oral traditions

James Thomas Stevens reads poems from Combing the Snakes from His Hair (2002), as well as poems that would later be collected in A Bridge Dead in the Water (2007). This reading was originally given with Matthea Harvey and Olena Kalytiak Davis for the Next Word in Poetry Series.

In this lecture on Homer titled "We Should Shudder," Michael Schmidt discusses the distance of early Greek sensibility from our own and the power of impersonal writing in Homer's poems, reflecting upon what modern poets can learn from this approach. He also incorporates readings of poems by W.H. Auden and Edwin Muir.