Poetry in America

Season 4 Preview

Performers, public figures and everyday Americans join host Elisa New to read and discuss unforgettable American poems. The poems in Season 4 take us from colonial Boston to the halls of Congress, from Texas Hill Country to Central Park. Guests range from poets to celebrity chefs, from actors to ice cream makers, from political strategists to preachers and more.

Season 4 Preview

30s

  • Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper

    S4 E7 - 25m 21s

    Long before he won the National Book Award, Latinx poet Martín Espada worked after school in a factory making legal pads. Espada, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, economists Natasha Sarin, Betsey Stevenson, and Justin Wolfers, historian Jill Lepore, and actor John Turturro join Elisa New to reflect on social mobility, and what connects manual labor with the raw materials of poetry and law.

  • Emperor of Ice Cream, Motive for Metaphor: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Emperor of Ice Cream, Motive for Metaphor

    S4 E6 - 25m 43s

    Modernist poet Wallace Stevens balanced his long career as an insurance executive with a thrilling life of the imagination. Actor Murray Bartlett, ice cream maker Gus Rancatore, cognitive scientist Laurie Santos, scholar Al Filreis, poet David Baker, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Bob Rubin, and the 2021 National Student Poets join Elisa New.

  • Hill Country: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Hill Country

    S4 E5 - 25m 21s

    God drives down from the mountains behind the wheel of a Jeep, in this poem by Tracy K. Smith, former U.S. poet laureate. Smith illuminates the ambrosial bounty of Texas Hill Country, where she’s joined by country music singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, members of both Christian and Jewish communities, and host Elisa New.

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