Poets & Writers Theater

“Is the woman in the pool of light / really reading or just staring / at what is written,” reads C. D. Wright from her poem “Lake Echo, Dear” in this reading at the 2008 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. 

“There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill / and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows…” In this 2009 video, pioneering feminist poet Adrienne Rich reads her poem “What Kind of Times Are These?” at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Rich died at the age of eighty-two on March 27, 2012.

“for the lingering / eyes of the children, staring...” In this video, the late poet Lucille Clifton reads “report from the angel of eden” and “sorrow song” at the 2008 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.

Rita Dove reads her poem "American Smooth" at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in 2010. Her new book, Collected Poems: 1974–2004 (Norton, 2016), which is longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award, is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"I love. Wouldn't we all like to start / a poem with 'I love...'? I would." C. Dale Young reads his poems "The Bridge" and "Torn" from his book Torn (Four Way Books, 2011) at the 2014 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Young's fourth collection of poems, The Halo (Four Way Books, 2016), is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

"'Whenever you receive a letter from a creditor / immediately write fifty lines / upon an otherworldly subject, / and you will be saved!' (If not from the stepfool.)" Franz Wright reads "Baudelaire" from his book Wheeling Motel (Knopf, 2009) at the 2008 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Wright passed away last month at the age of sixty-two.

“Aren’t we enlarged by the scale of what we’re able to desire?” Filmed at the 2008 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, poet Mark Doty reads his compelling poem “Messiah (Christmas Portions).”

“What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.” Stanley Kunitz, who died in 2006, is seen here at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in 2000 reading “Touch Me.”

The late poet is seen here reading two poems at the 2008 Dodge Poetry Festival. The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965–2010, published in September by BOA Editions, is one of the twelve titles featured in this issue's Page One.