Poet Linda McCarriston.

McCarriston is the author of several books including "Eva-Mary" which is a collection of poems about the domestic abuse that McCarriston, along with her mother and brother, suffered at the hands of her father. She reads and talks about her poem "Last Frontier," about her relocation to Alaska.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and essayist William Stanley Merwin was known in the 1960s as an anti-war poet. Now an environmental activist, Merwin has published a new book of poems, The Shadow of Sirius, which addresses themes of memory and mortality.

When Emily Dickinson died in the 1880s, she was a reclusive, barely published writer. Today, she is a fully canonized, iconic poet. Former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins says the progress of her status was unprecedented.