After more than 800 episodes, I’ve observed that many of my remarkable guests are connected by one or more common threads.

Each episode of Special Collections focuses on a particular thread that ties together some of my guests.

In this episode, that common thread is poetry.

This episode features five remarkable, world-class poets who have expanded the range of artistic expression featured on this podcast.

When I started this podcast just over five years ago, as a musician myself, I focused primarily on great musicians as my guests. But as those guests began introducing me to other artists, a wonderful development occurred: my focus expanded to include other creative disciplines, including poetry.

And my first poet guest led me to the second, and so on. I’ve now built a roster of extraordinary poets — and I look forward to continuing to add to it.

What makes poetry especially interesting to me is that I’ve adapted the SongFest portion of each interview — which I do with my musician guests — into a PoetryFest segment for my poet guests, where they read one of their works live on the air. I love it.

So with that in mind, let me reintroduce these five remarkable poets and share a portion of the poem each performed live on the podcast.

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Robert Pinsky is a three-time United States Poet Laureate. He has received numerous awards and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He created the Favorite Poem Project, has performed with Bruce Springsteen, and was featured on The Simpsons.

Paul Muldoon is a Pulitzer Prize–winning Irish poet. He is the editor of Paul McCartney’s book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. He is also the author of 15 collections of poetry and has been a professor at Princeton for more than 35 years.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips is an award-winning poet and writer, with works including Silver, The Ground, and Heaven. He is also a sportswriter and serves as the poetry editor of The New Republic.

Tom Sleigh is an award-winning poet, dramatist, and essayist. He has written 11 books of poetry, including The King’s Touch, Army Cats, and Space Walk.

Declan Ryan is an Irish poet now based in London. His first collection is titled Crisis Actor. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Observer, and The Irish Times.

So there it is — five extraordinary poets who have been guests on this podcast.

As I mentioned during their interviews, poetry is not always emphasized in American education. My own exposure was limited to classics like “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. But the art of poetry stands alongside all the other arts, and I’m proud to feature these great poets on the podcast — and I look forward to presenting more.

Thank you for listening, and stay tuned for another Special Collections episode soon.

This is Robert Miller with Follow Your Dream.