Poetry For All
Episode Archive
Episode Archive
74 episodes of Poetry For All since the first episode, which aired on August 31st, 2020.
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Episode 10: Mary Jo Bang, The Head of a Dancer
November 10th, 2020 | Season 1 | 22 mins 22 secs
21st century, ekphrasis, free verse, guest on the show, intimacy, visual poetry, word and image
This week Mary Jo Bang joins us! We learn about the Bauhaus movement and a photographer named Lucia Moholy. And we look at both ekphrastic poetry (poetry about an image) and prose poetry (poetry with no line breaks).
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Episode 9: Anne Bradstreet, In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet
October 27th, 2020 | Season 1 | 14 mins 52 secs
17th century, anger, children, christianity, elegy, grief and loss, repetition or refrain, rhymed verse, sonnet, surprise, women's history month
This week we read Anne Bradstreet's elegy for her grandchild Elizabeth and draw out the multiple voices (both faith and doubt, both grief and consolation) and the tensions and deep emotions in the work of this talented Puritan poet--the first woman from British North America to publish a book of poems.
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Episode 8: Toi Derricotte, "The Minks"
October 20th, 2020 | Season 1 | 20 mins 18 secs
21st century, black history month, free verse, guest on the show, narrative, surprise, wonder
This week, with special guest Carl Phillips, we take a close look at "The Minks" and consider the art of narrative poetry and the movements of a single-stanza poem.
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Episode 7: John Donne, Holy Sonnet 14
October 14th, 2020 | Season 1 | 15 mins 54 secs
17th century, christianity, intimacy, restlessness, rhymed verse, sonnet
This week we look at one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets from the seventeenth century. This famous poem (#14, "Batter my heart") turns a poetic tradition of love and longing to religious ends, earnestly seeking God and questioning whether union with God will ever be achieved.
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Episode 6: Jen Bervin, Nets
October 6th, 2020 | Season 1 | 19 mins 13 secs
21st century, erasure, eros and desire, grief and loss, intimacy, women's history month
In this episode we learn about erasure poetry and poetic tradition by looking at Jen Bervin's incredible book NETS, created from the sonnets of Shakespeare.
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Episode 5: Claude McKay, "America"
September 29th, 2020 | Season 1 | 14 mins 40 secs
20th century, anger, black history month, harlem renaissance, modernism, rhymed verse, social justice and advocacy, sonnet
In this episode, we discuss Claude McKay, an influential poet of the Harlem Renaissance, taking a close look at his incredible sonnet "America."
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Episode 4: Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
September 22nd, 2020 | Season 1 | 16 mins 12 secs
17th century, eros and desire, love, rhymed verse, sonnet, summer
In this episode we introduce listeners to one of the most resilient forms in English-language poetry: the sonnet. And we do it with one of the most famous sonnets Shakespeare wrote.
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Episode 3: Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America
September 15th, 2020 | Season 1 | 14 mins 9 secs
18th century, anger, black history month, christianity, hope, rhymed verse, social justice and advocacy, surprise
This episode examines a short, incredible, difficult and important poem by one of the founding figures of African American literary traditions, Phillis Wheatley.
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Episode 2: Emily Dickinson, Tell all the truth
September 10th, 2020 | Season 1 | 14 mins 13 secs
19th century, ars poetica, rhymed verse, spirituality, surprise, women's history month
What does it mean to tell the truth "slant"? Is this a ballad, a hymn? What is "ars poetica" and is this an example? Join us for a discussion of this great, short, fun, rich poem by Dickinson.
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Episode 1: Seamus Heaney, Digging
August 31st, 2020 | Season 1 | 14 mins 44 secs
20th century, ars poetica, free verse, laborers, wonder
We begin Poetry for All by teaching and talking about a great poem on poetry itself: Seamus Heaney's "Digging."