as the leading poet of the Pacific Northwest, often compared to his early mentor Theodore Roethke, and highly praised for his skillful, insightful and serious body of work. He won numerous prestigious literary awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and was nominated twice for the National Book Award. The author of ten acclaimed novels, Wagoner's fiction has been awarded the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Award. Professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Wagoner enjoyed an excellent reputation as both a writer and a teacher of writing. He was selected to serve as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1978, replacing Robert Lowell, and was the editor of Poetry Northwest until 2002.Born in Ohio and raised in Indiana, Midwesterner Wagoner was initially influenced by family ties, ethnic neighborhoods, industrial production and pollution, and the urban environment. His move to the Pacific Northwest in 1954, at Roethke's urging, changed both his outlook and his poetry. Writing in the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Wagoner recalls: “when I drove down out of the Cascades and saw the region that was to become my home territory for the next thirty years, my extreme uneasiness turned into awe. I had never seen or imagined such greenness, such a promise of healing growth. Everything I saw appeared to be living ancestral forms of the dead earth where I'd tried to grow up.” Wagoner's poetry often mourns the loss of a natural, fertile wilderness, though David K. Robinson, writing in Contemporary Poetry, described the themes of “survival, anger at those who violate the natural world” and “a Chaucerian delight in human oddity” at work in the poems as well. Critics have also praised Wagoner's poetry for its crisp descriptive detail and metaphorical bent. However, Paul Breslin in the New York Times Book Review pronounced David Wagoner to be “predominantly a nature poet…as Frost and Roethke were nature poets.”Wagoner's first books, including Dry Sun, Dry Wind (1953), A Place to Stand (1958), and Poems (1959), demonstrate an early mastery of his chosen subject matter and form. Often comprised of observations of nature, Wagoner links his speakers' predicaments and estrangement to the larger imperfection of the world. In Wagoner's second book, A Place to Stand,Roethke's influence is clear, and the book uses journey poems to represent the poet's own quest back to his beginnings. Wagoner's fourth book, The Nesting Ground (1963), reflects his relocation physically, aesthetically and emotionally; the Midwest is abandoned for the lush abundance of the Pacific Northwest, and Wagoner's style is less concerned with lamentation or complaint and more with cataloguing the bounty around him. James K. Robinson called the title poem from Staying Alive (1966) “one of the best American poems since World War II.” In poems like “The Words,” Wagoner discovers harmony with nature by learning to be open to all it has to offer: “I take what is: / The light beats on the stones, / the wind over water shines / Like long grass through the trees, / As I set loose, like birds / in a landscape, the old words.” Robert Cording, who called Staying Alive “the volume where Wagoner comes into his own as a poet,” believed that for Wagoner, taking what is involves “an acceptance of our fragmented selves, which through love we are always trying to patch together; an acceptance of our own darkness; and an acceptance of the world around us with which we must reacquaint ourselves.”Collected Poems 1956-1976 (1976) was nominated for the National Book Award and praised by X. J. Kennedy in Parnassus for offering poems which are “beautifully clear; not merely comprehensible, but clear in the sense that their contents are quickly visible.” Yet it was Who Shall Be the Sun? (1978),based upon Native American myth and legend, which gained critical attention. Hayden Carruth, writing in Harper's Magazine, called the book “a remarkable achievement,” not only for its presentation of “the literalness of shamanistic mysticism” but also for “its true feeling.” Hudson Review's James Finn Cotter also noted how Wagoner “has not written translations but condensed versions that avoid stereotyped language….The voice is Wagoner's own, personal, familiar, concerned. He has achieved a remarkable fusion of nature, legend and psyche in these poems.”In Broken Country (1979), also nominated for the National Book Award, shows Wagoner honing the instructional backpacking poems he had first used in Staying Alive. Leonard Neufeldt, writing in New England Review,called “the love lyrics” of the first section “among the finest since Williams' ‘Asphodel.'” Wagoner has been accused of using staid pastoral conventions in book after book, as well as writing less well about human subjects. However, his books have continued to receive critical attention, often recognized for the ways in which they use encounters with nature as metaphors for encounters with the self. First Light (1983), Wagoner's “most intense” collection, according to James K. Robinson, reflects Wagoner's third marriage to poet Robin Seyfried. And Publishers Weekly celebrated Walt Whitman Bathing (1996) for its use of “plainspoken formal virtuosity” which allows for “a pragmatic clarity of perception.” A volume of new and collected poems, Traveling Light, was released in 1999. Sampling Wagoner's work through the years, many reviewers found the strongest poems to also be the newest. Rochelle Ratner in Library Journal noted “since many of the best are in the ‘New Poems' section, it might make sense to wait for his next volume.” That next volume, The House of Song (2002) won high praise for its variety of subject matter and pitch-perfect craft. Christina Pugh in Poetry declared “The House of Song boasts a superb architecture, and each one of its rooms (or in Italian, stanzas) affords a pleasure that enhances the last.” In 2008 Wagoner published his twenty-third collection of verse, A Map of the Night. Reviewing the book for the Seattle Times, Sheila Farr found many poems shot through with nostalgia, adding “the book feels like a summing-up.” Conceding that “not all the work reaches the high plane of Wagoner's reputation,” Farr described its “finest moments” as those which “resonate with the title, venturing into darkness and helping us recognize its familiar places.”In addition to his numerous books of poetry, David Wagoner was also a successful novelist, writing both mainstream fiction and regional Western fiction. Offering a steady mix of drama seasoned with occasional comedy, Wagoner's tales often involve a naive central character's encounter with and acceptance of human failing and social corruption. In the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Wagoner described his first novel, The Man in the Middle (1954), as “a thriller with some Graham Greene overtones about a railroad crossing watchmen in violent political trouble in Chicago,” his second novel, Money, Money, Money (1955), as a story about “a young tree surgeon who can't touch, look at, or even think about money, though he has a lot of it,” his third novel, Rock (1958) as a tale of “teenage Chicago delinquents,” and his fifth novel, Baby, Come On Inside (1968) as a story “about an aging popular singer who'd lost his voice.” As a popular novelist, however, Wagoner is best known for The Escape Artist (1965), the story of an amateur magician and the unscrupulous adults who attempt to exploit him, which was adapted as a film in 1981. Wagoner produced four successful novels as a Western “regional” writer. Structurally and thematically, they bear similarities to his other novels. David W. Madden noted in Twentieth-Century Western Writers: “Central to each of these [Western] works is a young protagonist's movement from innocence to experience as he journeys across the American frontier encountering an often debased and corrupted world. However, unlike those he meets, the hero retains his fundamental optimism and incorruptibility.”Although Wagoner wrote numerous novels, his reputation rests on his numerous, exquisitely crafted poetry collections, and his dedication as a teacher. Harold Bloom said of Wagoner: “His study of American nostalgias is as eloquent as that of James Wright, and like Wright's poetry carries on some of the deepest currents in American verse.” And Leonard Neufeldt called Wagoner “simply, one of the most accomplished poets currently at work in and with America…His range and mastery of subjects, voices, and modes, his ability to work with ease in any of the modes (narrative, descriptive, dramatic, lyric, anecdotal) and with any number of species (elegy, satirical portraiture, verse editorial, apostrophe, jeremiad, and childlike song, to name a few) and his frequent combinations of a number of these into astonishingly compelling orchestrations provide us with an intelligent and convincing definition of genius.”Wagoner died in late 2021 at age 95.-bio via Poetry Foundation This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe