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Poetry in America
Mushrooms, Weakness and Doubt
Season 4
Episode 3
Poems by Sylvia Plath and Kay Ryan take the peripheral status of the fungal kingdom as an invitation to consider the scientific knowns and unknowns, and cultural significance, of mushrooms. Microbial ecologist Serita Frey, chef Gabrielle Hamilton, plant pathologist Barry Pryor, health advocate Dr. Andrew Weil, writers Maria Popova and Maria Pinto, and journalist Frank Bruni join host Elisa New.
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24:42
Play hooky with Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems.” Poets and NYC-lovers join host Elisa New.
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25:21
Poet Martín Espada worked manufacturing legal pads, and the job is burned into his memory.
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25:43
Murray Bartlett, Laurie Santos, and more guests join Elisa New to read Wallace Stevens.
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25:21
Drive through West Texas with Tracy K. Smith, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and host Elisa New.
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25:21
David Axelrod, Bill Kristol and Andrea Mitchell read Robert Lowell with Elisa New.
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25:21
Read the elegiac poetry of Joseph Brodsky, a Cold War Russian exile, with host Elisa New.
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25:21
Poems by Wheatley with Amanda Gorman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Richard Blanco, and more.
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25:41
Leslie Jamison, Olivia Gatwood, & more read a sonnet by Millay with host Elisa New.
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25:14
Linda Hogan & Alberto Ríos explore their poems with host Elisa New, Jeff Corwin & more.
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25:38
Elisa New, Emily Oster, Sharon Olds, & Bernadette Mayer explore poems on motherhood.
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25:21
Caroline Kennedy, Tracy K. Smith & more read Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” with Elisa New.
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25:22
Cassandra Wilson, Elisa New & more read Evie Shockley’s “you can say that again, billie.”