world war ii

Stephen Spender reads widely from his earlier works, including Poems (1933), The Still Centre (1939), and The Generous Days (1969); he also reads journal excerpts. Reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of Stephen Spender. 

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.

In Alan Dugan's last performance at the Poetry Center, he reads widely from work published during the 26 years between 1963 and 1989. He reads poems about art and artists, Greek and Roman antiquity, contemporary life in Provincetown, World War II, work, and cats.

In this reading, originally given with Joni Wallace, Mary Jo Bang reads poems that would go on to be collected in The Last Two Seconds (2015) as well as a segment from her translation of "Canto III" of Dante's Inferno (2012).

Carolyn Forché reads from her first three collections of poetry, Gathering the Tribes (1976), The Country Between Us (1981), and The Angel of History, which would be published three years after this reading. She also speaks about French Surrealist poet Robert Desnos and reads her translator's note to The Selected Poems of Robert Desnos (1991).

Robert Hass reads new translations from the Polish of postwar poems by Czesław Miłosz. These poems come from the period (1946-1953) during which Miłosz fled from Warsaw and worked in the United States for the Polish consulate. Throughout the reading, Hass provides commentary on the unique challenges of translating Miłosz.