“If you are a New Yorker, if you are a writer, it’s part of your civic duty to appear at the Y—at least once,” Mr. Vonnegut says in his opening remarks. As it happens, this was Mr. Vonnegut’s second appearance at the Poetry Center. His first, with poet Muriel Rukeyser, took place some 13 years before, on the evening of May 4, 1970—the day the National Guard opened fire on student protesters at Kent State. That night, he recalls in the recording from 1983, “there were people out in the audience standing up saying, ‘What do we do, what are we supposed to do?’ and nobody had a very bright answer, certainly Muriel and I didn’t.” Mr. Vonnegut ended up reading from a forthcoming novel, Breakfast of Champions, and that recording can be found here.

In the recording from 1983, however, he addresses Kent State much more directly, by reading a speech he delivered at Haverford College shortly after the shootings. He then reads two more speeches—one on our addiction to war preparation and another on nuclear holocaust, which was originally delivered at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.