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Last night Gothamist attended the 4th annual benefit for the Academy of American Poets at Alice Tully Hall and was reminded that reciting poetry aloud is really a wonderful thing. As the kick-off to National Poetry Month in April, a panel of celebrity readers including William Wegman, Mike Wallace, Dianne Weist, Alan Alda and Meryl Streep read a few examples each from a variety of American poets. Great poets like William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes and Kenneth Koch were represented in the mix, with a highlight for the night coming from musician Wynton Marsalis's lyrical reading of Sterling A. Brown's "Ma Rainey -- a poem he punctuated by breaking into song a cappella during one portion.
All during the month of April there's a host of poetry events you can check out; there's a great listing on the AAP's website, Poets.org. Also, they're encouraging people to email their favorite lines of poetry to be posted on their message board called Life Lines. A New York poem Gothamist particularly likes is Walt Whitman's "Mannahatta", it's so evocative of the city we love:
The beautiful city, the city of hurried and sparkling waters! the city of spires and masts! The city nested in bays! my city! The city of such women, I am mad to be with them! I will return after death to be with them! The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy, without I often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep, with them!
Do you have a favorite poet or poem?
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sometimes i dig the "poetry on the way" on the subway
"The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel
If Elvis Presley
is King
Who is James Brown,
God?
Amiri Baraka
Thanks for the great link. I recently bought Fred Hersch's "Leaves of Grass" CD based on some clips that I'd heard. He sets Walt Whitman's poetry to music. It's still unopened, but you've made me want to run home and play it. :)
Sharon Olds
Saul Williams
Sonia Sanchez
Nick Flynn
Raymond Carver
Sandra Cisneros
and about a million others. . .
the apparation of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.
Anne Sexton
Frank O'Hara, who evokes the rhythms of New York in his poems.
I agree with the Frank O'Hara statement. He reveals the essence of New York. Gothamist should check out "A Warm Day for December." It's about 57th Street.
john donne -- "a valediction: forbidding mourning"
The comma in the title to this post has no business there. While in conversation you pause there, in writing it's incorrect, slicing an independent clause into two fragments. It should be: "A poem a day keeps the doctor away."