Disc 1: The charge of the light brigade (2:20) ; Come into the garden, Maud (:20) / Alfred, Lord Tennyson

How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix : excerpt / Robert Browning (:58)

America : excerpt / Walt Whitman (:38)

The lake isle of Innisfree (3:10) ; The song of the old mother (:54) / William Butler Yeats

Lucinda Matlock (:58) ; Emily Sparks (:52) / Edgar Lee Masters

The creation / James Weldon Johnson (4:26)

If I told him : a completed portrait of Picasso / Gertrude Stein (3:38)

The road not taken (1:04) ; Stopping by woods on a snow evening (:56) / Robert Frost

From The people, yes. #90 / Carl Sandburg

So and so reclining on her couch / Wallace Stevens (2:10)

The red wheelbarrow (:15) ; Spring and all. For Elsie (1:46) / William Carlos Williams

From Hugh Selwyn Mauberly / Ezra Pound (3:02)

From Helen in Egypt : excerpt / H.D. (3:35)

Journey of the Magi : with introduction / T.S. Eliot (3:19)

Recuerdo (1:29) ; Love is not all (1:14) / Edna Saint Vincent Millay

Resume (:21) ; The lady's reward (:57) / Dorothy Parker

As freedom is a breakfastfood / e.e. cummings (2:33)

To Juan at the Winter Solstice / Robert Graves (2:21)

From John Brown's body / Stephen Vincent Benet (3:50)

Strong men / Sterling Brown (2:59)

The negro speaks of rivers : with intro (:57) ; The waery blues : with intro (1:46) / Langston Hughes

Portrait of the artist as a prematurely old man / Ogden Nash (2:02)

King of the river / Stanley Kunitz (3:16)

The cave of nakedness / W.H. Auden (6:28)

I knew a woman (1:47) ; Elegy for Jane (1:12) / Theodore Roethke

Late air (:33) ; The fish (2:40) / Elizabeth Bishop.

Disc 2: Those winter Sundays / Robert Hayden (:52)

The ballad of orange and grape (2:46) ; To be a Jew in the twentieth century (1:02) / Muriel Rukeyser

#23 (The lay of Ike) (1:11) ; #36 (The high ones die

) (1:28) / John Berryman

The world is so difficult to give up

(:23) ; This is the solution, to be happy with slaughter

(:19) ; Here I am with mike in hand, shooting down the rapids

(:38) ; I killed a fly

(:29) ; What about dying? (:52) / David Ignatow

Passing remark (:48) ; Serving with Gideon (1:17) / William Stafford

And death shall have no dominion (1:44) ; The tombstone told when she died (1:52) / Dylan Thomas

The mother (2:34) ; We real cool (1:36) / Gwendolyn Brooks

Skunk hour / Robert Lowell (2:25)

Crossing over / William Meredith (2:17)

See it was like this when

(:39) ; Underwear (3:34) / Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The secret of my endurance / Charles Bukowski (2:16)

Ray / Hayden Carruth (2:44)

Love calls us to the things of this world / Richard Wilbur (1:54)

American haikus : excerpt / Jack Kerouac with Al Cohn & Zoot Simms (6:08)

Death psalm : O Lord of mysteries / Denise Levertov (3:45)

Monet refuses the operation / Lisel Mueller (2:28)

Woodchucks / Maxine Kumin (1:57)

America / Allen Ginsberg (8:47)

Still / A.R. Ammons (2:40)

My philosophy of life / John Ashbery (4:08)

After making love we hear footsteps (1:31) ; Last gods (2:03) / Galway Kinnell

A blessing / James Wright (1:49)

All my pretty ones (3:26) ; For my lover, returning to his wife (3:07) / Anne Sexton.

Disc 3: Even in Paris : excerpt / Richard Howard (6:28)

Driving into the wreck / Adrienne Rich (4:02)

Lovesong / Ted Hughes (2:12)

Omeros : excerpt / Derek Walcott (3:02)

The song of the taste (:59) ; Why I take good care of my Macintosh computer (1:30) / Gary Snyder

The idea of ancestry / Etheridge Knight (3:09)

Daddy / Sylvia Plath (3:41)

The greatest poem in the world / David Ray (1:20)

An oddly lovely day alone / John Updike (2:10)

Bang, bang outishly (1:31) ; Rhythim blues (:24) ; Shazam doowah (:50) / Amiri Baraka

Dahomey / Audrey Lorde (2:09)

Right to life / Marge Piercy (4:09)

The poem / Mark Strand (2:31)

Zimmer imagines heaven / Paul Zimmer (1:59)

Cruelty, don't talk to me about cruelty / Lucille Clifton (:40)

I have had to learn to live with my face / Diane Wakoski (6:43)

We were so poor

(:30) ; I was stolen by the gypsies

(:35) ; Everybody knows the story

(:43) / Charles Simic

Death of a naturalist / Seamus Heaney (2:05)

Lester leaps in (1:08) ; A dance for militant dilettantes (1:29) / Al Young

Fire / Gloria Vando (4:08)

Odysseus to Telemachus / Joseph Brodsky (1:40)

Sometimes it's better to laugh 'honest injun' / Simon J. Ortiz (2:55)

Ode to my shoes / Erica Jong (1:49).

Disc 4: Wonder / Sharon Olds (1:38)

The lost pilot / James Tate (1:56)

Puerto Rican obituary : excerpt / Pedro Pietri (5:34)

Uh oh plutonium / Anne Waldman (3:12)

The fine printing on the label of a bottle of non-alcohol beer (1:29) ; The sweat lodge (1:11) / Adrian Louis

Facing it / Yusef Komunyakaa (1:10)

Logan Heights and the world / Juan Felipe Herrera (4:35)

The Colonel / Carolyn Forche (2:44)

The history of Armenia / Peter Balakian (3:37)

Grace / Joy Harjo (4:27)

Parsley / Rita Dove (4:13)

The long meadow / Vijay Seshadri (4:11)

The floral apron / Marilyn Chin (1:24)

Raisin eyes / Luci Tapahonso (1:43)

The concrete river / Luis Rodriguez (3:34)

My father, in heaven, is reading out loud / Li-Young Lee (2:29)

Two standards / Elise Paschen (2:17)

I saw you walking / Deborah Garrison (1:42)

The female seer will burn upon this pyre (1:17) ; After the gig, Mick Jagger (1:10) / Elizabeth Alexander

Morning broke on my cabin inverted, tempest in my forehead / D.A. Powell (3:47)

Eleven more days / Carl Hancock Rux (4:52)

Simon Peter / John Poch (2:09)

Fragments of the forgotten war / Suji Kwock Kim (3:46)

Lucky criminals / Kevin Prufer (2:01)

The slaughter / Kevin Young (2:18)

Scab / Jonathan Lamfers (3:14).