Poetry (Audio)

Mary Karr's work has been deemed "hardboiled, hardedged, hardbitten" by Poetry. Her allure is a gripping combination of savvy intelligence and an utter refusal for sentimentality. Karr is the author of four volumes of poetry including the forthcoming "Sinners Welcome" (Harper Collins, 2006), and the memoir, "The Liars' Club." Tune in as she reads a selection of her poetry before a live audience at...

A prominent figure in the wide-open poetry movement of the 50s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti gave voice to a generation that changed the face of poetry forever. Challenging the elite's definition of art and the artist's role, Ferlinghetti founded City Lights Bookstore, providing a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals for over a half century. Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind cont...

California Poet Laureate Al Young has created a profound and enduring body of work that represents our time. Young's numerous publications in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and for the stage and screen explore the American, human condition through the lens of the individual voice. Tune in as he reads a selection of his poems before a live audience at UC Berkeley. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series"...

Juan Felipe Herrera traveled as a child with his parents through many small farming towns and cities in California, until finally settling in San Diego. He has taught poetry from kindergarten to the university level and is the author of numerous poetry and children's books, including Calling The Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award, and Crashboomlove, which was prized with the Americas Award...

U.S. Poet Laureate (2004-2006) Ted Kooser is a major poetic voice for rural and small town America and the award-winning author of ten collections of poetry, most recently 2004's Pulitzer Prize-winning Delights and Shadows. Nebraskan Kooser often draws from his native Great Plains and his poems are acclaimed for their simple, straightforward style. Kooser reads from his poetry before a standing-ro...

A range of Berkeley luminaries read and discuss their favorite poems. This year's line-up: Barbara Ertter (Jepson Herbarium), H. Mack Horton (East Asian Languages), Amy Kautzman (Doe Library), Elaine Kim (Ethnic Studies), Ray Lifchez (Architecture), Cam Nguyet Nguyen (Southeast Asian Studies), Bob Osserman (Mathematical Science Research Center), Laura Perez (Chicano Studies), John Prausnitz (Chemi...

Former Poet Laureate of the United StatesHass is a UC Berkeley professor who has made important contributions in poetry, criticism, and translation. His books of poetry are Sun Under Wood, Human Wishes, Praise, and Field Guide, the latter winner of the Yale Younger Poets Award. His critical essays are assembled in Twentieth Century Pleasures, and the poets he has translated include Czeslaw Milosz,...

Charismatic poet Cornelius Eady uses deft paradoxes to meet the world's absurdities head-on. In a powerful reading of his own work, Eady recites like a jazz singer croons, emphasizing his poetry's hard-hitting content. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 7952]

Yusef Komunyakaa is known as a "jazz poet," a Southern writer and a "soldier poet." Author of nine books and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Komunyakaa sets a provocative stage by rejecting the "write what you know" model in favor of the defying "write what you are willing to discover" premise. Series: "Helen Edison Lecture Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 5640]

Trinidad resident Derek Walcott won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. Walcott has published twenty volumes of poetry and is also a published playwright. Series: "Artists on the Cutting Edge" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 5593]

Marilyn Chin reads some of her poetry, including BARBARIAN SWEET, which she says retains ancient Chinese forms in a recognizable Western format Series: "Artists on the Cutting Edge" [Humanities] [Show ID: 595]

Poet Quincy Troupe and jazz guitarist Phil Upchurch combine spoken word and music in a fluid, dynamic performance centering on the African-American experience. Series: "Artists on the Cutting Edge" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 2787]