Top 5 PoemTalk episodes
I am often asked to recommend my five favorite episodes of PoemTalk. I mean, there have been 158 of them since 2007, so naming five is a tall order. I’ve loved many of them. Found dozens of them so powerful—such a moving experience, even in the middle of my scrambling to be a good host—that picking five is well nigh impossible. I can’t say these are the only five that would make my top 5 list always and any time, but these, I think, are excellent instances of the format creating good conversation:
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 
Founder/Faculty Director, 