Borders Open-Door Poetry is ... n’t just for poets and fans of poetry. It’s for anyone who’s wanted to COMMUNICATE SOMETHING to SOMEONE in SOME WAY. Borders Open-Door Poetry is where they can see and hear and feel and ask how it’s done, so that they can do it too.

Here’s what other people are saying about Borders Open-Door Poetry...

- BILLY COLLINS, featured poet: "Borders Open-Door Poetry is an exciting and invigorating part of a broad effort to bring poetry up to speed with technology. Poetry will have a hard time playing a vital role in our culture if it is confined to leather-bound books on the library shelf. Getting poems off the page and into our ear-buds and onto our video screens can lead to a revitalization of this ancient and essential means of human expression."

- PATRICIA SMITH, featured poet: "Words - in particular, words laid down in hopeful, lyrical lines - don't even begin to approach their potential until they reach the open air. There, anyone can snag them, dream on them, memorize them, twist them to fit their own lives. Borders Open-Door Poetry knocks poetry from its precious perch and puts it back where it belongs - in the faces and ears of an audience hungry for what words can do.”

- MARK STRAND, featured poet: “... Borders Open-Door Poetry is terrific. It is the only such enterprise that I have enjoyed, thoroughly enjoyed.”

- TAYLOR MALI, featured poet: "Borders Open-Door Poetry serves to demystify poetry, and poetry sure needs a lot of demystification. Here are the poets themselves - all kinds of people - reading their own work, and in some cases talking about it. I'll go out on a limb and say this is exactly what the Internet is good for, and this is exactly how poetry should be delivered."

- OVEOUS MAXIMUS, featured poet: “Borders Open-Door Poetry is a beautiful marriage between several technologies and art. With Borders Open-Door Poetry, we see how film, Internet, and poems form an unstoppable bond that can excite the minds of millions. Thank you Borders, thank you Anthony and Martha, and thank you Internet readers of the world.”

- RICH FAHLE, vice president content for Borders Group: “Borders Open Door Poetry celebrates passion, individuality and the power of the written and spoken word. It’s authentic, thought-provoking and bristling with the type of raw energy that comes from the act of self-expression. In short, it’s a perfect example of what we stand for at Borders. We’re very proud to add this exciting new show to our BordersMedia.com entertainment lineup – where viewers will find exclusive author interviews, red-carpet coverage of major movie premiers and artists playing live from our 01 store in downtown Ann Arbor.”

- MARTHA SAGER, co-creator of Borders Open-Door Poetry and cofounder of The Student Publishing Program: “Borders Open-Door Poetry is educational and entertaining, blending words and writing advice with motion graphics and music and the actual text of poems, along with many opportunities for viewer participation. We’re looking to reach and inspire the widest possible audience with poetry, and our partnership with Borders has enabled an outreach that is unprecedented in the poetry world: Promotion of each episode of Borders Open-Door Poetry to the Borders community of 23 million opt-in email subscribers.”

- ANTHONY TEDESCO, co-creator of Borders Open-Door Poetry and cofounder of The Student Publishing Program: “What makes Borders Open-Door Poetry unique is our alchemy of poets - the best from both the spoken-word and academic worlds, reading and performing poems that really move and uplift, poems that are literary but accessible and engaging. We choose to work with poets who are also great performers, poets that can connect with readers in the real world. We’re hoping that connection will inspire more people – not only to write more poetry, but to communicate and connect with others in their daily lives, to recognize themselves as having something worthy to say and to help them find the words to say it.”

- CONSTANCE VIDOR, Librarian and a viewer who had her writing question answered by Don Hall in the first episode: “I’ve recommended Borders Open-Door Poetry within my school, both to teachers and students, because it lets students experience living poets reading, shouting, whispering, and confiding their poems from the places where they live and write. Students can log on and enjoy the sounds and sights of poetry from wherever they are. Borders Open-Door Poetry makes written words into engaging, active, participatory experiences.”