Boston Athenæum

May 7, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. Poets are supposed to pour their souls into their work. In so doing, however, they often adopt masks, speaking through others. This cast of characters can be extremely varied: genders are switched, professions are tried on, contrary ideas rehearsed, Phillis Wheatley hangs out with Robinson Crusoe, Sacagawea headlines with Crazy Jane. This set of readings by actors from The Poets' Theatre, which ranges from Erica Funkhouser to Alfred Lord Tennyson to Richard Howard, from the Earl of Rochester to Elizabeth Bishop to Lloyd Schwartz, reveals poets in masquerade, ventriloquizing a wide array of extraordinary individuals, even pretending to be... versions of themselves.