war

Richard Eberhart reads from Fields of Grace (1972), along with a wide range of selections from his earlier work.

Donald Hall reads from The Alligator Bride: Poems New and Selected (1969) and The Yellow Room (1971). He also reads poems that would be collected in The Town of Hill (1975) along with several that remain uncollected, including a series of surrealistic limericks.

Yusef Komunyakaa reads widely from his poetry published in the 1980s, including many poems from Dien Cai Dau (1988). He also reads poems that would soon thereafter be collected in Magic City (1992) and Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (1993).

W.S. Merwin reads from his early collections The Moving Target (1963) and The Lice (1967), as well as from The Carrier of Ladders (1970), which had not yet been completed at the time of this reading. Used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

Richard Shelton reads from The Tattooed Desert (1970), as well as several poems from Journal of Return (1969) and Of All the Dirty Words (1972).

Sandra McPherson reads from her first two collections of poetry, Elegies for the Hot Season (1970) and Radiation (1973). She reads one love poem that remains uncollected.

Ai reads solely from the manuscript for Sin, a collection published the year following this reading. She briefly discusses her time at the University of Arizona, where she was a student during the late 1960s.

Tomas Tranströmer reads widely from his work; he also reads two poems by fellow Swedish poet Harry Martinson. Of note, Martinson received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974, the year before this reading. Thirty-six years later, in 2011, Tranströmer himself was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The reading includes the performance of two poems in Swedish, and ends with a rich and extensive question and answer session.

Neil Claremon reads from East by Southwest (1970), along with uncollected poems and poems that would later appear in West of the American Dream: Visions of an Alien Landscape (1973).

Poet, playwright, and novelist Owen Dodson reads a range of poems from his distinguished career. As he introduces his poems, Dodson reflects on his consciousness as a writer, from his undergraduate days at Bates College to his engagement with spirituality, Civil Rights, and social justice.

Jim Harrison reads widely from his earliest collections of poetry: Plain Song (1965), Locations (1968), and Outlyer & Ghazals (1971).

Paul Zimmer reads from The Republic of Many Voices (1969), along with poems that would be published in The Zimmer Poems (1976) or remain uncollected. Making use of persona, narrative, and humor, he addresses topics such as childhood, identity, and mortality.

Alan Dugan reads from his first four books of poems; he also reads unpublished poems and poems that would go on to appear in New and Collected Poems (1983).

Yehuda Amichai reads widely from his extensive body of work, reading some poems in both English and Hebrew. Several translations (including translations of poem titles) performed here differ from the translations collected in his books.

Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon reads from his collection Baghdad Blues and uncollected translations of many more poems. He concludes the reading with a performance of a poem in Arabic.

Judith Ortiz Cofer reads prose and poetry from Terms of Survival (1987) and Silent Dancing (1990), as well as work that would later be collected in The Latin Deli (1993), Reaching for the Mainland (1995), and A Love Story Beginning in Spanish (2005).

Ana Božičević reads work from Stars of the Night Commute (2009) as well as work that would go on to be collected in Rise in the Fall (2013). This reading was given alongside Kazim Ali as part of the Next Word in Poetry series.

Peter Wild reads uncollected poems on a diverse range of subjects, from famous Western frontiersmen to radio therapy to optometrists. Along the way he shares with the audience experiences and preoccupations that have shaped his work.

In this reading, originally given with Peggy Shumaker, Eloise Klein Healy reads from the collection A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings (2013).

Rita Dove reads from her collection American Smooth: Poems (2004).

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.

Srikanth Reddy reads from Facts for Visitors (2004) and Voyager (2011). This reading was originally given with Brian Turner and Joshua Marie Wilkinson.

Brian Turner reads from Here, Bullet (2005). This reading was originally given with Srikanth Reddy and Joshua Marie Wilkinson.

Dana Levin reads primarily from In the Surgical Theatre (1999). This reading was originally given with Louise Glück.

Matt Méndez reads from Twitching Heart (2012). This reading was originally given with C.E. Poverman as part of the UA Prose Series.

Timothy Liu reads new poems that would go on to be published in Don't Go Back to Sleep (2014), as well as poems from Polytheogamy (2009) and Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse (2009).

Semezdin Mehmedinović reads poems from Sarajevo Blues (1998) and Nine Alexandrias (2003).

Gene Frumkin reads poems from The Rainbow-Walker (1968). This reading was originally given with Douglas Flaherty.

Douglas Flaherty reads poems from The Elderly Battlefield Nurse (1968). This reading was originally given with Gene Frumkin.

W.S. Merwin reads poems from collections spanning four decades of work, including poems that would be collected three years later in Travels (1993). Used with permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

CAConrad reads poems from The Book of Frank (2009), A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics (2012), and Translucent Salamander: A (Soma)tic Poetry Ritual and Resulting Poems (2013), along with new and uncollected work.

Yona Harvey performs poems from Hemming the Water (2013) as well as work unpublished at the time of the reading. This reading was originally given with Craig Santos Perez as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Rolando Hinojosa reads widely from his work in English and Spanish.

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.

In this matinee performance at Tucson High School, Natalie Diaz reads poems, provides commentary, and participates in a question and answer session with Eduardo C. Corral.

David Kirby reads from his poetry. Kirby provides many anecdotes between poems, explaining the role of research in his creative process, and telling witty stories of the personal experiences that spark much of his work.

Carolyn Kizer reads from her poems, many of which are dedicated to historical heroes or to figures who played an important role in her personal life.

Willy Vlautin reads segments from the perspectives of three main characters (Freddie McCall, Nurse Pauline Hawkins, and Leroy Kervin) in his novel The Free (2014).

Gretel Ehrlich reads from and discusses the process of collaboration on Arctic Heart (1992), a series of poems composed for a ballet. She also reads excerpts from "The Fasting Heart," an essay on destruction and abundance in the natural world, collected in Islands, The Universe, Home (1991).

Elizabeth Libbey reads poems from her first book, The Crowd Inside (1978), as well as early drafts of poems that would go on to be collected in Songs of a Returning Soul (1981). 

Poet and physician Fady Joudah reads uncollected and new poems; poems from Alight (2013) and Textu (2014); and translations from the works of Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Zaqtan, Hussein Barghouti, and Amjad Nasser.

Ariana Reines reads new and uncollected poems, including one written for this reading.

John Harmon McElroy reads work from several major American authors. He opens with a brief passage from John Dos Passos's USA Trilogy (1930-1936), and reads from works including Washington Irving's The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon (1819), Henry James's The American (1877), Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), Herman Melville's Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855), Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), Walt Whitman's Specimen Days (1892), several poems by Emily Dickinson, and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

Simon J. Ortiz reads prose and poetry, including an excerpt from an in-progress manuscript of an epic poem and selections from Woven Stone (1992), from Sand Creek (2000), and Out There Somewhere (2002).

Richard Marius reads an excerpt from an early draft of his novel After the War (1992).

Myra Sklarew opens with a reading of poems by Richard Shelton, Tadeusz Rózewicz, and Takis Sinopoulos, continuing with poems from her collections The Science of Goodbyes (1982), Travels of the Itinerant Freda Aharon (1985), and Lithuania: New & Selected Poems (1995).

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.

Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig read for the Writers At Work Series. Wittig and Zeig team to play the parts of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in a play written by Wittig and translated by Zeig, Le Voyage sans fin (The Constant Journey, 1985), based on Miguel de Cervantes's classic novel. Before performing the play, Wittig gives a brief talk explaining the role of transposition and gender roles in her adaption of Cervantes's work.

Diane Glancy reads a range of works on the theme of story, including a number of poems that would subsequently appear in The West Pole (1997) and (Ado)ration (1999). She also reads excerpts from Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears (1996) and closes the reading with a brief extract from Firesticks (1993). 

Jane Miller opens her reading with "Miami Heart" and "The Poet," both from Memory at These Speeds: New and Selected Poems (1996). She continues with work from Wherever You Lay Your Head, published in 1999. This reading was originally given with Eleni Sikelianos.

Tarfia Faizullah reads poems from her collection Seam (2014) and from an early version of Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf Press, 2018). This reading was originally given with francine j. harris as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Srikanth Reddy reads from a manuscript in progress titled "Underworld Lit."

Solmaz Sharif reads poems from her collection Look (2016). This reading was originally given with Danniel Schoonebeek as part of the Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Series.

Ocean Vuong reads poems from Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016). This reading was originally given with Camille Rankine.

Joy Harjo reads from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015) and from uncollected work at the Phoenix Art Museum. She also reads one poem from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994). This reading was originally given with Sandra Cisneros and Rita Dove in partnership with ArchiTEXTS: A Conversation Across Languages with Natalie Diaz.

Eleanor Wilner reads poems from Reversing the Spell: New & Selected Poems (1998), The Girl with Bees in Her Hair (2004), and Tourist in Hell (2010), along with poems that would go on to be collected in Before Our Eyes: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2017 (2019). 

Naomi Shihab Nye reads from her poetry collections Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018) and The Tiny Journalist (2019). She also reads from new work, including one poem that would appear in Cast Away: Poems for Our Time (2020). 

Carolyn Forché reads excerpts from her memoir What You Have Heard Is True (2019) and poems from her collection In the Lateness of the World (2020).