Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Diane Sawyer, Wynton Marsalis, Cynthia Rowley to Read at Benefit for the Academy of American Poets

New York, March 1, 2004--Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Diane Sawyer, Wynton Marsalis, Mary-Louise Parker, Tony Kushner, Vanessa Redgrave, Louis Menand, Cynthia Rowley, Ted Kennedy, Samantha Power, and Brice Marden will read their favorite poems by some of America's best-loved poets on Tuesday, April 6, 2004, at 6:30 p.m. as part of Poetry & The Creative Mind, the second annual benefit for the Academy of American Poets. Poetry & The Creative Mind will be held at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City. Meryl Streep will serve as Honorary Benefit Chair, along with Co-Chairs Rose Styron, activist and Academy Board member, and Jorie Graham, former Academy Chancellor and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

"These readings are testimony to the pure power of poetry," said the Academy's Executive Director, Tree Swenson. "We are delighted that people who are so well-known in other fields are so eager to acknowledge and celebrate the influence that poetry has had on their own careers as well as in their private lives."

Poetry & The Creative Mind also kicks off the ninth annual National Poetry Month (April), which was established by the Academy in 1996 and is now the largest literary celebration in the world.

Among the readers at the Academy's first benefit in April 2003 were Meryl Streep, Jessye Norman, Mark Morris, Natalie Portman, Kitty Carlisle Hart, William Styron, Laurie Anderson, Frank McCourt, Caroline Kennedy, Zadie Smith, and the late George Plimpton.

To purchase tickets to Poetry & The Creative Mind, call 212-721-6500, or visit www.lincolncenter.org or the Alice Tully Hall box office at Broadway and 65th Street. Tickets to the performance are $35, $50, and $75 (Academy members and students receive a $10 discount). A limited number of VIP tickets (including the performance followed by a cocktail buffet supper with the special guest readers) are available starting at $400. Please contact Beth Harrison at bharrison@poets.org or (212) 274-0343 ext. 34 for more information about VIP tickets.

The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit organization founded in 1934 to foster appreciation for contemporary poetry and to support American poets at all stages of their careers. For more information on the Academy and its programs, visit www.poets.org.