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

On April 27, 2011, the Academy of American Poets held its 9th annual benefit, Poetry & The Creative Mind, at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Noted actors, musicians, writers, and visual artists participated in this extraordinary evening celebrating the role of contemporary poetry in American culture. Poetry & the Creative Mind celebrates National Poetry Month, established by the Academy in 1996 and now the largest literary celebration in the world.

Our special guest readers were Alec Baldwin, Dan Barber, Adrien Brody, Michael Cunningham, Jesse Eisenberg, Caroline Kennedy, Liev Schreiber, Patti Smith, and Cassandra Wilson. Chip Kidd served as master of ceremonies. They read work by poets including Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Hass, Langston Hughes, Frank O'Hara, among others.

With the generous support of friends and donors, Poetry & the Creative Mind raised $150,000 for the Academy and National Poetry Month activities.

Opening Remarks
Chip Kidd, Master of Ceremonies

Caroline Kennedy
Elizabeth Bishop, Letter to New York
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

Jesse Eisenberg
Delmore Schwartz, The Ballad of the Children of the Czar
Delmore Schwartz, The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me

Dan Barber
Robert Hass, Meditation at Lagunitas

Michael Cunningham
Marie Howe, Annunciation
Frank O'Hara, Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]

Cassandra Wilson
Langston Hughes, In Time of Silver Rain
Nikky Finney, Left

Adrien Brody
Charles Bukowski, the proud thin dying
Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.), The Ten Crack Commandments

Liev Schreiber
Joseph Brodsky, A Song
Charles Simic, My Beloved
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

Patti Smith
Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing
Arthur Rimbaud, Eternity
   translated by Louise Varese
Allen Ginsberg, Footnote to Howl

Alec Baldwin
Enomoto Seifu-jo, Everyone is asleep,
   translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Edgar Allen Poe, Annabel Lee

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