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Kenneth Koch opens this reading with two poems about place: Senegal and Kenya specifically. The rest of the performance is devoted to poems collected in One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays.

In this reading, Mona Van Duyn reads poems appearing in To See, to Take (1970); Letter From a Father and Other Poems (1982); and Selected Poems (2002).

Adam Zagajewski reads from Tremor (1985) and Solidarity, Solitude (1990). He also reads early drafts of translations of poems that would go on to be collected in Canvas (1991); most differ from those that appear in the published version of the book (translated by Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry, and C.K. Williams).

Louise Glück reads from her 2001 collection of poems The Seven Ages.

Eleni Sikelianos reads from Earliest Worlds (2001), The California Poem (2004), and Body Clock (2008). This reading was given as the final installment of the Poetry Center's "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conversations about Art and Ecology" series.

Ruth Stephan reads from her collection Various Poems (1963). She also reads uncollected poems, one of which responds to John F. Kennedy's assassination a year prior.

Rae Armantrout reads from Writing the Plot About Sets (1998), Up To Speed (2004), Collected Prose (2007) and Next Life (2007). This reading was originally given with Rodney Phillips.

Brenda Shaughnessy reads from Interior with Sudden Joy (1999) and Human Dark with Sugar (2008). This reading was originally given with Gary Copeland Lilley and David Dominguez.

Poet-translators Pura López-Colomé and Forrest Gander give bilingual performances of poems from Science and Steepleflower (1998) and No Shelter: The Selected Poems of Pura López-Colomé (2002).

Brian Blanchfield reads from his James Laughlin Award-winning book A Several World (2014). This reading was originally given with Karen Brennan and Stephen Willey.

John Ashbery reads poems that would later be collected in Hotel Lautréamont (1992), as well as an excerpt from Flow Chart (1991).

Australian poets Vincent Buckley, Les Murray, and David Malouf visit Tucson to read their work, also providing background and commentary. Les Murray reads a selection of poems in chronological order, including his oldest poem "The Burning Crook." Vincent Buckley reads from Golden Builders (1976), Late Winter Child (1979), and The Pattern (1979), as well as some unpublished poems. David Malouf reads both poetry and passages from his novel An Imaginary Life (1978).

Lynn Luria-Sukenick reads two works of fiction ("The Man With The Blues Guitar" and "Still Life With Bath"), along with a short performance piece called "Bomb." "Bomb" is a collaboration with poet and musician Rob Brezsny, whose part is performed here by Jonathan Penner.

Jim Simmerman reads from a manuscript that would become his collection Kingdom Come (1999), a series of persona poems written in the voices of various Biblical characters. Jewell Parker Rhodes reads from her first novel, Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau (1993), inspired by the life of the famed 19th century Voodoo Queen. She reads two scenes from the novel, the first set just before Marie Laveau's tenth birthday, and the second during the performance of one of Laveau's greatest miracles.

Nanao Sakaki performs poems and songs in the courtyard of the Poetry Center on Cherry Avenue. Asking the audience, "Any questions? I'll answer by my poems," Sakaki addresses themes raised by audience members such as anger, feeling at home, time, walking, and love for the desert and all forms of life.

Mark Doty reads from his collection of poetry Deep Lane (2015).

Johanna Skibsrud reads from The Description of the World (2016) as well as from a manuscript-in-progress titled Medium. This reading was originally given with Cynthia Hogue.

Jennifer Elise Foerster reads from The Maybe-Bird (2022), her third book of poetry. Her poems and commentary center on themes of poetry as deep listening, layered voices, and created forms that expand and circle back on themselves. Foerster closes with two short poems in Mvskoke. Part of the Distinguished Visitors in Creative Writing Series, this reading was originally given with Michael Wasson.