American Poets Corner
Annual Dante Reading
Monday, April 29, 2024
Visitors come to the Cathedral’s American Poets Corner, located in the Arts Bay on the north side of the nave, curious to see who’s honored, to admire the stones, to pay homage. Poets, fiction writers, essayists, and dramatists: the American Poets Corner memorializes the literature of our nation in all its surprise, wit and beauty.
The Muriel Rukeyser Poetry Wall
In 1976, poet Muriel Rukeyser and The Very Reverend James Parks Morton, then Dean of the Cathedral, inaugurated the Poetry Wall in the Cathedral as a “place where poems will always be accepted.” Visitors were invited to leave a poem and take another, and people from around the country mailed in submissions to be posted on the wall.