Classical Music Critic -- and Poet -- Lloyd Schwartz

Our classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz has a new collection of poems, "Goodnight, Gracie," (published by Phoenix Poets). David Lehman calls this new collection, "a moving and inventive collection, his best and most ambitious to date." LLOYD is also music editor of The Boston Phoenix and is co-director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and essayist William Stanley Merwin was known in the 1960s as an anti-war poet. Now an environmental activist, Merwin has published a new book of poems, The Shadow of Sirius, which addresses themes of memory and mortality.

When Emily Dickinson died in the 1880s, she was a reclusive, barely published writer. Today, she is a fully canonized, iconic poet. Former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins says the progress of her status was unprecedented.