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The Two-Way
Send Your Haiku To Mars! NASA Seeks Poets
May 2, 2013 NASA is looking for three haiku to include on a DVD that will travel to Mars aboard a spacecraft this fall. And everyone who submits a poem will have their name included.
A Cartoon Tribute To Cats, And The Poets Who Loved Them
April 30, 2013 As National Poetry Month comes to a close, cartoonist Francesco Marciuliano sketches his way through three centuries of cat-loving poets from Christopher Smart's sacred mouser to Margaret Atwood's yellow-eyed feline companion.
From Dissections To Depositions, Poets' Second Jobs
April 29, 2013 Great poetry almost never leads to great paychecks. Even award-winning poets need to pay the bills. Many teach, but others are doctors, scientists, lawyers, undertakers or even market analysts. In celebration of National Poetry Month, writer David Orr takes a look at the secret lives of poets.
Dilruba Ahmed: An Outsider Turns To Poetry
April 28, 2013 For National Poetry Month, Bangladeshi-American poet Dilruba Ahmed talks about how her heritage and her experience of being an outsider in small rural towns pushed her toward writing poetry.
Just In Time For Poetry Month, Four Fantastic Books Of Verse
April 27, 2013 April is National Poetry Month, and what better way to celebrate than with new books? This month brings us a reissue of Hayden, a retranslation of Dante, a gathering of estimable poems from the past quarter-century and a new collection with a camera-eye view of the world.
Author Interviews
For A Student Of Theology, Poetry Reverberates
April 21, 2013 Nate Klug is a poet and candidate for ordination in the United Church of Christ. "Poetry is a form where the language is under so much pressure," he says, "and that can really bring about wonderful surprises and insights in our ways of talking about God or thinking about our faith."
From The NPR Bookshelves
Meet America's Poets Laureate, Past And Present
April 17, 2013 In honor of National Poetry Month, we've reached into our archives and pulled up 10 interviews with Poets Laureate. Hear current laureate Natasha Trethewey on Hurricane Katrina, Ted Kooser on his Valentine's Day poems, Robert Pinsky on the news, and more.
Harmony Holiday On Finding Poetry In Her Biracial Roots
April 14, 2013 In celebration of National Poetry Month, Weekend Edition is asking young poets about what poetry means to them. This week, Harmony Holiday describes how poetry helped her "negotiate the language" of having a white mother and an African-American father.
Short And Sweet: Celebrating D.C.'s Cherry Blossoms With Haiku
April 12, 2013 The cherry blossoms are finally in bloom in Washington, D.C., and what better way to celebrate these beautiful Japanese gifts than with a haiku? We celebrate the delicate pink petals with poetry submitted by our listeners.
Does Poetry Still Matter? Yes Indeed, Says NPR NewsPoet
April 6, 2013 April is famously the cruelest month — according to the poem — but it's also the month we celebrate poetry. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith says we all need poetry, and even those of us who don't write poems can still learn how to see and hear the world through poetry.
Revisiting Iraq Through The Eyes Of An Exiled Poet
March 21, 2013 Dunya Mikhail fled her homeland in the wake of the first Gulf War, after her writing was labeled subversive by Saddam Hussein's government. She has never physically returned to Iraq, but she remembers it in her poetry.
The Case For Being Concise: Short Poems That Speak Volumes
February 28, 2013 Brad Leithauser likes to look for poetry in graveyards. An author and poet himself, there's something he values greatly in tombstone epitaphs: brevity. In a piece for The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, Leithauser cites tiny works that speak volumes.
For Modern American Poets, A 'Likeness' Could Evolve
February 28, 2013 Poets are not the world's most visible celebrities. But an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., puts faces to verse, and explores poets' shifting — and sometimes conflicting — public images.
Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco: 'I Finally Felt Like I Was Home'
February 18, 2013 Blanco, who read his poem "One Today" at Obama's second inauguration, is the first immigrant, Latino and openly gay poet chosen to read at an inauguration. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that while he was on the podium, "I really embraced America up there like I never had before."
Pentametron Reveals Unintended Poetry of Twitter Users
February 16, 2013 A program that makes poems from our tweets / With rhyming lines and smooth iambic beats ... Ranjit Bhatnagar wrote a program to find tweets in iambic pentameter and retweet them in rhyming pairs. With NPR's Jacki Lyden, he shares some of the resulting couplets.
