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Read Me a Poem

“Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes

Poems read aloud, beautifully

By Amanda Holmes | November 2, 2018
Langston Hughes in 1936, photographed by Carl Van Vechten (Library of Congress/photo-illustration by Stephanie Bastek)

Amanda Holmes reads Langston Hughes’s poem, “Let America Be America Again.” Have a suggestion for a poem? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Permission required for reprinting, reproducing, or other uses.

Amanda Holmes, the author of the novel I Know Where I Am When I’m Falling, is a book club facilitator for Fairfax County Public Library and a bookseller at Politics and Prose in Washington, D. C. Follow her blog at nextbookbyamandaholmes.blogspot.com

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THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

Remembering W. S. Merwin

by John Kaag

W. S. Merwin, one of the most celebrated and prolific poets of his generation, died last Friday at the age of 91. A former U.S. poet laureate and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Merwin was also known for his work as a conservationist. After moving to Hawaii in the 1970s, he began the decades-long project of restoring different plant species to the former pineapple plantation where he lived. Merwin was notoriously difficult to contact, but in the fall of last year, John Kaag managed to interview him over the phone. Merwin, he reports, repeated the same lines throughout their conversation: “The time of wisdom cannot be measured, and, for me, wisdom is the garden. There is no time in the garden.” In an essay for the Scholar, Kaag explores this relationship between gardening and the passage of time, and how it is reflected in Merwin’s life and poetry.