Angie Venezia at Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s poetry blog “The Best Words in Their Best Order” recently conducted an interview with our very own Alexandra Wilder, the Managing Director of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center. They spoke about Alexandra’s time here, favorite poets, memorable events at the center and more. Here is a snippet:

Angie: Which poet living or dead would you be most excited to hear read their work for an audience, and what about their poetry makes you want to hear it aloud and in person? What are the virtues of reading poetry aloud?

Alexandra: This is a tough question to answer because there are just so many poets I would have loved to hear read their work. Just to name a few: I would have loved to hear W.H. Auden, e.e. cummings and Sylvia Plath—though we’re lucky to have recordings of them reading. How amazing would it be to hear Emily Dickinson read? How would she have wrapped her voice around those words of hers? That’s a wonderful thing to imagine. A Canadian poet who had a great influence on me as a kid (I was born and raised in Toronto) was Gwendolyn MacEwen. She lived from 1941 to 1987 and is highly regarded in Canadian literary circles. Her poetry is full of magic and myth and mysterious beauty. She had a very soft and musical voice and, from what I’ve read, her readings cast an incantatory spell over the audience. The music of poetry—the meter and rhythm and texture—can only be fully appreciated by hearing it aloud. I encourage anyone who is unable to attend a reading for whatever reason to read aloud to themselves or to others or, better yet, try to memorize a poem. It seems old-fashioned, but memorizing a poem is the best way to get inside it and appreciate it fully.

As far as upcoming readings she’s really excited about, we have Natasha Trethewey and Charles Wright on April 6, the “Discovery”/Boston Review poetry contest winners’ reading on May 11 and Richard Wilbur returns on May 21. He first read at the Y’s Poetry Center on March 23, 1950!

You can read the full interview here. Visit the Unterberg Poetry Center for more information about our literary events, classes and browse Podium, our online literary journal.

Lastly, if you are following us on Twitter, you know that we are offering a special for the John Stape on Joseph Conrad talk this Sunday. To receive these specially priced $10 tickets (excludes brunch), send a message here.