What Happens in a Poem

I recently found the You Tube videos from the Philoctetes Center--a series of multidiciplinary discussions about imagination, sponsored by the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

Although a number of the discussions look interesting, the one I'd like to point out is the roundtable discussion "What Happens in a Poem." The panel consists of Michael Braziller, Timothy Donnelly, Anne-Marie Levine, David Pollens, Alice Quinn, and David Shapiro, and each panelist presents a reading of a poet.

The poets who are read/discussed are Elizabeth Bishop, Cavafy, ee cummings, Wallace Stevens, Vincent Andres Estelles, and Frank O'Hara.

If you only have a few moments, fast forward to the beautiful discussion of Estelles--the contributions of the Catalonian Modernists remain painfully unaknowledge, by large--and Shapiro's tender reading of O'Hara's "To the Harbormaster."

The embedded video has been disabled by request, but the video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkF6JHwGbp0