Nicole Blackman reads her poem Lost. Lost I’ve lost my notebook. I’ve lost a poem. It was a great one. It was eleven pages long. It was about my father saying he couldn’t hear me. It was about the X I cut into the back of my hand. It was about seeing yet another friend [...]

Mary Oliver reads her poem The Summer Day from New and selected poems The summer day Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my [...]

Dylan Thomas reads his poem Love in the Asylum. Love in the Asylum A stranger has come To share my room in the house not right in the head, A girl mad as birds Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume. Strait in the mazed bed She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering [...]

  Rita Dove reads her poem, Chocolate, from her book, American Smooth. Chocolate Velvet fruit, exquisite square I hold up to sniff between finger and thumb— how you numb me with your rich attentions! If I don’t eat you quickly, you’ll melt in my palm. Pleasure seeker, if I let you you’d liquefy everywhere. Knotted [...]

Dylan Thomas reads his poem If I Were Tickled by The Rub of Love If I Were Tickled by The Rub of Love If I were tickled by the rub of love, A rooking girl who stole me for her side, Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string, If the red tickle as the [...]

Jack Kerouac reads American Haikus

Robert Frost reads his poem Birches. Birches When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter [...]

T. S. Eliot reads his poem Journey of the Magi. Journey of the Magi A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.” And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in [...]

Adrienne Rich reads her poem What Kind Of Times Are These? What Kind Of Times Are These? There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I’ve walked there picking [...]

Robin Robertson reads his poem At Roane Head.