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This program offers a general introduction to the audience and its role in mass media.
Formats: DVDStreaming Copyright Date: 2020
This engaging film tells the story of Walt Whitman’s remarkable life (1819-1892), the turbulent era in which he lived, and the timeless poetry he created. Interweaving narration and dramatic readings with captivating period music, insights from scholars, and photography filmed in key locations, this documentary brings to life Whitman’s unique character and poems. This is the most comprehensive fil...
Walt Whitman rises from a hardscrabble boyhood in New York to write Leaves of Grass in 1855; a work that revolutionizes poetry. This episode explores the mystery of how a seemingly ordinary writer, with little education or training, could have created such a literature-altering masterpiece. Many of Whitman’s most famous poems are profiled, including “There Was a Child Went Forth,” “I Hear America...
Whitman falls in love, explores war and assassination in his poetry, and becomes disillusioned by the Gilded Age that ensues. He recovers from a debilitating stroke to live out his days in Camden NJ, where he continues to write poetry. This episode includes powerful readings of some of Whitman’s most acclaimed poems including “When Lilacs Last in the Doory’d Bloomed,” “O Captain! My Captain!” “O M...
After publishing Leaves of Grass, Whitman receives a fateful letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and moves to Washington to care for sick and injured Civil War soldiers. This episode brings to life such renowned poems as “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim,” and “The Wound-Dresser.”
Stephen Sondheim is widely hailed as the greatest modern American musical theater composer. Elisa New speaks with Broadway stage actors and Adam Gopnik to explore Sondheim’s singular ability to blend lyrics and music.
Formats: Streaming Copyright Date: 2020
An exploration of Marianne Moore’s great poem of marine life. Guests Al Gore, Jorie Graham, and scientists from Conservation International dive into her portrayal of the ocean’s always-changing history, and its future in a warming world.
Guests including Katie Couric, Sheryl Sandberg, Yang Lan, Mary Chapin Carpenter and others discuss Elizabeth Bishop’s masterpiece on losses, great and small.
In the second season of Poetry in America, guests join Elisa New to discuss the poems of Marilyn Chin, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Mark Doty, Yusef Komunyakaa, Stephen Sondheim, William Carlos Williams, and Walt Whitman.
Join John Hodgman, Rafael Campo, Jane Hirshfield, a chorus of couples and host Elisa New as they consider what may or may not lie beneath the surface of William Carlos Williams’s brief tribute to marital relations.