Cleaning up my office, getting it ready for a new academic year, I came across a CD compilation of the Poetry Foundation's podcasts. It must have been something I picked up at the AWP this year. I generally don't listen to poetry or poetry-related podcasts while I'm working because of the concentration they require but stacking and filing papers didn't demand a lot of my attention. The podcasts often complement the latest issue of Poetry magazine--for instance, a Kay Ryan interview on Robert Frost followed her essay in the September 2007 issue ("I Demand to Speak with God").
Readings by Marie Ponsot and Terrance Hayes were the highlights (for me) of the CD. The March 2008 issue marked Hayes's first appearance in Poetry. Go listen to his poem "The Blue Terrance." The poet G. C. Waldrep observed at a reading that when he reads a poem out loud, he feels that he has created another, a second, poem. I was thinking about that while listening to Hayes. On the page, you notice the careful prosody, the word arrangement, the space the poem occupies on the page. But listen to how Hayes reads "The Blue Terrance," how he lingers over certain words, how his breath spaces the poem in a different way. To hear more of Hayes's work, visit his profile on the PBS website.
The Poetry Foundation has a lot of good material on their website. I especially enjoy their "Poem of the Day" feature. They run for a few minutes at the most, an amuse bouche of poetry. But if you have more time to spare, browse their essay archive. Ange Mlinko's essay on Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, "Craft Vs. Conscience," is excellent and only appears online.
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