W.W. Norton has launched a new poetry website in honor of National Poetry Month. The website is Poemsoutloud.net and it features recordings of poets reading poetry.
The poems can be listened to online or downloaded for later. Often the poets read their own work — as is the case for Rita Dove and Todd Boss, above. But former poet laureate Robert Pinsky reads Anne Bradstreet and the poem "Of Money" by Barnabe Googe — the latter, written more than 400 years ago, is still painfully true.
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The site was inspired by Pinsky's "Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Out Loud," published by W.W. Norton. All the poets featured on the site are with the publishing house, which has a pretty significant poetry roster. They caught up with many of them at a writers conference earlier this year and asked them "What is poetry for?" The answers include a lot of blank stares and some inspired off-the-cuff responses: "for tresspassing and feeling at home at the same time" and "change ... witness ... celebration."
