Today on Speakers Forum: poetic inspiration from your friends, neighbors and other notables.
When Town Hall Seattle opened its doors in March of 1999 ,the first gathering was a celebration of Seattle’s Favorite Poems. The event was part of a national project created and hosted by then-U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky.
Last month Pinsky returned to Seattle to continue the celebration. It was a fittingly lyrical night, with spirited readings led by KUOW’s Marcie Sillman and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Heather McHugh.
Seattle’s Favorite Poems 2014 was hosted by Town Hall Seattle on September 18. Presenters included Seattle Arts and Lectures, Poetry Northwest, Hugo House and the Washington Center for the Book at The Seattle Public Library.
Thanks to Anna Tatistcheff for this recording.
Featured:
- Robert Pinsky reading "Those Winter Sundays," by Robert Hayden
- Fay Jones reading “Museedes Beaux Arts,” by W.H. Auden
- Jessica Gigot reading “Digging,” by Seamus Heaney
- Cindy Englehart reading “Could Have,” by Wislawa Szymborska
- Carrie Williams reading “Snow Day,” by Billy Collins
- Maya Chinen reading “Kindness,” by Naomi Shihab Nye
- Phyllis Rosen reading “Someone Puts a Pineapple Together,” by Wallace Stevens
- Karen Clark reading “I, Too,” by Langston Hughes
- Addison Richards reading “A Supermarket in California,” by Allen Ginsberg
- Linda Norlen reading “In the Waiting Room,” by Elizabeth Bishop
- Michael Wells reading “Poem,” by Frank O’Hara
- Rebecca Chung reading “Suicide’s Note reading “An Annual,” by Mary Karr
- Ele Watts reading “The Quiet World,” by Jeffrey McDaniel
- Barbara Johnstone reading “Dithyrambof a Happy Woman,” by Anna Swir
- Margaret Duffy reading “Love After Love,” by Derek Walcott
- Richard Groomer reading “The Mountain,” by W.S. Merwin
- Aidan Lang reading “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost
- Robert Pinsky: "To the Reader," by Ben Jonson
