United States of Poetry

Where are you from? Ours is the New Land, the roots of our family trees criss-cross beneath continents and seas. We're a hyphenated people, blends and shades. This episode features Henry Real Bird, George Ella Lyon, Jeff Tagami, Tracie Morris, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Naomi Shihab Nye, Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Lord Buckley, Sparrow, Everston Sylvester, Rita Dove and James Still.

To sleep perchance to dream- to wake up and it's off to work. The tick tock of the clock tock tock, the beat beat of the heart, the crash crash of the waves against the shore- the methodical irresistibility of time marches on. This episode features Czeslaw Milosz, Rev. Pedro Pietri, Ismail Azim El, Sheryl Noethe, Matt Cook, Hal Sirowitz, Paul Beatty, C.D. Wright Derek Walcott and others.

The great argument: is a poem inherently political? Or does the poem with political intent cease to be a poem, become rhetoric? This episode features Leonard Cohen, Amiri Baraka, Nerissa Diaz, Jim Northrup, Luís Alfaro, Wanda Coleman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and others.

Who wrote "Who wrote the book of love?"? Poets. The domain of the heart, struggling to twin, that's where the poet and the poem step in. This episode features Pearl Cleage, Allen Gingsberg, Maggie Estep, Quincy Troupe, Lou Reed, Joseph Brodsky, Miguel Algarín, Lypsinka and others.

Poems are made of words. Theirs is a fragile architecture. Is "the apple" green? or red or yellow? Hanging on the tree or baked in the pie? This episode features Carla Harryman, Robert Creeley, Russell Leong, Johnny Depp, Larry Eigner, Jimmy Carter, Michael Franti, Peter Cook, and others.