Category archive: Press

Elisa New featured by Brandeis University

On April 19th, 2022, in honor of National Poetry Month, Anne Lawrence Guyon interviewed Elisa New for Brandeis Alumni Stories. The online piece, “To Be Nobody But Herself,” celebrates New’s accomplishments and chronicles how her undergraduate experience at Brandeis has informed her career as a humanist. 

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Poetry in America featured on Tomorrow Will Be Televised

On February 11th, Elisa New & two-time Poetry in America guest Donna Lynne Champlin were interviewed on Simon Applebaum’s online radio program “Tomorrow Will Be Televised.”  When discussing the difference between poetry and theater, Champlin said: “Poetry is everywhere. Poetry is a haiku on the subway, it’s a lyric to your favorite song, it’s a monologue, it’s just words put in a certain way that will inspire a certain feeling … the feeling that poetry is not easy to understand couldn’t be further from the truth.”

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Poetry in America featured in The Los Angeles Daily News

On February 19th, 2022, Erik Pedersen featured Poetry in America in The Los Angeles Daily News’s popular newsletter “Book Pages.” While channel surfing, Pedersen and his wife watched our episode on Walt Whitman’s “The Wound-Dresser” and found themselves hooked. Recommending the series to his readers, Pederson described it as: “​​smart, affecting and visually interesting, [and] packed with emotion, drama, music, history and more.” 

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Elisa New Interviewed on KJZZ

On Wednesday, January 19th, Poetry in America host Elisa New was interviewed by Steve Goldstein for KJZZ (NPR Phoenix). Goldstein and New discuss what the broad term “humanities” means, and how that relates to Professor New’s mission leading the new Center for the Public Humanities at Arizona State University (ASU). 

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Poetry in America in Publishers Weekly Daily

On Friday, January 21st, Poetry in America was featured as the Photo of the Day by Publishers Weekly Daily. Their chosen photo, in honor of the release of our third season, featured poet Linda Hogan, Writer in Residence for the Chickasaw Nation, who discusses her work “Bear Fat” with Professor Elisa New and others in a forthcoming episode. 

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Poetry in America featured in The Paris Review

On July 10, 2020, Poetry in America was featured in The Paris Review’s weekly round-up of staff picks. Alongside the work of novelists Marie NDiaye and Halle Butler, essayist Moyra Davey, and jazz label Pi Recordings, The Paris Review staff spotlights Poetry in America’s season 2 episode on Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “You and I Are Disappearing.”

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Poetry in America featured in Forbes

On June 12th,  2020, Forbes wrote about Poetry in America Live event hosted by the Sheen Center, a continuation of the Finishing the Hat episode, and showcased the series more generally. The article highlights the work of the Sheen Center, the accomplishments of the live event’s guests (singer & actor Melissa Errico, musical director Tedd Firth, and writer Adam Gopnik), the vitality of the series, and the specific contents of the live event. 

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Poetry in America featured in The New York Times

On June 11th, 2020, The New York Times featured Poetry in America’s live ‘Finishing the Hat’ event on their listing of livestreams to watch. They noted the live events mixture of discussion and performance as well as the variety and quality of guests.

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Poetry in America featured in Psychology Today

On May 30th, 2020, Psychology Today featured a blog post on Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem” and the current protests, referencing (and encouraging readers to watch) our Season 1 episode on the poem. How do we deal with suffering? Can poetry provide us comfort? Can it help us move forward?

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Poetry in America featured in LitHub

On May 29th, 2020, LitHub featured Poetry in America’s tie-in Whitman crossword puzzle. PIA guest (and author, poet & puzzler) Adrienne Raphel’s promotional Whitman crossword was discussed with consideration to Poetry in America’s balancing act between its broader appeals and desire to attract poetry nerds.

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Poetry in America featured in Playbill

On May 5th, 2020, Playbill featured Poetry in America’s episode on Sondheim’s “Finishing The Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George in their film and tv news. The article discusses both the aim of the show (to analyze how Sondheim works at the intersection of lyric and sound) and the very real Broadway creds of the guests.

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Poetry in America featured in The Washington Post

On April 10th, 2020, The Washington Post Book Club Newsletter, in its series of reviews and recommendations from critic Ron Charles featured Poetry in America. The article notes the great variety of guests on the show, the close readings of individual poems, and the accompanying educational materials.

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Poetry in America featured in The Atlantic

On August 20th, 2018, The Atlantic featured Poetry in America in an article on the improving fortunes of Poetry in popular culture following an NEA study, showing a significant increase in the readership of Poetry (including a two-fold rise for those 18-24). The article attributed this uptick to the interchange between poetry and other mediums (in the case of Poetry in America documentary filmmaking).

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Poetry in America featured in The Boston Globe

On April 25th, 2018, The Boston Globe discussed Poetry in America in its “TV Critics Corner.” In the article are topics including the state of poetry (Rupi Kaur, the dream frontier, dismissive college freshmen), the case (for poetry) made by the show, and the potential downside to listening to Allen Ginsberg’s “Hum Bom” at excessive volume. 

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Poetry in America featured in Tablet

On April 13th, 2018, Tablet Magazine published an essay in its Arts and Letters section on Poetry in America’s first season. Describing the show as ‘infectious,’ ‘too good to be true,’ and capable of inspiring viewers to ‘seek out more daring and unusual contemporary writing.’ The article also notes some of season 1’s highlights: Regina Spektor’s personal take on ‘The New Colossus’, New’s intro to the Ginsberg episode, and the natural conversational style from which stunning insights seem to ‘spontaneously erupt at climactic points.’

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Poetry in America featured in The Star Tribune

On April 3rd, 2018, The Star Tribune’s Neal Jordan listed Poetry in America among his daily TV Picks. While Jordan remained agnostic towards Cythia Nixon’s gubernatorial run, he faithfully praised her critical reading abilities in our episode on Emily Dickinson’s “I Cannot Dance Opon My Toes.”

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Poetry in America featured in Time Magazine

On April 2nd, 2018, Time Magazine’s Olivia Waxman discussed John McCain’s poetic leanings—his famous recitation on TV, his time in the Hanoi Hilton—and referred readers to Poetry in America’s exclusive interview with McCain on the poem he knew all too well: Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”

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Poetry in America featured in The New Yorker

On December 14th, 2014, Elisabeth Denison wrote about The Nantucket Poetry Project for The New Yorker Culture Desk. Denison discusses Robert Pinsky’s “Shirt,” which originally appeared in The New Yorker in the late 80s. Long prior to creating a Season One episode of Poetry in America Elisa New was visualizing Pinsky’s poem with readings and discussions by Nas, Kate Burton, and Pinsky himself.

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