In the November 2022 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, poet and journalist Kristina Andersson Bicher discussed Poetry in America’s progress expanding access to high quality humanities education over the past decade.
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The mythology of the vast “untouched” frontier has inspired American authors from James Fenimore Cooper to Thomas Pynchon. But, the natural world explored in the poetry of the early 20th century American poet Robinson Jeffers is not one of heroism or horses. Gillian Osborne – Instructor and Curriculum Designer for Poetry in America, Director of Curriculum at ASU’s Center for Public Humanities, and scholar of 19th century American and environmental literature – compares Jeffers’s reverence for American nature, and his Californian “cultural nationalism,” to famous American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau’s relationship with the natural world in the century before.
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Richard Blanco is a poet who, when reflecting on his past, displays both his inimitable uniqueness and the universality of his experiences.
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Eighth grade, a turning point in adolescence, is a great time to be introduced to contemporary poetry. Reading poetry can feel daunting for newcomers, but at Poetry in America, we work to present poetry not as academic and aloof, but real and relatable—an art form that is great fun, and that instigates growth of the mind.
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Three years ago, Poetry in America launched an online channel with the science magazine Nautilus, dedicated to bringing together science and poetry. This summer, as Poetry in America’s educational programs settle into their new home base at Arizona State University’s Center for Public Humanities, the Nautilus channel is once again breaking new ground.
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May 2022 marked the graduation of the first class of Poetry in America, 1850-1945.
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This summer, in collaboration with Arizona State University’s Center for the Public Humanities, Poetry in America is launching a summer intensive workshop for high school students in India.
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This summer, Arizona State University’s Center for Public Humanities collaborated with ASU Prep Digital to present an environmental poetry intensive for Middle and High School educators!
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Filming for Season Four continued this April in and around Austin, Texas. We filmed several Texas natives on Tracy K. Smith’s “Hill Country,” a poem that journeys through the complicated linkage between biblical text and the geography of “Jesus country.” What has been lost in translation (and gained in misprision) between ancient text and modern life?
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On April 13th, 2022, Arizona PBS presented a celebration of National Poetry Month, spotlighting the Arizona State University faculty who appeared in our third season.
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On April 12th, 2022, Poetry in America’s own Elisa New and Gillian Osborne joined the National Student Poets Class of 2020 for a discussion of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s provocative poetry, and their own craft.
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On April 21st, 2022, Cornell Chronicle’s David Nutt interviewed Professor of English Roger Gilbert about the special significance of A.R. Ammons’ poem “Cascadilla Falls” on Cornell’s campus.
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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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T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland begins: “April is the cruelest month.” In 1996, the American Academy of Poets declared the very same cruel April National Poetry Month, with a winking …
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Poetry in America reunited with PBS Books on January 26th, 2022 to host another virtual event on trailblazing women poets. Elisa New and PBS Books host Heather-Marie Montilla were joined by PIA Season Three featured poet Evie Shockley to discuss her poem, “you can say that again, billie.” The group was joined by two distinguished guests, who also appear in our Season Three episode: historian Robin D.G. Kelley, and actor LisaGay Hamilton.
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On Friday, March 11th, 2022, the independent Miami bookshop Books and Books hosted a screening of our episode on Richard Blanco’s “Looking for The Gulf Motel,” atSanctuary of the Arts in Coral Gables, Florida. The sold-out screening was followed by a fascinating discussion and audience Q&A with Blanco, Elisa New, and entrepreneur Nely Galán, as well as a reading and book signing with Blanco.
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LitHub’s “Virtual Book Channel.” Every week, in conjunction with the release of our new episode, LitHub has hosted an exclusive clip on their website and sent a brief description of the week’s episode to their LitHub Daily newsletter subscribers.
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“The Literary Life.” Kaplan, the longtime owner of independent bookstores Books & Books and co-founder of the acclaimed Miami Book Fair, focused his questions on their experience bringing Blanco’s poem “Looking for The Gulf Motel” to the screen.
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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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February 10th, in collaboration with Theater of War and Community Building Art Works (CBAW), we hosted a virtual community discussion of Walt Whitman’s “The Wound-Dresser.”
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On February 18th, 2022, Erik Pedersen featured Poetry in America in The Orange County Register’s “Books” section. Pedersen interviewed Elisa New on the challenges and delights of hosting and directing Poetry in America.
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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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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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On Friday, January 21st, 2022, Poetry in America host Elisa New was interviewed for The Arts Fuse. Speaking to Robert Israel, Professor New noted the importance of “the immersive aspect of poetry itself” in driving viewers to the show.
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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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On January 21st, Poetry in America was featured in The Washington Post Book World Newsletter. Ron Charles described Walt Whitman’s “The Wound-Dresser,” the subject of our season premier, as “a poem that shatters all romantic visions of war.”
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