Houghton Mifflin Poetry Podcast: The Poetic Voice

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we are delighted to bring you a special April episode of The Poetic Voice. This episode includes selections from The Poetic Voice's inaugural year and features eight poets - both modern masters and fresh voices - reading from their work.

Contents: Donald Hall reads "Affirmation" from White Apples and the Taste of Stone; David Tucker reads "The Dancer" from Late for Work; Michael Collier reads "Birds Appearing in a Dream" from Dark Wild Realm; Ron Slate reads "The Final Call" from The Incentive of the Maggot; Natasha Trethewey reads "Self" from Native Guard; Galway Kinnell reads "Middle Path" from Strong Is Your Hold; Glyn Maxwell reads "Harry In The Dark" from The Sugar Mile; and Alan Shapiro reads the first and second sections of "Tantalus In Love" from Tantalus In Love.

This episode features Alan Shapiro reading from and discussing his collection Tantalus in Love, recently released in paperback. A work full of life, jealousy, lust, and romantic abandon, Tantalus in Love reinvents myth and symbol in lyrical portraits of astounding resonance. The collection begins with the sorrow of a disintegrating marriage, with its anger and suspicion, its hurt and rage, but moves on to celebrate the resilience of love after loss and the awakening glory of an amorous middle age. Alan Shapiro is the author of eight acclaimed books of poetry. He has received the Kingsley Tufts Award and the Los Angeles Times prize for poetry, among other honors. His memoir, The Last Happy Occasion, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

This episode features Glyn Maxwell reading from and discussing his collection The Sugar Mile. The stirring verse narrative of The Sugar Mile begins when the poet steps into an uptown Manhattan bar a few days before September 11, 2001. Encountering Joe Stone, a fellow Brit and a barstool regular, the narrator becomes the fated scribe of Joe's memories of London's "Black Saturday," the start of the worst of the Blitz during World War II. Glyn Maxwell is the poetry editor of the New Republic and the author of four New York Times Notable Books. Among the honors he has received are the Somerset Maugham Prize and the E. M. Forster Prize.

This episode features Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Galway Kinnell reading from and discussing his eleventh collection, Strong Is Your Hold. In conversation with Houghton Mifflin's Janet Silver, Vice President and Publisher of Adult Trade Books, Galway Kinnell discusses his influences, his revision process, and how the events of 9/11 shaped this work. Strong Is Your Hold includes a CD recording of Galway Kinnell reading the entire collection.

This episode features Natasha Trethewey reading from her latest collection, Native Guard, about a unit of black soldiers who played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Among Natasha Trethewey's many honors are a Guggenheim fellowship, the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Grolier Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.

This episode features Ron Slate reading from and discussing his debut collection The Incentive of the Maggot. Ron Slate is the winner of the 2004 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference's prestigious Bakeless Prize, selected by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky. As Pinsky writes in his foreward to the collection, Slate "brings together the personal and the global in a way that is distinctive, subtle, defying expectations about what is political and what is personal."

This episode features Michael Collier reading from his latest collection Dark Wild Realm. Michael Collier has been the director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference for five years and has taught English at the University of Maryland, College Park, for fifteen years. His previous volumes of poetry are The Clasp and Other Poems, The Flooded Heart, The Neighbor, and most recently The Ledge, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Collier is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, NEA fellowships, and the Discovery/The Nation Award, among other honors.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast to bring you a new reading and conversation with Donald Hall who has been named Poet Laureate of the United States by the Library of Congress.

Donald Hall's first book with Houghton Mifflin was Seasons at Eagle Pond (1987). Hall has won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the LA Times Book Award for The One Day (1989) and a PEN-Winship Award for Without (1998). He was the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire from 1984-89 and again in 1995-99. In 1991, he was the recipient of the Robert Frost Silver Medal from the Poetry Society of America. Earlier this year, Houghton Mifflin published White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006, a volume of his essential life's work.

David Tucker reads from and discusses Late For Work. Tucker wrote the poems in this collection throughout his twenty-eight-year career as a reporter and editor at various newspapers, including the New Jersey Star-Ledger and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the winner of the 2005 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference's prestigious Bakeless Prize for poetry, judged by Philip Levine.

The premiere episode of The Poetic Voice from Houghton Mifflin featuring award winning poet Donald Hall.