Poetry off the Shelf: Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates returns to the Poetry Foundation to read her poetry. The author of many books, Oates has penned best-selling novels, critically acclaimed collections of short fiction, essays, plays, poetry, the unlikely bestseller On Boxing (1987), and a memoir about her childhood, The Lost Landscape (2015). Her remarkable bibliography—which includes work as an editor and anthologist—spans forms, themes, topics, and genres. Writing in the Nation, critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. said, "A future archeologist equipped only with her oeuvre could easily piece together the whole of postwar America." In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Oates the National Humanities Medal.