News at Eleven: [Peter] Payack was also the driving force

between the 1976 Phone a Poem program, in which poets were asked to record their work on a cassette tape to which callers could listen.

Before the advent of the Internet, "it was the only way that you could get poetry outside of a book or library," says Payack.

Payack has even transferred poetry from formal readings--quite literally--into peoples' mouths.

from The Harvard Crimson: City Populist Spreads Love of Poetry

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