Stream an episode from our latest season
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, …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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, …
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 …
Looking for The Gulf Motel by Richard Blanco
Eight new half-hour episodes of Poetry in America will premiere in January 2022 and continue through the spring. Episodes focus on unforgettable American poems, which guests read and discuss with Elisa New, the series creator, host and director. The third season continues to expand the scope of the series: visit the plains and deserts of the American west and southwest with Linda Hogan and Alberto Ríos, the green mountains of Vermont with Robert Frost, and the pastel motels of Marco Island with Richard Blanco.
Season Three guests include: Gloria Estefan, Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, David Strathairn, Tracy K. Smith, Tony Kushner, Julia Alvarez, LisaGay Hamilton, Robin D.G. Kelley, Emily Oster, Joshua Bennett, Rafael Campo, Donna Lynne Champlin, Leslie Jamison, DJ Spooky and more discussing works by A.R. Ammons, Richard Blanco, Robert Frost, Linda Hogan, Bernadette Mayer, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sharon Olds, Alberto Ríos, Evie Shockley, and Walt Whitman.
Interested in learning more? Poetry in America offers a wide range of courses, all dedicated to bringing poetry into classrooms and living rooms around the world. Check out our course offerings
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965 to serve and strengthen our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans.
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Learn more about the Sloan FoundationAdditional support for season three provided by:
Deborah Hayes Stone & Max Stone