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The Poet and the
Poem from the
Library of Congress
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ARCHIVED POETS

The Poet and the Poem 2022-23 Series
CLICK THESE NAMES TO HEAR THE PROGRAM

Eduardo C. Corral
Carmen Calatayud

Susana H. Case

Joan K. Selby

Abdul Ali

Kwame Alexander

Diane Wilbon Parks

fahima ife

The Poet and the Poem 2022-23 Series

Katherine J. Williams

Daniel Pravda

Sally Wen Mao

Evie Shockley

Jennifer Homans

James J. Patterson

The Song In the Room: Six Women Poets

Terence Winch

William Heath

Terry Edmonds

Deanna Nikaido

Hailey Leithauser

Danny Queen

Rachel Pastan

David Keplinger

Jane Clarke

Dr. Tonee Moll

Susan Okie

Truth Thomas

Greg McBride

Edgar Kunz

Andrew Wong &
Lai Fong Wong

Laura Shovan

The Poet and the Poem 2022-23 Series

Eva Brann

Kondwani Fidel

George Ella Lyon

Vailes Shepperd

Miho Kinnas

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Annie Finch

Samuel Peralta

Melvin E. Brown

Stewart Moss

Barbara Quick

Kim B Miller

Barbara Goldberg

Laura Costas

Kira Thurman

Joel Dias Porter

Esperanza Hope Snyder

Pat Valdata

Taylor Johnson

Maria Lisella

John Berry

Minnie Bruce Pratt

Daniel Mark Epstein

Ada Limón

Marita Golden

Avideh Shashaani

Joyce Kornblatt

Mary Morris

Pamela Woolford

Heid E. Erdrich

Remica
Bingham-Risher

W. Luther Jett

Tim Seibles

Shara McCallum

Frank X Walker

Patti (Spady) Ross

Sunu P. Chandy

Kristin Kowalski Ferragut

Merrill Leffler

Hiram Larew

 

The Poet and the Poem 2021-22 Series

Ocean Vuong

Terence Winch

Lenard D. Moore

John Doe

Jerry Ward

Henry Crawford

Didi Menendez

Francisco Aragón

Tom Kirlin

Jona Colson and
Caroline Bock

Jehanne Dubrow

Miles David Moore

Maggie Doherty

Cornelius Eady

Paul Bartlett

Y.S. Fing

Teri Ellen Cross Davis

Sandra Beasley

Fleda Brown

Jeanne Murray Franklin

Rion Amilcar Scott

Jiwon Choi

Lenny DellaRocca

David Keplinger

Sandra Yannone

Willie Perdomo

J.P. Dancing Bear

Anne Harding Woodworth

Richard Harteis
& Tom Veys

Thomas Sayers Ellis

The Poet and the Poem 2020-21 Series

Barbara DeCesare

The Write Blend
Poetry Collective

Pamela Murray Winters

Shirley J. Brewer

Garrett J. Brown

Temple Cone

Lauren K. Alleyne

Doritt Carroll

Yao Hoke Glover III

Meg Eden

George Bilgere

Robert Earl Price
IN CONCERT

Robert Earl Price
Interview

Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka

Andrew McConnell Stott

Jody Bolz

Dr. Monifa A. Love

Jericho Brown

Jose Padua

Ann Bracken

Jesse N. Alexander

Jeffrey Coleman

Carolyn Joyner

Barbara Quick

Linda Joy Burke

Kim Roberts

Mecca Verdell

John O'Dell

Ned Balbo

Carolyn Forché

The Poet and the Poem 2020 Series

Panna Naik

Joanna Howard

Lisa Vihos

Fatemeh Keshavarz

Steve Leyva

Seema Reza

Judith Farr

Susan Orlean

Nancy Mitchell

celeste doaks

Robert Ertman

Joy Harjo

Natwar Gandhi

Mervyn Taylor

Jane Clarke

Rob Richmond

The Poet and the Poem 2019 Series

Dr. Xuhua Liang

Chad Frame

Erica Wright

David Gewanter

Wendy Lesser

Marcus Jackson

Michael Lally

Nin Andrews

Linda Pastan

Kyle Dargan

Virginia Smith

Kim Roberts

Abhay K.

Geraldine Connolly

Bob Hicok

George Bilgere

Jeannine M. Pitas

Jorie Graham

Lesley Nneka Arimah

Poets Commemorate China's Nanking Massacre

Arielle Saiber

The Poet and the Poem 2018 Series

Zeina Hashem Beck

Sherwin Bitsui

Linda Rodriguez
George Wallace
Bojan Louis
Margo Jefferson
Anna Lawton
Lauren Camp
Diane Wilbon Parks
Rachel Corbett
Patrick Washington
Mike Maggio
Holly Bass
Terry Blackhawk
Frank X Walker
Shauna Morgan
Tracy K Smith
Matthew Hittinger
Platos Symposium
Fleda Brown
Eli Gottlieb
Reuben Jackson
Kevin Gordon
Emily Fragos
Sandra Evans Falconer
The Poet & the Poem 2017 Featured Poets for the 40th Anneversary
CLICK THESE NAMES TO HEAR THE PROGRAM
The Literary Review
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Harteis' Appreciation of Cavalieri's "Other Voices, Other Lives."
Jim Reese
Mark McMorris
E. Ethelbert Miller
Collective Voices
Elizabeth Hazen
Judith McCombs
Joseph Ross
Hayes Davis
Indran Amirthanayagam
Evie Shockley
Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
Barbara Goldberg
Nancy Carlson
Hope Snyder
Laura Shovan
Poems
Father
I Gave You My Work, Gilbert
Don't Undersell Yourself
January
You Can't Start The Spiritual Journey
The Protest
Going South
Two by Two
This Is
Helpmates
Interviews
Washington Independant Review
Danmurano.com
Interviews
Podcast from WPFW-FM
ON THE MARGIN
Interview
"The Man Who Got Away"
Geoffrey Himes
Interview
The December
Interview
A Review by
Sonja James
Review of Wicked Stage
by Daniela Gioseff
Fund for the Future of Children "Emerging Voices in Poetry"
Interviews
Interviews with
U.S. Poets Laureate
Interviews with Significant Poets
Currency of the Heart
An Interview with Grace Cavalieri
Scene4 Magazine
Grace Cavalieri's book and theater reviews at The Montserrat Review
Articles
Tapes and Books
Pinecrest Rest Haven Audio Tape
WPFW 89.3FM Poetry Anthology
Ordering
Information

© 2024 Grace Cavalieri

Cosa farei per Amore; Poesie Dalla Voce di Mary WollstonecraftCosa farei per Amore; Poesie Dalla Voce di Mary Wollstonecraft
$17.00
(Jacaranda Press 2012) *There is a wait for this order
Gotta Go NowGotta Go Now
$9.99
(Casa Menendez 2012) available on magcloud
A chapbook, 34 pgs. perfect bound, poems of eulogies-ironic and wry
Millie’s Sunshine Tiki VillasMillie's Sunshine Tiki Villas, A Novella in Verse.
$17.00
(Casa Menendez 2011) A home for retired citizens in Florida is mayhem when rivals Muriel and Coco compete as femme fatales.
Navy WifeNavy Wife
$9.99
(Casa Menendez 2010) available on magcloud
Grace Cavalieri relives her years married to a Naval Aviator, but juxtaposes poetry of real life experience with excerpts from an antiquated guide book for how Navy officer wives should behave.

Welcome


Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri is the author of 26 books and chapbooks of poetry, the latest are What The Psychic Said (Goss Publishing 2020;) Showboat (Goss Publishing, 2019;), Other Voices, Other Lives (ASP, 2017;) and a Memoir; Life Upon The Wicked Stage (Nerw Academia/Scarity, 2015.) The Man Who Got Away (new academia/scarith (2014:) The Mandate of Heaven (Bordighera Press 2014:) and (from Casa Menendez Press) Gotta Go Now (2012;) Millie's Sunshine Tiki Villas (2011;) Sounds Like Something I Would Say (2010;) Also, The Poet's Cookbook, in English & Italian (Bordighera Press, 2009;) The Poet's Cookbook, in English & German; (Goethe-Institut;) Anna Nicole: Poems (Goss:183 Casa Menendez, 2008,) Water on the Sun (Bordighera Press, 2006,) What I Would Do For Love (Jacaranda Press, 2003,) Cuffed Frays (Argonne House Press, 2001,) Sit Down Says Love (Argonne House Press, 1999). Pinecrest Rest Haven (The Word Works,1998.) She's also written texts and lyrics performed for opera, television and film. A recent publication is an Italian translation of What I Would Do For Love: Poems in the Voice of Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797. It's titled, Cosa Farei Per Amore, and was translated by Sabine Pascarelli (2013.)

She has had 26 plays produced on American stages. Her 21st play "Quilting the Sun" was presented at the Smithsonian Institution, and received its world premiere at Centre Stage, S.C. Her latest play is "Anna Nicole: Blonde Glory" (2011.) Grace teaches poetry workshops throughout the country at numerous colleges. She produced and hosted "The Poet and the Poem," weekly, on WPFW-FM (1977-1997) presenting 2,000 poets to the nation. She now presents this series to public radio from the Library of Congress via NPR satellite and Pacifica Radio celebrating 42 years on air in 2019. 

Grace has received 2013 George Garrett Award, the Pen-Fiction Award, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Silver Medal, and awards from the National Commission on Working Women, the WV Commission on Women, the American Association of University Women, The DC Poet Laureate Award from Dolores Kendrick, the Paterson lifetime Achievement Award, and more. She won a Paterson Excellence Award for What I Would do for Love, and The Bordighera Poetry Prize for Water on the Sun. She received the inaugural Columbia Merit Award for "significant contributions to poetry."

Grace's career in broadcasting began as founding core staff of WPFW-FM, moving to Associate Director Education/ Children's programming PBS, in charge of the daytime schedule; then, Program Officer, National Endowment for the Humanities & Head of Children's Media funding. She founded two poetry presses in Washington DC that are still thriving. She is presently poetry columnist for The Washington Independent Review of Books. Her Papers are in the George Washington University Gelman Library Special Collections.

Her teaching career began with establishing writing programs at Antioch College's east coast campuses, to Asst. Director St. Mary College of Maryland's Annual Poetry Festival and Workshops (1977-2005,) among others. She writes full-time in Annapolis, Maryland where she had lived with her late husband, sculptor Kenneth Flynn (1930-2013.) They have four grown daughters.


The Poet's Cookbook—by Grace Cavalieri and Sabine Pascarelli

The Poet's CookbookThere are many standard national cookbooks in English and Italian. However, Sabine Pascarelli and I want to share recipes that were once purely Italian and are now becominge Italo-American. Sabine lives in Tuscany, the birthplace of my parents. Our lineage is the same, and our kitchens are very much the same, although one home overlooks an olive grove near Florence, and the other is near the sailboats of Annopolis. Because we came to our friendship through poetry and cooking, we offer some of each in this book. Cooking speaks of community, in Italy and America; and the breaking of bread in any language, in every country, speaks of a commonality with friends. In this spirit, although the recipes are our own, we asked that the poems included be from our friends, other poets.

Featured Poets

Barbara Goldberg

 
Moira Egan

Rod Jellema

 
Rose Solari

Michael Glaser

 
Calder Lowe

Diane Lockwood

 
Patricia Gray

Jean Emerson

 
Linda Pastan

David Budbill

 
Anne Caston

Judy Neri

 
Chistina Daub

Alexis Rotella

 
Jenny D'Angelo

Ernie Wormwood

 
Christine Sostarich

Carly Sachs

 
Katherine J. Williams

Vivian Shipley

 
Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Nan Fry

 
Andrea Hollander Budy

Cicely Angleton

 
Karren LaLonde Alenier

Emily Ferrara

 
Carole Wagner Greenwood


Anna Nicole From Anna Nicole: Poems

Unlikely Relationships
Grace Cavalieri

Sleeping with the old man made
Anna feel better. It was like
being a little girl when your mother
would make you hug your smelly
Aunt for the sake of her happiness.
Anna felt secure here.
Why in the world a blind man insisted
on a blue eyed blonde she
never questioned.
Once she held her maid's baby
against her chest
but it felt like a new rug on a dirty floor.
Where did she put that baby?
The old man said she was in
love with her own face and could
not love anything else.
A lie. A dirty lie. There was much
much more about her body she
loved. She loved how it felt
with the baby.



Quilting the Sun

Quilting the Sun

"Inspired by a magnificent quilt created by former slave

Harriet Powers, which now resides in the Smithsonian,

Quilting the Sun stitches an enchanting narrative,

pieced together from historical fact, African myth and

the brilliant storytelling of one of

America?s greatest living poets."

.....Centre Stage, S.C.

 

 

 

Poster designed by Tiffany Nave


Grace interviews U.S. Poets Laureate

Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky is a native of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. His poetry has been published in twelve languages. Joseph Brodsky has lived in the U.S. since 1972 when he was exiled from the Soviet Union. He is the recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award. His essay collection, Less Than One, was awarded the 1986 National Book Award for criticism. Winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature, he is one of only five Americans to win the award during the past thirty years. ...

Billy Collins
This interview was conducted at the Library of Congress, December 2001. Grace Cavalieri produces and hosts "The Poet and the Poem;" The series is delivered to public radio via NPR satellite. Billy Collins's most recent books of poetry include a volume of new and selected poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room (Random House, 2001) Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998); The Art of Drowning, (1995); and, Questions About Angels (1991.) ...

Rita Dove
In May of 1993, Dove was named the Poet Laureate of the United States. She was the first African American appointed to the position as well as the first woman and the youngest, at 41 years old. Grace Cavalieri Interviews Rita Dove, U.S. Poet Laureate. on her Inaugural Day at the Library of Congress, (1993) ...

Louise Gluck
Louise Gluck was the 12th Poet Laureate Consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress. This interview was conducted by Grace Cavalieri for the radio program "The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress," during the Library's bicentennial celebration in 2000. The program was distributed via NPR satellite to public radio stations. Louise Gluck holds the Pulitzer Prize for her book, The Wild Iris; She is the author of eight other books of poetry, most recently The Seven Ages (Ecco Press.). She holds the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Prize for Poetry, The National Critics Circle Award, and The Poetry Society of America's Melville Kane Award. ...

Robert Haas
Robert Hass is our Poet Laureate consultant in poetry. He was born in San Francisco, took his undergraduate degree at St. Mary’s College and his graduate degrees at Stanford University. He reads from Field Guide, his first book, and Human Wishes. His other collections are 20th Century Pleasures, The The Essential Haiku, and he has worked with many translations which we will find out about. ...

Donald Hall
Donald Hall is the author of 15 books of poetry. When not working on poems, he has published reviews, criticism, textbooks, sports journalism, memoirs, biographies, children's stories, and plays. And he is here with an opening poem. Grace Cavalieri interviews Donald Hall, 14th Poet Laureate of the United States, as he takes office in Washington D.C. This interview was recorded at the Library of Congress, September 2006. ...

Joy Harjo
Our guest is the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo. She’s one of the most significant women in the history of poetry. So congratulations, and the audience would love to hear your voice with an opening poem. ...

Juan Filipe Herrera
Juan Felipe Herrera is the author of 28 books of poetry, novels for young adults, and collections for children, including Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (2008), winner of National Book Critics Circle Award and the International Latino Book Award. His other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards, and a PEN / Beyond Margins Award. Elected a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets in 2011, Herrera, who was born in Fowler, California, in 1948, served as the Poet Laureate of California from 2012-2015. ...

Josephine Jacobsen
Josephine Jacobsen was born in Ontario Canada in 1908. She authored many books of poetry including The Chinese Insomniacs, and The Sisters which won the Lenore-Marshall Award. Her career spanned more than six decades. The American Academy of the Arts Citation celebrated her as a recipient of "almost every major poetry award." From 1971-1973 she served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. This interview celebrated her ninth book, In the Crevice of Time, New and Collected Poems in 1995. Josephine Jacobsen died earlier this year, 2004. ...

Ted Kooser
Ted Kooser, who was born in Ames, Iowa, received his bachelor's degree from Iowa State and his master's in English from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. He is the author of 10 collections of poetry, including "Delights & Shadows," which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. His other honors include two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a Pushcart Prize and the Stanley Kunitz Prize from Columbia. He is a professor in the English department at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. This interview was conducted at the Library of Congress the time of his inauguration as the 13th Poet Laureate of the United States. ...

Stanley Kunitz
Our guest is the tenth Poet Laureate of the United States, Stanley Kunitz, just inaugurated. Stanley Kunitz, the most beloved poet in America and a fitting choice to hold the county's top poetry post.  Born in Worchester, Massachusetts in 1905, educated in Harvard, he has done many things for other poets in this county. ...

Philip Levine
Philip Levine was the 18th Poet Laureate of the United States. The following Poems with commentary by Philip Levine are extracted from his conversation with Grace Cavalieri on public radio's " The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress ," the day of his inauguration, October 17, 2011. He holds the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, National Book Award, Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, Levinson Prize, American Book Award, two Guggenheim's, National Book Critic's Circle Award, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Frank O'Hara Prize plus others. Philip Levine is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry. ...

Ada Limón
Ada Limón became the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States in July of 2022. Limón is the author of the poetry collections The Hurting Kind (2022, Milkweed Editions); The Carrying (2018, Milkweed Editions), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; Bright Dead Things (2015, Milkweed Editions), a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Books Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Sharks in the Rivers (2010, Milkweed Editions); Lucky Wreck (2005, Autumn House Press, reissued 2021); and This Big Fake World (2005, Pearl Editions). ...

W.S. Merwin
William Stanley Merwin's honors include Pulitzer Prizes ,the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the Tanning Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Pen Translation Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Governor's Award for Literature of the State of Hawaii, the Guggenheim, the Ford Foundation; Fellowships from the American Academy of Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the former chancellorship of the Academy of American Poets, among numerous other awards. ...

Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov was the third Poet Laureate of the United States. At the time of this interview he was working on his 14th volume of poetry. He is the author of three novels, two collections of short stories and has received every top award including the Pulitzer in' 78. At the time of his death he was the Distinguished University Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. This interview took place the day of Mr. Nemerov's inauguration as Laureate. It was broadcast nationwide on satellite to public radio stations. ...

Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky is the U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, 1997-98. Pinsky's verse translation, The Inferno of Dante, was published in 1995. He teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University. He is the author of five books of poetry: Sadness and Happiness (1975), An Explanation of America (1979), History of  My Heart (1983), and The Want Bone (1990). The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems was published in 1996. This program was recorded while Mr. Pinsky visited the Library of Congress as a guest poet, 1995-96 season, the year prior to his appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate. ...

Kay Ryan
Kay Ryan, sixteenth Poet Laureate of the United States, and she’s all ours today. I’m Grace Cavalieri, and we’re at the Library of Congress, and we couldn’t be happier about that. It doesn’t seem like you could get in too much trouble. You live a writer’s life, you teach English, and yet you do have poems – chickens coming home to roost, survival poems – as if there’s a lot of danger out there. Do you think that the poet who’s most awake sees what there is to fear, or to worry about? Because your life looks like they can’t get you. ...

Charles Simic
Charles Simic was born in Yugoslavia on May 9, 1938. His childhood was complicated by the events of World War II. He moved to Paris with his mother when he was 15; a year later, they joined his father in New York and then moved to Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, where he graduated from the same high school as Ernest Hemingway. Simic attended the University of Chicago, working nights in an office at the Chicago Sun Times, but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 and served until 1963. He earned his bachelor's degree from New York University in 1966. From 1966 to 1974 he wrote and translated poetry, and he also worked as an editorial assistant for Aperture, a photography magazine. He married fashion designer Helen Dubin in 1964. They have two children. He has been a U.S. citizen since 1971 and lives in Strafford, N.H. Our Poet Laureate Charles Simic says hello with an opening poem. ...

Tracy K Smith
Tracy K. Smith is the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States. She is the author of three books of poetry, including Life on Mars (2011), winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Duende (2007), winner of the 2006 James Laughlin Award and the 2008 Essence Literary Award; and The Body?s Question (2003), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith is also the author of a memoir, Ordinary Light (2015), a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Nonfiction and selected as a Notable Book by The New York Times and The Washington Post. For her poetry, Smith has received a Rona Jaffe Writers Award and a Whiting Award. In 2014, the Academy of American Poets awarded her with the Academy Fellowship...

Mark Strand
Mark Strand has published eight books of Poetry, most recently The Continuous Life (1990). He is the author of three children's books and the coeditor of several anthologies, Including New Poetry of Mexico (with Octavio Paz) and Another Republic (with Charles Simic). He is also a translator and an art critic. As a poet, Mark Strand has won numerous awards; In 1990, he was appointed fourth Poet Laureate of the United States. ...

Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey is the Library of Congress's Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2012-2013. Born in Gulfport, Mississippi, Trethewey received a BA from the University of Georgia, an MA from Hollins College (now Hollins University), and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts. Her first book of poems, Domestic Work (2000), was selected by former Poet Laureate Rita Dove as winner of the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was published by Graywolf Press. ...

Reed Whittemore
Reed Whittemore is the author of more than 14 books. He is a biographer and one of America’s most distinguished poets. He has twice served as the consultant in poetry to the library of congress. He is Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, he is the biographer of William Carlos Williams, and he is presently writing his memoirs. ...

Richard Wilbur
First Consultant in Poetry to be named Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, when Congress in 1987. changed the title officially. This interview was conducted with Mr. Wilbur on his Inaugural day, The Library of Congress, 1987...