Podcasts

Defying Type: Poet Gregory Pardlo

July 30, 2007 | Book Beat

As a teenager, Gregory Pardlo witnessed his father, the president of Newark Airport’s Professional Air Traffic Controllers union, lead his members on an unpopular and illegal labor strike. That spirit of dogged opposition inspired him to pursue his passion–poetry–and guided him to produce a wide range of work that defies simple categorization. Pardlo, an assistant professor at Medgar Evers College, reads and discusses selections from his book “Totem,” winner of the American Poetry Review’s Honickman First Book Prize.
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