MPR has had a keen ear for capturing the words and meter of poetry. Minnesota is home to many nationally renowned poets, city and state poet laureates, spoken word artists, and individuals young and old that have simply created work for the sake of the form. The state is also a magnet for poets all throughout the world. Here is a wonderful breadth of those readings, speeches, thoughts, and histories of the poet.
January 24, 1981 - On this edition of New Letters on the Air, poet-in-residence for the state of Delaware Molly Peacock reads her work.
January 25, 1981 - This portion of "Options" contains profiles of two creative men: the architect, master planner, and holistic builder Paolo Soleri; and the Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda.
January 31, 1981 - On this edition of New Letters on the Air, the late poet E.L. Mayo is profiled. Mayo is considered a poet's poet.
February 12, 1981 - Stanley Kiesel, poet in residence for Minneapolis Schools, talks with MPR’s Dan Olson about education, poetry, and his new book, The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids.
February 21, 1981 - On this edition of New Letters on the Air, poet Philip Levine is profiled. Levine reads his poems and discusses his childhood in Detroit, the setting of many of his poems, as well as his experience in post-Franco Spain.
May 23, 1981 - MPR’s Nancy Fushan has a Q&A with British-American poet Elizabeth Sewwell on her passion for poetry.
June 20, 1981 - An excerpt of American poet and educator Ai Ogawa reading from her work.
October 7, 1981 - MPR's Nancy Fushan interviews 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Czeslaw Milosz. Born in Poland but now living and teaching in the United States, Milosz talks about his poetry, the United States, his native country of Poland, and writing.
February 13, 1982 - Minnesota poet Robert Bly performs reading about winter during intermission of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra broadcast of Baroque Series Concert V.
November 15, 1983 - Eugene McCarthy, former Minnesota senator and presidential candidate, speaks at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. McCarthy’s address was titled "Growing Up in Rural Minnesota.” McCarthy speaks of experiences in his hometown of Watkins, some of which were expressed in a collection of poems entitled Gene McCarthy's Minnesota.