News at Eleven: [Carol] Muske-Dukes tells NPR's Renee Montagne

that a poetry relay race was no easy task.

"To write 10 lines in less than two days . . . doesn't sound like much," she says, "but if you're a poet, it's quite an assignment."

Muske-Dukes says the collaborative nature of the poem meant poets were in conversation with one another, reacting to what the previous one had written. So when poet Micheal Ryan of the University of California writes, "How many poets does it take to change a light bulb? . . . How many poets does it take to change a country? How many presidents? How much pain?" the next poet, Brenda Hillman of California's Saint Mary's College, responds with this:

from NPR: 'Crossing State Lines': 54 Writers, One American Poem

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