The Blessing of a Poetry House

Posted at 12:08 PM on May 3, 2010 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: People, Poetry

Poets House is a national poetry library and literary center. This past fall it moved into its brand new home in Battery Park, New York. As the construction workers finished off their work, Poets House decided to honor them with their own poetry reading, presented by actor and comedian Bill Murray. The result, as you can see above, is both awkward, surreal and slightly moving, especially when Murray reads the following work by "corny gal" Emily Dickinson:

I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--

Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--

Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise--

The video is worth a watch just to see the guys react to Bill Murray's call for them to perform their own original poems.

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