Boston Athenæum

January 18, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Historically, Boston has been home to numerous prominent American poets. This remains true today, making its civic moniker of “the Athens of America” as fitting now as it was in the nineteenth century. This evening’s performance, directed by Poets’ Theatre President and Artistic Director Robert Scanlan, is a gathering of Boston’s best poets, including Jennie Barber, Martha Collins, David Ferry, Regie Gibson, George Kalogeris, Marcia Karp, Fred Marchant, Jill McDonough, Lloyd Schwartz, and Meg Tyler. They will read their own works paired with the works of their nineteenth-century predecessors, invoking the ghosts of poets such as William Cullen Bryant, Lydia Maria Child, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathanial Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman. The program will pay tribute to the Athenæum’s rich historical and literary roots while demonstrating how a living and contemporary literary scene continues to be nourished by this tradi