Poetry in a Time of Crisis

Introduction by Alice Quinn.

Part 1

Billy Collins reads "On Being Asked for a War Poem" and "The Stare's Nest By My Window" by W.B. Yeats.

Alastair Reid and Billy Collins read "A Callarse"/"Keeping Quiet" by Pablo Neruda.

Michael Cunningham reads "After Great Pain" by Emily Dickinson and "The Armadillo" by Elizabeth Bishop.

Eve Ensler reads "Afghanistan" by Raymond Carver, "Zero Circle" by Rumi, "The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field" by Richard Hugo, "The Crowd at the Ball Game" by William Carlos Williams and "Guide" by A.R. Ammons.

Yusef Komunyakaa reads "Monet's Water Lilies" by Robert Hayden and "What Did I Learn in the Wars" from "Anniversaries of War" by Yehuda Amichai.

Stanley Kunitz reads "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova. 

Part 2

Lawrence Weschler reads "Could Have" and "Maybe All This" by Wislawa Szymborska and "The Pebble" by Sbigniew Herbert

C.K. Williams reads "Bypassing Rue Descartes", "An Honest Description of Myself With a Glass of Whiskey at an Airport, Let Us Say, in Minneapolis" and "Late Ripeness" by Czeslaw Milosz

Adam Zagajewski reads "To Go to Lvov", "Erinna From Telos", "Farewell for Zbigniew Herbert", "My Aunts", "Self-Portrait" and "Try to Praise the Mutilated World".

Wednesday, March 13th, 2002

The Great Hall at Cooper Union
New York, New York