Readers typically interpret, experience, and sometimes struggle with poetry on their own. What happens when you lift a poem off the page and present it on air/in a podcast? Or what do you hope will happen? I might be able to answer these questions with a personal anecdote. I got into this profession originally because I wanted to create a poetry program for public radio. All my friends read great fiction but they never cracked a book of poems. The reason, I thought, was that poetry had dismal associations with high school and college, where more than likely it was boringly inflicted rather than engagingly taught. So my idea was to create a program that presented poetry casually, entertainingly, by supplying some of the context which poets often assume their readers already know and by talking about it not as as an educational experience that will be good for you but as a pleasure, like baseball. I wanted to subvert the inhibiting idea people have about poetry that it's difficult and arcane and talk about it in a way that shows that it really is a kind of entertainment. It may require more attention than a baseball game but it can give a tremendous amount of pleasure once you're more comfortable with some of the conventions and personalities. So that was my idea at least, but apart from a few segments on other programs I worked on I never saw an opportunity to do a poetry show for public radio. And besides, there is a troubling weakness in poetry on the radio. Radio listeners get only one shot at a poem, and the range of poems that can be understood on first hearing is rather narrow. Unless, that is, you take some time introducing a poem you're about to play. If you build up some expectations and explain in advance some of the references or complexities, or just flat out say that a lot of this poem is going to go right by you and it's the sound that matters most, listeners are less likely to feel at sea. Also, you can talk about a poem afterwards, and quote from it again, and do some tight editing that keeps people engaged. Podcasting has a particular advantage over radio when it comes to poetry, in that listeners can replay a program or parts of it, so they can listen again to a poem if they want to. (I don't know if anyone actually does, but it's a nice option.) So basically that's what I hope happens in the poetry podcasts I produce. Listeners are introduced to poems and poets in a down-to-earth way, and by hearing people talk about poems with pleasure and interest they get comfortable with the idea of poetry as an interesting pleasure, not homework. Also, I hope it engages active readers of poetry who get to hear how their favorite poets read and talk about their poems. Do you ever worry about influencing people's poetic encounters too much? How do you explore a poem without dictating its meaning to your listeners? It's a worry. We overdo it at times, I'm sure. But PoetryFoundation.org also puts out a daily poem podcast without any commentary, so listeners who want their poems straight can subscribe to that one. And there is also the Poetry M agazine Podcast , in which the editors of the magazine present poems from the upcoming issue and talk about them in a more literary way. When I first started consulting for the Poetry Foundation, I had to convince them to do a hosted program rather than just put out audio poems. Their mission is to build the readership for poetry, and I felt very strongly that, in order to engage people who were interested in the idea of poetry but frustrated by finding any way into the rather complex contemporary poetry scene, poems had to be introduced and talked about. I think there's a way to do this without dictating meaning. I myself am often flummoxed by poems, and I say so openly on the program. I don't think of myself as a teacher but as a fellow reader/listener who asks the questions that the audience might be wondering about. I did a few segments called Call the Poet. We hear an actor read a difficult poem that seems to make no sense whatsoever, then get the poet on the phone and politely ask what the hell is going on in the poem. Poets usually hate to explain their poems, but it's fun to make them squirm -- and illuminating