Poets often struggle with the issue of how much of the self to reveal in a poem. This workshop is an opportunity to explore different modes of self-revelation and restraint and to discover ways of combining self-expression with poetic discipline.

Four poets share work that resonates with the renowned Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) in the exquisite museum and rock garden dedicated to his art.

Join us for a heartwarming Poets House tradition, the screening of Albert Lamorisse's immortal film The Red Balloon (1956), followed by the creation of our own floating valentines.

Matsuo Bashō, wandering the back-country fields, mountains, and cities of 17th-century Japan and of his own life, distilled the immensities of human experience into single images of striking depth and feeling. Bashō offered the seventeen-syllable haiku as an evocative and democratic form for capturing the realizations of ordinary existence. His brief poems—sometimes sorrowful, sometimes humorous, always acutely perceptive—revolutionized and transfigured not only the poetry of his own time but current American and world poetry as well.

The former US Poet Laureate explores the shared territory of two major 20th century poets, Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams, whose distinct voices are unified by a common interest in the American idiom and the construction of the American memory.

Friends and fellow writers join the beloved bard Galway Kinnell in a reading that honors his profound impact on generations of poets.

Presented in conjunction with Blue Flower Arts, Cooper Union, Houghton Mifflin, NYU Creative Writing Program and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y.

Join Nightboat Books to celebrate the publication of Lytton Smith's newest book While You Were Approaching the Spectacle But Before You Were Transformed by It

Reception to follow.

For writers aged 12–18

For fifty years, William Stafford wrote every morning before others were awake, welcoming whatever his imagination offered, and using this attitude as the basis of his poems. In a workshop led by poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Kim Stafford, we will look at William Stafford poems that exemplify this process and try on some of his writing techniques.

William Stafford (1914–1993) was the author of more than 50 books; his first poetry collection, Traveling Through the Dark (1962), won the 1963 National Book Award for Poetry. A conscientious objector during World War II and avid ecologist, Stafford spent most of his teaching career at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon. With his deceptively simple style and reverence for the natural world, he is considered the Robert Frost of the American west.