When the new home for Poets House, a national poetry library and literary center in New York City, was in the thick of being built in 2009, actor Bill Murray dropped by to read poems to the construction workers. The builders seemed uninterested at first but they warmed up a bit when Murray read a piece relevant to the construction profession. The piece even received an enthusiastic applause.
Murray read three poems, one each from Billy Collins, Lorine Niedecker, and Emily Dickinson. He only read the fourth paragraph from Collins' poem Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House.
When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton
The second poem is by Lorine Niedecker called Poet's Work.
Grandfather advised me: Learn a trade
I learned to sit at desk and condense
No layoffs from this condensery
And last but not the least, Murray got closer to bringing the house down with a reading of Emily Dickinson's I Dwell In Possibility:
I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--
Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--
Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise--
