Prospero’s Books launches record-breaking poetry reading

The owners of Prospero’s Books, Will Leathem and Tom Wayne, kicked off a literary firestorm in 2007 when they held a book-burning outside their store at 1800 West 39th Street to draw attention to the country’s lagging respect for the written word.

Their newest stunt starts tomorrow at 10 a.m., when more than 200 poets will convene to break the record for the longest continuous poetry reading. The original record, established in 1978 in Cincinnati, Ohio, went for 56 hours and 25 minutes. Prospero’s and friends will try to more than double that record with a poetry filibuster: 120 hours of nonstop performance.