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).