disc 1. The charge of the light brigade (2:20) ; Come into the garden, Maud (:20) / Alfred, Lord Tennyson
How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix : excerpt / Robert Browning (:58)
America : excerpt / Walt Whitman (:38)
The lake isle of Innisfree (3:10) ; The song of the old mother (:54) / William Butler Yeats
Lucinda Matlock (:58) ; Emily Sparks (:52) / Edgar Lee Masters
The creation / James Weldon Johnson (4:26)
If I told him : a completed portrait of Picasso / Gertrude Stein (3:38)
The road not taken (1:04) ; Stopping by woods on a snow evening (:56) / Robert Frost
From The people, yes (#90) / Carl Sandburg
So and so reclining on her couch / Wallace Stevens (2:10)
The red wheelbarrow (:15) ; For Elsie (from Spring and all) (1:46) / William Carlos Williams
From Hugh Selwyn Mauberly / Ezra Pound (3:02)
From Helen in Egypt : excerpt / H.D. (3:35)
Journey of the Magi : with introduction / T.S. Eliot (3:19)
Recuerdo (1:29) ; Love is not all (1:14) / Edna Saint Vincent Millay
Résumé (:21) ; The lady's reward (:57) / Dorothy Parker
As freedom is a breakfastfood / e.e. cummings (2:33)
To Juan at the Winter Solstice / Robert Graves (2:21)
From John Brown's body / Stephen Vincent Benét (3:50)
Strong men / Sterling Brown (2:59)
The negro speaks of rivers : with intro (:57) ; The weary blues : with intro (1:46) / Langston Hughes
Portrait of the artist as a prematurely old man / Ogden Nash (2:02)
King of the river / Stanley Kunitz (3:16)
The cave of nakedness / W.H. Auden (6:28)
I knew a woman (1:47) ; Elegy for Jane (1:12) / Theodore Roethke
Late air (:33) ; The fish (2:40) / Elizabeth Bishop


disc 2. Those winter Sundays / Robert Hayden (:52)
The ballad of orange and grape (2:46) ; To be a Jew in the twentieth century (1:02) / Muriel Rukeyser
#23 (The lay of Ike) (1:11) ; #36 (The high ones die
) (1:28) / John Berryman
The world is so difficult to give up
(:23) ; This is the solution, to be happy with slaughter
(:19) ; Here I am with mike in hand, shooting down the rapids
(:38) ; I killed a fly
(:29) ; What about dying? (:52) / David Ignatow
Passing remark (:48) ; Serving with Gideon (1:17) / William Stafford
And death shall have no dominion (1:44) ; The tombstone told when she died (1:52) / Dylan Thomas
The mother (2:34) ; We real cool (1:36) / Gwendolyn Brooks
Skunk hour / Robert Lowell (2:25)
Crossing over / William Meredith (2:17)
See it was like this when
(:39) ; Underwear (3:34) / Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The secret of my endurance / Charles Bukowski (2:16)
Ray / Hayden Carruth (2:44)
Love calls us to the things of this world / Richard Wilbur (1:54)
American haikus : excerpt / Jack Kerouac with Al Cohn & Zoot Simms (6:08)
Death psalm : O Lord of mysteries / Denise Levertov (3:45)
Monet refuses the operation / Lisel Mueller (2:28)
Woodchucks / Maxine Kumin (1:57)
America / Allen Ginsberg (8:47)
Still / A.R. Ammons (2:40)
My philosophy of life / John Ashbery (4:08)
After making love we hear footsteps (1:31) ; Last gods (2:03) / Galway Kinnell
A blessing / James Wright (1:49)
All my pretty ones (3:26) ; For my lover, returning to his wife (3:07) / Anne Sexton


disc 3. Even in Paris : excerpt / Richard Howard (6:28)
Driving into the wreck / Adrienne Rich (4:02)
Lovesong / Ted Hughes (2:12)
Omeros : excerpt / Derek Walcott (3:02)
The song of the taste (:59) ; Why I take good care of my Macintosh computer (1:30) / Gary Snyder
The idea of ancestry / Etheridge Knight (3:09)
Daddy / Sylvia Plath (3:41)
The greatest poem in the world / David Ray (1:20)
An oddly lovely day alone / John Updike (2:10)
Bang, bang outishly (1:31) ; Rhythim [sic] blues (:24) ; Shazam doowah (:50) / Amiri Baraka
Dahomey / Audrey Lorde (2:09)
Right to life / Marge Piercy (4:09)
The poem / Mark Strand (2:31)
Zimmer imagines heaven / Paul Zimmer (1:59)
Cruelty, don't talk to me about cruelty / Lucille Clifton (:40)
I have had to learn to live with my face / Diane Wakoski (6:43)
We were so poor
(:30) ; I was stolen by the gypsies
(:35) ; Everybody knows the story
(:43) / Charles Simic
Death of a naturalist / Seamus Heaney (2:05)
Lester leaps in (1:08) ; A dance for militant dilettantes (1:29) / Al Young
Fire / Gloria Vando (4:08)
Odysseus to Telemachus / Joseph Brodsky (1:40)
Sometimes it's better to laugh, honest injun / Simon J. Ortiz (2:55)
Ode to my shoes / Erica Jong (1:49)


disc 4. Wonder / Sharon Olds (1:38)
The lost pilot / James Tate (1:56)
Puerto Rican obituary : excerpt / Pedro Pietri (5:34)
Uh oh plutonium / Anne Waldman (3:12)
The fine printing on the label of a bottle of non-alcohol beer (1:29) ; The sweat lodge (1:11) / Adrian Louis
Facing it / Yusef Komunyakaa (1:10)
Logan Heights and the world / Juan Felipe Herrera (4:35)
The Colonel / Carolyn Forché (2:44)
The history of Armenia / Peter Balakian (3:37)
Grace / Joy Harjo (4:27)
Parsley / Rita Dove (4:13)
The long meadow / Vijay Seshadri (4:11)
The floral apron / Marilyn Chin (1:24)
Raisin eyes / Luci Tapahonso (1:43)
The concrete river / Luis Rodriguez (3:34)
My father, in heaven, is reading out loud / Li-Young Lee (2:29)
Two standards / Elise Paschen (2:17)
I saw you walking / Deborah Garrison (1:42)
The female seer will burn upon this pyre (1:17) ; After the gig, Mick Jagger (1:10) / Elizabeth Alexander
Morning broke on my cabin inverted, tempest in my forehead / D.A. Powell (3:47)
Eleven more days / Carl Hancock Rux (4:52)
Simon Peter / John Poch (2:09)
Fragments of the forgotten war / Suji Kwock Kim (3:46)
Lucky criminals / Kevin Prufer (2:01)
The slaughter / Kevin Young (2:18)
Scab / Jonathan Lamfers (3:14).