"A precious treasure chest has been unearthed with these historic recordings." --Booklist

About the Series

The Academy’s Poetry Audio Archive contains hundreds of unique live recordings made since 1963, when the Academy hosted its first public reading. A number of these recordings are available for purchase in CD-R format, and the list of titles in our catalog increases annually.

Each recording represents a reading in its entirety, chronicling a distinct moment in the career of a poet and in the arc of their art. While many masterworks exist here in their original forms--often in their premier public performance--many unpublished poems have also hereby been saved from obscurity.

About the Recordings

Our Poetry Audio Archive recordings come from a variety of years, locations, and technologies. Each one has been diligently re-mastered to provide a moving, memorable listening experience.

Though we strive to improve the audio quality of each recording to the best of our ability--we carefully remove distracting tones--some recordings contain anomalies we have been unable to remove and are therefore noisier than studio recordings.

Each single CD is $12; double-CD sets are $17.