Literary figures/poets

Former poet laureate Robert Hass also reads a poem.

Poet Billy Collins has just been appointed the next Poet Laureate. His books include Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press), The Art of Drowning, (University of Pittsburgh Press), and Questions about Angels (William Morrow & Co.), which was selected as a winner of the National Poetry Series Competition in 1990. John Updike says of Collins' poetry, "Billy Collins writes lovely poems...

Our classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz joins us to talk about his new book of poems, “Cairo Traffic.” (University of Chicago Press) Lloyd is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and writes about classical music for the Boston Phoenix. In 1994, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Associate curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Russell Ferguson He curated the exhibit “In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art,” (there’s also a companion book). Frank O’Hara was part of a small group of poets in New York City in the 1950s and 60s, influenced by the Abstract Expressionist painters of that time, including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. O’Hara died in 1966 after being struck by a jeep. Also, poet David Lehman (“LEE-man”), author of “the Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets” (Anchor Books)

Poets Sonia Sanchez and Michael Harper. The two are featured on a new CD anthology, "Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like the Rivers" (Rhino) a collection of African American poetry from 1919 to 1999. It Includes the work of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Maya Angelou, Gil Scott-heron, Amiri Baraka and others.

Poet David Lehman is the editor of “The Best American Poetry” and on the faculty of Bennington College and The New School. His new book of poems chronicles his attempt to write a poem a day. It’s called “The Daily Mirror: a journal in poetry.” (Scribner)

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic. He is part Serbian, and was born in Belgrade. He emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager over 40 years ago. His new collection of poems is "Jackstraws" (Harcourt Brace). SIMIC also edited and translated an anthology of Serbian poetry, "The Horse Has Six Legs" (Graywolf Press, 1992)

Poet Seamus Heaney has released a new collection of his poems called "Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. He resides in Dublin, Ireland and in Boston where he teaches at Harvard University.

Lehman is the series editor of "The Best American Poetry." His new book "The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets" (Doubleday) is a cultural history about a group of poets in the 1950s who he says helped to reinvent literature, like John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler. They took their cue from the Abstract Expressionistic painters of the time who were also in New York.

Dickey has written a new memoir about his relationship with his father, the late poet and novelist James Dickey. It's called "Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son" (Simon & Schuster). Dickey writes that his father was "a great poet, a famous novelist, a powerful intellect, and a son of a bitch I hated." But Dickey writes that he also loved his alcoholic, abusive father. And as an adult, he picked up his relationship with his father again, after a 20 year absence.