Literary figures/poets

Pinsky joins Fresh Air to read his poem "House Hour."

Shore's new collection of poems "Music Minus One" (Picador) reads like a memoir of her youth growing up in the 1950s in New Jersey. She's won several prizes for her two previous volumes of poetry and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

A Village Voice critic once wrote of Sundiata, "...like Billie Holiday, Sundiata surprises with images and tumbling phrases that blend with subtle rhythmic variations." Although he's an established and respected artist, he's just completed his debut CD, "The Blue Oneness of Dreams."

Book critic Maureen Corrigan pays tribute to the late American poet.

Poet and countercultural activist Allen Ginsberg. He died over the weekend from liver cancer, at the age of 70. We remember him with a 1994 interview; at the time a four-CD boxed set of Ginsberg's work was released, "Holy Soul Jelly Roll - Songs and Poems (1949-1993). (REBROADCAST from 11/8/94)

Dickey died Sunday at the age of 73 from complications of lung disease. He was the author of the novel "Deliverance" and the screenplay for the movie of the same name. He said he wrote novels to pay the bills, but his first love was poetry. He wrote more than 20 collections of poetry. (REBROADCAST from 9/30/93)

Poet and professor Miller Williams. He teaches at the University of Arkansas. He's been asked to read at Clinton's Inauguration. He's also President Carter's poetry mentor. Miller is best known for his narrative, dramatic, poems of everyday people. He's had a number of collection of poems published. His latest is "The Ways We Touch." (University of Illinois Press) which was originally scheduled for a Fall 1997 release, but moved up because of the inauguration.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet grew up in Detroit and worked in the factories as a young man. He's probably best known for his 1992 book of poems about the working class, "What Work Is," which won the National Book Award. He has several volumes of poetry as well as a memoir. His forthcoming book is called "Unselected Poems."

The Fresh Air classical music critic reads a new poem about his mother.

Poet Hal Sirowitz. His new collection of poems is "Mother Said," (Crown Publishers) and is written in the vernacular of a mother. One reviewer wrote of the poems, "the logical step forward in the comic treatment of Oedipal angst." Sirowitz has appeared on MTV's "Spoken Word Unplugged" and on PBS's "The United States of Poetry."