National Poetry Month is right around the corner (Friday!) and O magazine will publish its very first poetry issue; highlights are already online. In one feature, they asked a number of poets: “Where do poets get their inspiration?” Paul Muldoon answered: “The idea that poetry comes from beyond oneself is vital, as is the sense that one writes a poem in a condition that is often associated with a spiritual position, i.e., the condition of humility. One doesn’t know what one’s doing and is inspired in that respect. But it doesn’t mean one’s completely inert, or passive; rather it’s just about allowing a poem to come from wherever it comes from and getting it into the world.”

In the video at top, Muldoon reads from Maggot at 92nd Street Y in October of last year. “Maggot, like all Mr. Muldoon’s work,” wrote The New York Times, “is packed with gnarled and unfamiliar terms. . . [his] verse works high and low. The poems in Maggot play over a wide variety of human experience, but sex and death are the subjects that repeatedly cut its surface like twin dorsal fins.”

Tomorrow at 92Y, Bei Dao and Rosanna Warren will read from their work. Tickets are just $10 for those 35 and under.

In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings. For access to these recordings, please click here. To look at the rest of the season’s live readings, please click here.

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

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