In this episode, Alec Soth reads “Of Modern Poetry” by Wallace Stevens. Soth is a photographer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has published over twenty-five books and has been called a “living legend” and “one of the most important photographers working today” by the Washington Post.

Soth’s recent photo book, I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating, is a stunning collection of portraits and interiors from around the world. Soth has described the collection as an attempt to “strip the [photographic] medium down to it’s primary elements.” The collection takes its title from an early poem by the American modernist Wallace Stevens, whose meditations on poetry and aesthetics have helped shape Soth’s understanding of his own work.

“Of Modern Poetry” by Wallace Stevens appears in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, published by Vintage.

Keep up with Alec Soth on Instagram and at alecsoth.com. His new collaborative book with C. Fausto Cabrera is available here for preorder.

We feature one short listener poem at the end of every episode. To submit, call the Haiku Hotline at 612-440-0643 and read your poem after the beep. For the occasional prompt, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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