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Writer Cynthia Ozick attended readings at the Y in the 1950s. "You saw these icons standing in a blaze of brilliant spotlight," she says, "and you felt that you were at the crux of all civilization."

The host of A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac has published his first poetry collection called O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic and Profound. "I love rhymes," Keillor says. "I love to write a poem about New York and rhyme 'oysters' with 'The Cloisters.' "

Also: Katherine Boo, Robert Hass win PEN Literary Awards; gender at The New York Review of Books; John Cheever's prison visit.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky says he's tired of people thinking of poetry as bad-tasting medicine they have to swallow just because it's healthy. His anthology of 80 poems by master poets is designed to help us see poetry as an art "rather than a challenge to say smart things."

Frank Deford puts aside his gripes this week to pay tribute to the poem by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, first published in the San Francisco Examiner 125 years ago June 3.

Also: MediaBistro says Granta is closing its New York office; poetry for Martians; the freakish charms of David Bowie.

NASA is looking for three haiku to include on a DVD that will travel to Mars aboard a spacecraft this fall. And everyone who submits a poem will have their name included.

Poet Kazim Ali talks about poetry's importance in every day life for National Poetry Month. He is a contributing editor for AWP Writers Chronicle and founding editor of the small press, Nightboat Books.

Slam poetry was created in the mid 1980s by a Chicago construction worker and poet. The idea was to shake up the open mic poetry readings of the day and…

When the only known poem Winston Churchill wrote as an adult went up for auction in London recently, it was expected to fetch a pretty penny. But the poem failed to fetch a buyer, and now its fate is unknown. New Yorker Poetry Editor Paul Muldoon takes a critical look at "Our Modern Watchwords."