Published to coincide with the premiere of the eight-part PBS series of the same name.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [445]-450).

W.S. Merwin
Claribel Alegría
James A. Autry
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Coleman Barks
Robert Bly
Marilyn Chin
Lucille Clifton
William Stafford
Victor Hernández Cruz
Rita Dove
Carolyn Forche
Donald Hall
Joy Harjo
Michael S. Harper
Robert Hass
Garrett Kaoru Hongo
Sharon Olds
Jane Kenyon
Stanley Kunitz
Li-Young Lee
Linda McCarriston
Sandra McPherson
David Mura
Naomi Shihab Nye
Adrienne Rich
Galway Kinnell
Gary Snyder
Gerald Stern
Sekou Sundiata
Mary TallMountain
Quincy Troupe
Daisy Zamora
Octavio Paz

In a series of fascinating conversations with thirty-four American poets, The Language Of Life celebrates language in its "most exalted, wrenching, delighted, and concentrated form," and its unique power to re-create the human experience: falling in love, facing death, leaving home, playing basketball, losing faith, finding God. Listening to Linda McCarriston's award-winning poems about a child trapped in a violent home, or to Jimmy Santiago Baca explaining how words changed his life in prison, or to David Mura describing his Japanese American grandfather's experience in relocation camps, or to Sekou Sundiata stitching the magic of his childhood church in Harlem to the African tradition of storytelling, or to Gary Snyder invoking the natural wonder of mountains and rivers, or to Adrienne Rich calling for honesty in human relations, all testify to the necessity and clarity of the poet's voice, and all give hope that from such a wide variety of racial, ethnic, and religious threads we might yet weave a new American fabric.'Listen,' said the storytellers of old, 'listen and you shall hear,'" explains Bill Moyers. The Language Of Life is a joyous, life-affirming invitation to listen, learn, and experience the exhilarating power of the spoken word.