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Poetry in Person

By: Lucille Clifton, Alexander Neubauer - editor, Eamon Grennan, Edward Hirsch, James Merrill, Paul Muldoon, Robert Pinsky, William Matthews
Narrated by: Alexander Neubauer
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Publisher's summary

This first audio edition of Poetry in Person: 25 Years of Conversation with America’s Poets (Knopf, 2010), invites listeners into an intimate classroom with eight acclaimed poets: Robert Pinsky, James Merrill, Lucille Clifton, Edward Hirsch, Paul Muldoon, Muriel Rukeyser, Eamon Grennan, and William Matthews. Full of compelling, in-depth conversation about manuscripts and drafts by the poets themselves, plus readings of the finished poems, these historic recordings offer one of the most detailed portraits ever produced of how poems are actually made.

Based on “one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2010”, this audio version of Poetry in Person opens the door to a class run by Pearl London between 1973 and 1998, at the New School in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. London invited scores of poets to bring with them “notes jotted down on the back of an envelope, or worksheets of any sort, even doodles,” for a course she said was concerned “essentially with the making of the poem, with the work in progress as process - with both the vision and the revision.”

Poets accepted her invitation one after another, word of mouth spread, and for 25 years her class become home for Nobel Laureates, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners, U.S. Poets Laureate, and dozens of poets at the cusp of their emergence in letters.

After London died in 2003, three boxes of cassette tapes were discovered in a closet in her home, containing recordings of a hundred conversations with poets. Eight of those conversations can now be heard as they happened in this first audio edition of Poetry in Person.

Audio Production: Jonathan Binzen.

©2010 Alexander Neubauer (P)2010 Alexander Neubauer
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What listeners say about Poetry in Person

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Being able to hear the ideas, thoughts, and philosophies of these poets.

The recordings are old and it can be difficult to hear or understand the words being said. Still definitely worth the listen though

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Fascinating

I feel like I've gotten to be adult on the wall to sone fabulous discussions - some from before I was born. What a wonderful opportunity!

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6 people found this helpful

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Enjoyable discussions

I wasn't sure what I expected from this book, but it really was interesting to hear discussion about the poetry writing process and motivations leading authors to write certain poems.

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Abridged

This is a fantastic audiobook. Downright valuable. But be aware that it contains fewer than half the interviews of the paperback! I bought both, because hearing at least some of the poets speaking was worth it to me.

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3 people found this helpful