Poets, public figures and members of various communities join series creator Elisa New to engage in close readings of a single American poem. Each episode mixes lively discussion with archival materials, location footage, and vivid animation. The series offers audiences an immersive and accessible experience in reading poems that touch on many aspects of American life, past and present.

"Presents the full text of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in both its original version and in a translated version using everyday language. Describes the events that led to the creation of America's national anthem and its significance through history"--Provided by publisher.

"Robert Hass--former poet laureate, winner of the National Book Award, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize--illuminates the formal impulses that underlie great poetry in this accessible volume of essays drawn from a series of lectures he delivered at the renowned Iowa Writers' Workshop,"--NoveList.

"No art has been denounced as often as poetry. It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore."In this inventive and lucid essay,...

"In A Vertical Art, acclaimed poet Simon Armitage takes a refreshingly common-sense approach to an art form that can easily lend itself to grand statements and hollow gestures. Questioning both the facile and obscure ends of the poetry spectrum, he offers sparkling new insights about poetry and an array of favorite poets. Based on Armitage's public lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry, A Vertical Art illuminates poets as varied as Emily Dickinson,...

"We live in unsettled times. What is America and who are we as a people? How do we understand the dreams and betrayals that have shaped the American experience? For poet and critic Edward Hirsch, poetry opens up new ways of answering these questions, of reconnecting with one another and with what's best in us. In this landmark new book from Library of America, Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of forty essential American poems we thought we knew--from...