A student of W.H. Auden, Hayden's poetry went largely unnoticed until 1966, when he won an international poetry prize and was named Poet Laureate of Senegal. In 1975 he was also named Poet Laureate of the United States. Hayden was a practitioner of Baha'i, whose serenity, reflected in his poetry, was, at one time, widely criticized by the more political voices within the Black community. Here, Hayden reads his poem, "Those Winter Sundays".
Sharon Olds was New York State Poet from 1998-2000. She teaches at NYU and lives in New York. Her book Strike Sparks: Selected Poems was published in 2004. She reads her poem, "Wonder".
