One proud parent put together this amusing video of poet-toddler Elliot who, like all the great bards, uses "the fewest words to convey the greatest meaning."

Alberto Chimal of Mexico City reads his story "Variation on a Theme of Coleridge" from Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, published this month by Small Beer Press.

"My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light," writes Jack Gilbert in his poem "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart." His Collected Poems will be published by Knopf in March.

Amy King, the author of six poetry books, including I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press, 2011), reads her poem "Lidija Dimkovska Has Made a Bomb of My Eyes" in this clip. Ugly Duckling Presse published a translation of Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers by Dimkovska, a poet from Skopje, Macedonia, in 2006.

The author of The Uncommon Reader (FSG, 2007) reads from "The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes," one of the two stories in his new collection, Smut, published earlier this year by Faber and Faber and Profile Books in England and forthcoming in the U.S. next month from Picador.

Christie Ann Reynolds reads "Revenge for the Shark Death I Deserve," the first poem from Revenge Poems, published by Supermachine in 2010. Sadly, Supermachine editors recently announced that they will be ending the small press and literary magazine at the end of the year.

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.