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Of the poets who are reading their own work in this series of broadcasts the youngest is Daniel J. Hoffman who was born in one thousand and twenty three. Only last year Mr Hoffman won the Yo series of younger poets prizes. As some of you know this award is made annually and the judge is perhaps the chief of poetry in English today W.H. Auden. The title of the book that won the prize for Daniel Hoffman is an armada of thirty whale. That sounds like a long poem and a start value of. The poem is short and the book is thin. But then you know Hoffman's poet great is big. Because he is also the author of a scholarly book on the folk hero Paul Bunyan you might fancy that he was a number at a big miss but Mr Hoffman's poet Gray is not vague in the sense of being retired Akhil are overambitious quite the contrary. It is big in the best sense. Here as a poet who looks at the world around him and with a full awareness of its complexity and it savage. Cries to say truly what he actually see as he says it cruelly because he uses language skillfully he has a keen eye a good ear an alert mind in one of several delightful poems about his small daughter he says the word without description. Is vast and while as if. The owner of an armada of thirty whales does not close his eyes to the vast and wild but he must use it as best he can by description Mr Hoffman is an instructor in English at Columbia University and he spends his long vacations near the sea. The sea is an element alien to man and yet it is also necessary to him and from India. It is of course one of the richest symbols that poet Gray has to offer it is associated forest with the origin of life with the birth of beauty with the stream of time and the sea has the greatest importance for us physically it is a primary source of food and even with the development of air power it remains a road of communication between people is a vastly different cultures and history but the sea is also an enemy. It menaces us with storms and floods it is an immense and fathomless grave and again it is the scene of our jolliest occasion from Clambake song show or champagne parties on shipboard from yacht races to the simple pleasures of a swim Mr Hoffman has written some of his most resonant and most entertaining poet Chris about life near and on and in the city. It is with great pleasure that I present to you Danielle JE huff.