Billy Collins, Terrance Hayes, Shane McCrae, Paul Muldoon, & Patricia Smith: The Power of the Sonnet

Billy Collins, Terrance Hayes, Shane McCrae, Paul Muldoon, and Patricia Smith join us for a reading in celebration of the most vital, enthralling, deceptively simple of poetic forms — the sonnet — and Muldoon’s new anthology, Scanty Plot of Ground: A Book of Sonnets. The sonnet has sparked the imaginations of poets for centuries — an endlessly malleable site of lyric creation, packed into 14 lines: poetic lightning in a bottle. Now Muldoon, Hayes, Collins, and some of the sonnet’s most ingenuous contemporary innovators gather for a reading in celebration of the form: from Shakespeare to Elizabeth Bishop, John Donne to Wanda Coleman, Arthur Rimbaud to Ted Berrigan, John Keats to Muldoon and Hayes themselves, whose own sonnets have altered the landscape of contemporary poetry at large. Hear a group of some of the nation’s leading poets for a reading from Muldoon’s new anthology: hundreds of years in the making, fourteen lines at a time, for one night only. Recorded Dec 15, 2025 at 92nd Street Y, New York. Your support helps us continue creating online content for our community. Donate now: http://www.92NY.org/Donate Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/92ndStreetY Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/92ndStreetY TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@92ndstreety Archives: https://www.92ny.org/archives