Poetry In America

"I cannot dance upon my toes," Emily Dickinson writes -- "no man instructed me.

Join poet Edward Hirsch, host Elisa New, NBA players Shaquille O'Neal, Pau Gasol, and Shane Battier, and a group of pick-up basketball players as they read Hirsch's "Fast Break" and use basketball to understand poetry - and poetry to understand the game of basketball.

Vice President Joe Biden, Inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander, and psychologist Angela Duckworth join host Elisa New and a chorus of working fathers and sons to reflect on Robert Hayden's moving poem "Those Winter Sundays.

Joined by rock star Bono, US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, and by a chorus of clergy and religious practitioners, host Elisa New tackles two of Ginsberg's most emotionally transporting poems, the "Hymmnn" from Kaddish, and the anti-war chant "Hum Bom.

Elisa New considers the rise of the skyscraper-- and the emergence of the modernist poem-- in an episode featuring celebrated architect Frank Gehry, Chinese visionary and real estate developer Zhang Xin, poet Robert Polito, and student poets from around the United States.

President Bill Clinton, pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, poet Sonia Sanchez, and students from the Harlem Children's Zone interpret Langston Hughes's most iconic poem, "Harlem" with series host Elisa New.

Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, journalist and ethicist David Brooks, and poet, professor, and painter Peter Sacks join Elisa New to ponder W.

At New York Fashion Week, host Elisa New catches up with fashion designer Johnson Hartig, Bergdorf Goodman's Betty Halbreich, shoe designer Stuart Weitzman and with fashion and poetry students from the New School to discuss Robert Pinsky's poem on labor, craft, and the threads that connect us.

Senator John McCain, playwright and activist Anna Deavere Smith, poets Reginald Dwayne Betts and Li-Young Lee, and four exonerated prisoners discuss poetry's special resonance for those behind bars.

In this environmentally-themed, visually splendid episode, Elisa New is joined by evolutionary biologist E.

Host Elisa New rediscovers the freshness and the still-potent charge of Emma Lazarus's iconic sonnet of immigration alongside singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, activist and founder of the United We Dream Foundation Cristina Jimenez, President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten, financier and philanthropist David Rubenstein, and poet Duy Doan.

Explore San Francisco's history--from the Gold Rush and early Chinese immigration to the rise of Silicon Valley--through Marilyn Chin's poem of her San Francisco youth.

"The art of losing isn't hard to master," Elizabeth Bishop wrote in her poem "One Art," universally considered one of her greatest.

This environmental science-themed episode explores Marianne Moore's great poem of marine life, "The Fish.

Series creator Elisa New talks with poet Mark Doty, psychologist Steven Pinker, choreographer Bill T.

Stephen Sondheim is widely hailed as the greatest modern American musical theater composer.

Yusef Komunyakaa went to Vietnam as a journalist but he came home a poet.

Just 28 words and mimicking the form of a refrigerator note, is "This is Just to Say" simply the short apology it pretends to be, or something more subtle and passive-aggressive? Join actor John Hodgman, poet and physician Rafael Campo, poet Jane Hirshfield, a chorus of couples, and New as they consider what may or may not lie beneath the surface of William Carlos Williams's brief tribute to marital relations--and the savor of plums.

In 1855 Walt Whitman declared "The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

"I cannot dance upon my toes," Emily Dickinson writes -- "no man instructed me.