Elizabeth Bradfield brings together recordings of poets connected to Provincetown, Massachusetts, but linked more deeply by their acts of attention—to human community and to the more-than-human world. She shares Olga Broumas’s meditation on grief in the body (“The Massacre”), Mark Doty’s simultaneous engagement with the real and the metaphoric (“Description”), and Mark Wunderlich’s tongue-in-cheek exploration of myth and monstrosity (“Milking the Minotaur”). Bradfield closes with “Considering the Hadal Zone,” a poem that circles through ocean deeps and memory.

Find the full recordings of Broumas, Doty, and Wunderlich reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:
Olga Broumas (October 26, 1988)
Mark Doty (October 13, 1993)
Mark Wunderlich (September 12, 2024)

Full transcripts of every episode are available on Buzzsprout. Look for the transcript tab under each episode.

Voca is now fully captioned, with interactive transcripts and captions available for all readings! Read more about the project here, or try out this new feature by visiting Voca.

Soham Patel shares poems that each speak to “you,” finding in the second-person pronoun a way to explore difficult subjects. She introduces Mark Strand asking questions of his deceased father (“Elegy for My Father”), Kazim Ali addressing a past self in a time of transformation (“Gallery”), and Yanyi considering the fragmentary world alongside the beloved (“Beginning of Spring”). Patel closes with her poem “Beloved Writes a Letter,” a direct address to one of seven characters in her book The Daughter Industry.

Find the full recordings of Strand, Ali, and Yanyi reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:
Mark Strand (May 4, 1971)
Kazim Ali (February 24, 2011)
Yanyi (September 28, 2023)

Full transcripts of every episode are available on Buzzsprout. Look for the transcript tab under each episode.

Voca is now fully captioned, with interactive transcripts and captions available for all readings! Read more about the project here, or try out this new feature by visiting Voca.

Richard Blanco curates poems that look to language as a spiritual and psychological home, a center from which we make sense of reality. He introduces Ada Limón confronting the limits of what a poem can do (“The End of Poetry”), Robert Hass balancing lyric with narrative to reveal how language helps us understand our lives (“Meditation at Lagunitas”), and Heather McHugh demonstrating a way to conclude a poem with a leap into another universe (“What He Thought”). Blanco closes with his poem “The Splintering,” a piece that inhabits the blessing and curse of first becoming aware of language.

Find the full recordings of Limón, Hass, and McHugh reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:

Ada Limón (December 4, 2024)
Robert Hass (September 19, 1979)
Heather McHugh (April 19, 1995)

Full transcripts of every episode are available on Buzzsprout. Look for the transcript tab under each episode.

Voca is now fully captioned, with interactive transcripts and captions available for all readings! Read more about the project here, or try out this new feature by visiting Voca.