Welcome to the first episode of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry podcast. In this episode, the first of three in a series, we listen to Joshua Beckman's lecture, "The Lives of the Poems," originally given May 8, 2014 at New York University, and then hear an interview between Beckman and Colin McDonald of Seminary Coop's Open Stacks podcast, originally aired April 22, 2018.

Beckman's lectures attempt to articulate and conjure for the listener the private and shared experiences one can have through reading and listening to poetry. Beckman attends to imaginative reality as well as physical artifacts, including beloved dead poets, friendship as viewed through the lens of reading, the book-object, and his own writing process as seen through ‘the lives of the poems.’

Visit us at our website, www.bagleywrightlectures.org, for more information about Bagley Wright lecturers, as well as links to supplementary materials on each lecturer’s archive page, including selected writings. Thank you to New York University’s Creative Writing Program for partnering with the Series for this event,  to Seminary Coop and the Open Stacks podcast for permission to rebroadcast this interview, and to you for listening.

Joshua Beckman's double-book set of collected BWLS lectures, Three Talks and The Lives of the Poems (Wave Books, 2018) is here.

A transcription of the Q&A after Beckman's talk at the Library of Congress is here.

Music: "I Recall" by Blue Dot Sessions

from the Free Music Archive

CC BY NC