Cultural Writing. Recording. Poetry. This collection of historic recordings spans 40 years of public readings sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. The recordings-poets reading their own work-range from the amusing to the haunting, and from the abstract to the quotidian. Poets appearing on this album: John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, John Berryman, Kamau Brathwaite, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amy Clampitt, Lucille Clifton, Robert Creeley, Rita Dove, Carolyn Forche, Louise Gluck, Stanley Kunitz, Li-Young Lee, Denise Levertov, Philip Levine, Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur, Charles Wright, and James Wright.