One of the strengths of poetry is that it’s a different kind of language…it can cut directly to meaning making and, yes to emotional truths.

The National Book Award winner talks candidly about how his mental illness has influenced his work.

Three acclaimed poets, including Adrienne Rich, talk with Bill Moyers about the power of poetry including it's ability to tell the truth.

This episode features three very different artists who share an ability to transport audiences and instill hope with their poetry.

Bill Moyers talked with Mike Rose, a decades-long advocate for those on the margins of LA. After attending a poor neighborhood school where no one expected him to succeed, Rose because the associate director of the UCLA writing program.

In the second part of this 1990 interview with Bill Moyers, author Maxine Hong Kingston explains how she blends tales of tradition and her own American experience in her writing.

In this 1988 interview, the author discusses how the best writers are a nuisance to society, always preferring the uncomfortable truth to the comfortable lie.