With no offense to Ransacked, I'll take nearly anybody except Garrison Keillor unless we specifically get the whole Prairie Home Companion shtick, which at least shows some wit. The Writer's Almanac could kill the most exciting poem in existence with enough boredom left over to put a kindergarten full of kids with ADHD to sleep. Does the guy love poetry? Sure. Does his name carry some weight on "Main Street?" Sure. But that show is a horrid, horrid thing to do to poetry. Not just because it is boring, though I don't shy away from saying so. No, the real reason is that every poem is read the same way. The poems are treated as objects, worse, as a single object - "poem" - which can be presented each week without context, without any attempt to engage the audience intellectually or emotionally. Every once in a while I hear a decent poem on the show, one that does try to make you think for more than the duration of the piece itself, and my reaction is invariably, "It's such a pity what just happened to that poem. It deserves better."
If you want "Main Street" then put in a call to Billy Collins. Or see if Naomi Shihab Nye would be interested. Robert Bly ain't a bad reader. Marie Howe's pretty damn entertaining to hear.
:-/
