Explore the highlights of previous Poetry & the Creative Mind celebrations, including photos as well as lists of poems that were read.

2005 Benefit
2006 Benefit
2007 Benefit
2008 Benefit
2009 Benefit
2010 Benefit
2011 Benefit
2012 Benefit

Lauren Bacall

Glenn Close

David Halberstam

Patrick Wilson

Alfre Woodard

Ethan Hawke and Tree Swenson

On April 11, 2007, the Academy of American Poets held its fifth annual benefit, Poetry & The Creative Mind, at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Some of America’s leading artists, scholars, and public figures participated in this extraordinary evening celebrating the role of contemporary poetry in American culture. Poetry & The Creative Mind kicks off National Poetry Month, established by the Academy in 1996 and now the largest literary celebration in the world.

This year, our special guest readers were Lauren Bacall, William F. Baker, Glenn Close, David Halberstam, Ethan Hawke, Jules Feiffer, Simon Schama, John Simon, Wendy Whelan, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson, Alfre Woodard. Each read poems by some of America’s best-loved poets, including Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, E. E. Cummings, and Wallace Stevens.

With the generous support of our friends and donors, Poetry & The Creative Mind raised approximately $150,000 for the Academy and our National Poetry Month activities. We are very grateful for your support, and we look forward to seeing you in April 2008 for the sixth annual Poetry & The Creative Mind.

—Tree Swenson, Executive Director
Academy of American Poets

PROGRAM

Opening Remarks
Tree Swenson, Executive Director, Academy of American Poets

Ethan Hawke
Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

Glenn Close
Elizabeth Bishop, Filling Station
Elizabeth Bishop, In the Waiting Room
Robert Frost, Birches

William F. Baker
Charles Reznikoff, Te Deum
Emma Lazarus, Long Island Sound
William Stafford, The Star in the Hills

David Halberstam
Marianne Moore, What Are Years?
Langston Hughes, Warning: Augmented
Philip Levine, Coming Home, Detroit, 1968
W. S. Merwin, The Unwritten

Wendy Whelan
Theodore Roethke, I Knew A Woman
Theodore Roethke, The Apparition
Wallace Stevens, A Postcard from the Volcano
Thomas Valez, I Am the Demon

Patrick Wilson
Charles Bukowski, 3:16 and One Half …
William Stafford, With Kit, Age 7, at the Beach

Alfre Woodard
Emily Dickinson, This quiet dust
Emily Dickinson, Dear March
Langston Hughes, Freedom's Plow

John Simon
Kenneth Patchen, Do the Dead Know What Time It Is?
Tennessee Williams, Life Story
E. E. Cummings, somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

Dianne Wiest
Muriel Rukeyser, from Nine Poems for the unborn child, IX
Sylvia Plath, Black Rook in Rainy Weather
T. S. Eliot, from Four Quartets, East Coker, III

Jules Feiffer
E. E. Cummings, in Just-
Ogden Nash, Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man
May Swenson, Analysis of Baseball

Simon Schama
Jane Kenyon, Three Small Oranges
Czeslaw Milosz, Ars Poetica?
Elizabeth Bishop, Salem Willows

Lauren Bacall
Dorothy Parker, Coda
Dorothy Parker, Just a Little One
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Closing Remarks
Eunice J. Panetta, Chairman, Academy of American Poets

David Halberstam and Simon Schama	(Front row) Patrick Wilson, Glenn Close, and Ethan Hawke; (Back row) Jules Feiffer, Dianne Wiest, Wendy Whelan, Alfre Woodard, Simon Schama, David Halberstam, William F. Baker, and John Simon