Next Monday, the Unterberg Poetry Center will open its 71st-anniversary season with a reading by Adrienne Rich. Now 80, Ms. Rich first appeared at the 92nd Street Y in 1958. Starting today, in an effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog will begin to feature regular postings of archival recordings by some of the best writers of our time—many of whom, like Ms. Rich, will be returning to the Center in the months ahead. To purchase tickets to Ms. Rich's upcoming reading, please click here. And for more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here.

"I cannot give you a poetry of passions resolved, or of pure observation, or of self-enclosed self-exploration," Ms. Rich said, by way of introducing her reading at the Poetry Center in October of 1991, in the audio excerpt above. She went on to say: "I believe that poetry is one of our great human resources, and often a strangely wasted resource, like so many others in the United States. At a time when extremely sophisticated tactics are being employed to disinform and demoralize us as a people, I believe that poetry speaks not from a separate sphere but in a different voice."

Here, then, is an excerpt from that 1991 reading. This section includes Ms. Rich reading What Kind of Times Are These, which was inspired by a line of Brecht.

Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.

You can also download the MP3. [2 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]

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