Nate Pritts reads a poem from his new collection, Sweet Nothing, which was published last month by Lowbrow Press and is one of the books included in this issue's installment of Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin.

To get us all in the mood for this evening's festivities, here's a reading of "Darkness," a poem written by Lord Byron in 1816, also known as the Year Without a Summer because Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies had erupted the previous year, throwing ash into the atmosphere that blocked the sun and caused abnormal weather patterns across northeast America and northern Europe. Happy Halloween!

"This Dust Road: Self Portrait" is an excerpt from the final poem in Mule & Pear, the third poetry collection by Rachel Eliza Griffiths, published this month by New Issues Poetry & Prose.

Billy Collins, who was named the nation's poet laureate a few months before September 11, 2001, reads his poem "The Names" and talks with PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown about the impact of 9/11.

The next poet laureate, Philip Levine, who will succeed W. S. Merwin when he takes over the post in October, reads a selection of his poems, including "What Work Is."

Jim Meskimen, an accomplished actor and voice artist whose long list of acting credits includes five movies directed by Ron Howard and two Paul Thomas Anderson films, recites Shakespeare with twenty-five different celebrity impressions.

Reading from his second novel, The Storm at the Door, published last month by Random House, Stefan Merrill Block was the featured author at the Franklin Park Reading Series, held on the second Monday of every month at the Franklin Park Bar and Beer Garden in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?” Muriel Rukeyser asked in her poem “Käthe Kollwitz.” She answered: “The world would split open.” In this clip, Rukeyser, who died in 1980, reads the poem “In Our Time.”

As part of the 2010 PEN World Voices Festival, novelist Siri Hustvedt, who is profiled in the current issue of the magazine, read an excerpt from The Summer Without Men, published this month by Picador.

Poet Ish Klein reads "Smoke Outside" from her second collection, Moving Day, published this month by the independent press Canarium Books.