Poetry

Poet John Balaram has translated the poetry of an 18th century Vietnamese concubine in the new book, –Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuang Huong— (Copper Canyon Press) Ho Xuang Huong won acclaim for her poetry despite the fact that she was a woman and she challenged established conventions. Most of her poems also were double entendres: a hidden sexual meaning lay behind her words. Balaban was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war, and went back to the country after the war to collect and preserve Vietnamese folk poetry.

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.

Music critic Lloyd Schwartz first met poet Elizabeth Bishop when she moved to Cambridge in the early 1970s after living in Brazil for nearly 20 years. Now Schwartz has co-edited a new collection of work by the former U.S. Poet Laureate.

When his mother was turning 90, music critic Lloyd Schwartz wrote poems that put her memories into verse. Composer Mohammed Fairouz set three of the poems to music on the new recording, No Orpheus.

Clive James was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago. "There is a grief in all poetry," he writes in his latest book of essays. "Poetry holds itself together, and eventually we ourselves do not."

Levine's work often reflected the hardships and dignity of manual labor. He died Feb. 14 in Fresno, Calif. He was 87. In 1991, Levine spoke with Terry Gross about his collection What Work Is.

Woodson won the National Book Award for young people's literature for her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming. She says that growing up in South Carolina, she knew that the safest place was with her family.

In 1986, Angelou spoke to Terry Gross about Southern influences in her writing, her love of autobiography and how, as a traumatized young girl, poetry inspired her to start speaking again.

Fresh Air's classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz recently published a poem about friendship and loss on Poets.org.

The poet describes his new book — about the death of his father and the birth of his son — as having a blues sensibility. "There are moments of humor even in the sorrow," he says.

Baraka was one of the key black literary voices of the 1960s. The political and social views that inspired his writing changed over the years, from his bohemian days as a young man in Greenwich Village to his later years as a Marxist. He spoke to Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 1986.

Blanco, who read his poem "One Today" at Obama's second inauguration, is the first immigrant, Lation and openly gay poet chosen to read at an inauguration.

In Peter Heller's debut novel, The Dog Stars, a man named Hig survives a superflu that kills most of humanity. Heller, a travel and adventure writer, says that when his novel took a post-apocalyptic turn, he found himself relying on his real-life scrapes and survival skills.

Kin: Songs By Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell is a new collaboration between Karr, the bestselling author and poet, and the maverick singer-songwriter. Together, they've written 10 songs, which are performed on the album by a variety of singers, including Norah Jones, Rosanne Cash and Emmylou Harris.

The 83-year-old former poet laureate reflects on how life has changed as he's grown older. "My body causes me trouble when I cross the room, but when I am sitting down writing, I am in my heaven — my old heaven," he says.

Country singer-songwriter Darrell Scott grew up performing with his father, Wayne. Last month, Darrell was in Texas in between gigs when he learned that his father had died in a car accident. Here, he reflects on his father's life and death, and reads a poem he wrote about his dad.

"Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die," poet Marie Howe tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. One of Howe's most famous poems, "What the Living Do," was recently included in The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry.

Landesman, a songwriter and poet who wrote the words to the jazz standard "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," died on July 23. She was 83. Fresh Air remembers the iconoclastic lyricist with highlights from a 1988 interview.

In a new memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey revisits her own memories of the Gulf Coast region, and details how members of her family worked to rebuild their lives after the storm. She asks how the identity of the Gulf will be remembered — and how the region's stories will be told.