Poetry For All - Episodes Tagged with “20th Century”

Episode 79: W.H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 08:00:00 -0400

In this episode, Shankar Vendantam joins us to read and discuss "Musee des Beaux Arts," a poem that explores the ways in which humans become indifferent to the suffering of others.

To learn more about Shankar Vendantam and the Hidden Brain podcast, visit his website.

To read Auden's poem, click here.

Thanks to Curtis Brown Ltd. for granting us permission to read this poem.

Episode 76: Philip Levine, What Work Is

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 16:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we read and discuss Philip Levine's most famous poem, "What Work Is." We consider his deft use of the second-person perspective, the sociability and narrative energy of his poetry, and his deep concern for the insecurity that defines the lives of so working-class laborers.

Click here to read "What Work Is": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52173/what-work-is

Photo credit: Geoffrey Berliner

"What Work Is" was published in What Work Is (Knopf, 1991). Thanks to Penguin Random House for granting us permission to read this poem.

Episode 60: Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Tue, 02 May 2023 09:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we explore the poetry of joy in a world of shade and death, looking to sounds and repetitions while examining how "From Blossoms" speaks back to the poem that immediately precedes it in Lee's great book Rose.

For more on Li-Young Lee, see The Poetry Foundation here.

Thanks to BOA Editions for granting us permission to read Li-Young Lee's work on our podcast. "From Blossoms" and "The Weight of Sweetness" originally appeared in Rose (BOA Editions, 1986).

Episode 57: Edna St. Vincent Millay, She had forgotten how the August night

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 10:00:00 -0500

She called herself Vincent, she smoked cigarettes, and she wore shimmery golden evening gowns when she read her poetry to sold-out crowds. Edna St. Vincent Millay was the emblem of the "New Woman" and one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century...but in years after her death, her literary reputation suffered, and only recently have critics and historians revisited and properly celebrated her work.

In this episode, we focus on a sonnet that showcases the ways in which Millay approached desire and eros in her poetry.

To learn more about Edna St. Vincent Millay and her life and times, take a look Burning Candles: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, an informative documentary available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9ItdEiBR-o&t=2901s

Here is the poem:

She had forgotten how the August night
Was level as a lake beneath the moon,
In which she swam a little, losing sight
Of shore; and how the boy, who was at noon
Simple enough, not different from the rest,
Wore now a pleasant mystery as he went,
Which seemed to her an honest enough test
Whether she loved him, and she was content.
So loud, so loud the million crickets’ choir. . .
So sweet the night, so long-drawn-out and late. . .
And if the man were not her spirit’s mate,
Why was her body sluggish with desire?
Stark on the open field the moonlight fell,
But the oak tree’s shadow was deep and black and
secret as a well.

We so admire the podcast Poem Talk. In this episode, Al Filreis, Elisa New, Jane Malcolm, and Sophia DuRose offer a close reading of two more poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/155947/biologically-speaking-a-discussion-of-love-is-not-all-and-i-shall-forget-you-presently-by-edna-st-vincent-millay

photo by Carl Van Vechten

Episode 55: Kay Ryan, Crib

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 10:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we discuss Kay Ryan's "Crib," a brief poem that begins with an interest in the deep archaeology of language and shifts to a powerful meditation on theft, innocence, and guilt.

For more on Kay Ryan and her work, you can visit the Poetry Foundation website.

Our favorite interview with Kay Ryan appears in the Paris Review.

Episode 53: Carter Revard, What the Eagle Fan Says

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 10:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we focus on the life and work of Carter Revard, an Osage poet whose medieval scholarship informs the structure of "What the Eagle Fan Says." Jessica Rosenfeld, a professor of medieval literature at Washington University in St. Louis, joins us for this discussion.

Carter Revard was a prolific poet and scholar. To learn more about his work, click here.

"What the Eagle Fan Says" was published in How the Songs Came Down (Salt Publishing, 2005).

To learn more about accentual verse, read this brief treatment by poet Dana Gioia.

Episode 49: Lisel Mueller, When I am Asked

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 12:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we closely read Lisel Mueller's "When I am Asked" in order to better understand grief as a deep source of artistic expression. We look at language as a source of connection and hope, even in the midst of sorrow and solitude. With this poem about the making of poetry (an_ ars poetica_), we come to see how one artist turned to the intricacies of language in the face of a nature that seemed indifferent to her loss.

"When I Am Asked" appears in Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, published by Louisiana State University Press (1996). Thanks to LSU Press for granting us permission to read this poem on the podcast.

For the text of the poem, click here: "When I Am Asked"

Note: When out of copyright, we reproduce the text of the poem ourselves. When still in copyright, we link to the text of the poem elsewhere.

For more on Lisel Mueller, see the Poetry Foundation.

Episode 46: Lucille Clifton, spring song

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 11:00:00 -0400

Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) was one of the most powerful poets of the twentieth century. This joyful poem caps a sequence of sixteen poems called "some jesus," which walks through biblical characters (beginning with Adam and Eve) and ends on four poems for Holy Week and Easter. She wrote other poems on the Bible as well, including "john" and "my dream about the second coming," which reimagine a way into biblical characters to make their stories fresh.

Clifton wrote from the perspective of a Black woman and many of her most famous poems address race and gender. Clear-eyed about struggles and hardships, insistent in her calls for justice and equality, Clifton's poetry carries a consistent joy and hope, which is apparent (and abundant) in "spring song."

Clifton's poetry was known for its lean style, paring everything down to its essential elements. In addition to award-winning collections of poetry, Clifton also wrote sixteen books for children (and had six children herself).

For the text of "spring song," and for a recording of Lucille Clifton reading it, see The Poetry Foundation.

For more on Lucille Clifton see her biography at The Poetry Foundation.

For an introduction to Lucille Clifton, see the poem sampler "Lucille Clifton 101" by Benjamin Voigt.

Links:

Episode 42: Robert Hayden, Frederick Douglass

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 16:00:00 -0500

To read Hayden's poem, click here.

Thanks to W.W. Norton & Company for granting us permission to read this poem. Reginald Dwayne Betts's introduction to the Collected Poems of Robert Hayden is very moving, as is the afterword by Arnold Rampersad.

For a series of insightful observations about Hayden's sonnet, see Ross Gay, Aracelis Girmay, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Patrick Rosal, and Ira Sadoff, "Poets Respond: A Discussion of "Frederick Douglass" by Robert Hayden." American Poetry Review, 38.3 (2009): 25-28.

For a helpful close reading of the poem, see Fred M. Fetrow, "Robert Hayden's 'Frederick Douglass': Form and Meaning in a Modern Sonnet." CLA Journal 17.1 (September 1973): 78-84.

Episode 36: Denise Levertov, On the Mystery of the Incarnation

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 10:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we discuss Denise Levertov's powerful meditation on the horrors of the twentieth century, and how the mystery of the incarnation might provide humanity with some hope. Our close reading of this poem is informed by Eavan Boland's Preface and Anne Dewey and Paul A. Lacey's Afterword in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov (New Directions, 2013).

To read "On the Mystery of the Incarnation," click here.

To read Levertov's essay "Some Notes on Organic Form," click here.

Photo of Denise Levertov © David Geier. For more information see National Portrait Gallery at The Smithsonian Institution: https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2011.103

Episode 33: Adrienne Rich, Power

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 13:00:00 -0500

This week, the poet and scholar Stephanie Burt joins us to discuss the extraordinary power of Adrienne Rich. We think through how the spacing and stanzas of a poem can draw out denials and divulgences, while also exploring the life and writing of Rich.

Stephanie Burt's excellent book Don't Read Poetry ends with an examination of this poem by Adrienne Rich. The book, which can be found at the link, offers an introduction to reading poems and different ways of approaching them.

For the text of the poem, see here.

For more on Adrienne Rich, please see the Poetry Foundation.

For more on Stephanie Burt, please see the Poetry Foundation.

Photograph of Adrienne Rich by Robert Giard.

Links:

Episode 31: Jane Kenyon, Twilight: After Haying

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 11:00:00 -0400

This week we take a closer look at another autumn poem, this one by Jane Kenyon from her wonderful book Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Kenyon builds from and transforms the same tradition of the autumn ode we examined last week with John Keats.

Thank you to Graywolf Press for permission to read this poem from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems by Jane Kenyon.

Click here for the full text of Twilight: After Haying.

See the Poetry Foundation for more on Jane Kenyon.

Links:

Episode 29: Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 10:00:00 -0400

Elizabeth Bishop was one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, and "One Art" is certainly one of the greatest villanelles. In this episode, we talk about the poetic form and its constraints. We also draw upon recent scholarship that has revealed a great deal about Elizabeth Bishop's life and work in order to understand the power of poetic constraint.

Click here to read "One Art": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art

For more about Elizabeth Bishop's life and the cultural context that informed her work, read Megan Marshall's Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast.

To learn more about the correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, read Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, edited by Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton.

“One Art” from POEMS by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 2011 by The Alice H. Methfessel Trust. Publisher's Note and compilation copyright © 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Episode 28: Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 12:00:00 -0400

Countee Cullen was a major voice of the Harlem Renaissance. Joined by the renowned cultural critic Gerald Early, we here examine together story of Countee Cullen and the astounding sonnet that opens his main collection of poetry, My Soul's High Song.

For more on Countee Cullen, see the Poetry Foundation.

Here is the text of the sonnet:

Yet Do I Marvel
Countee Cullen

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,

Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare

If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.

Inscrutable His ways are, and immune

To catechism by a mind too strewn

With petty cares to slightly understand

What awful brain compels His awful hand.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:

To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

For the main collection of Countee Cullen's poetry, edited by Gerald Early, see My Soul's High Song.

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Episode 27: Marianne Moore, Poetry

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 12:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we read and discuss the influential modernist poet Marianne Moore and her witty, wonderful poem called "Poetry," a classic ars poetica (a poem about writing poetry). This poem has gone through many different editions. We take an earlier, longer version and ask how it participated in the modernist practice of "making it new" in the early 1900s.

Marianne Moore was a technical master with widespread influence who was at the very center of American modernism -- friends with William Carlos Williams (see episode 25), Ezra Pound, H.D., and many others, as well as a mentor to Elizabeth Bishop (who we'll have an episode on soon!). An ardent Presbyterian who wore a cape and tri-cornered hat and who carefully curated her public image, Marianne Moore became a sought-after celebrity in her own day.

For more on Marianne Moore, see the Poetry Foundation.

For the text of "Poetry," see here.

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Episode 25: William Carlos Williams, "This is Just to Say"

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 12:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we discuss a simple, iconic, "sorry-not sorry" poem from the early age of American modernism, which has taken on new life in the age of Twitter and the pandemic.

For more on William Carlos Williams, see the Poetry Foundation. See the text of "This is Just to Say" there as well.

“This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909-1939, copyright ©1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Episode 24: Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 13:00:00 -0400

Robert Hayden was one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. His poems are known for their formal grace and his deep and broad explorations of the African American experience. "Those Winter Sundays" is one of our all-time favorite poems. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

For the text of "Those Winter Sundays," click here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46461/those-winter-sundays

For more about Robert Hayden, click here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-hayden

We love Reginald Dwayne Betts's introduction to the Centenary Edition of Robert Hayden's Collected Poems, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Please do find a copy at your local library or at your favorite bookstore: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780871406798

Episode 23: Langston Hughes, "Johannesburg Mines"

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Fri, 21 May 2021 11:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we discuss social poetics, the poetry of witness, and the way poets can speak of the failure of language and the need for silence in the face of trauma. "The worst is not, so long as we can say, 'This is the worst.'"

For the text of Langston Hughes's poem "Johannesburg Mines," see here.

For more on Langston Hughes, see the Poetry Foundation.

For more on social poetics, see Mark Nowak's book by that name.

For more on the poetry of witness, see Sandra Beasley's essay "Flint and Tinder."

For Anna Akhmatova's "Instead of a Preface" in her great work Requiem as an alternative approach, see here.

Thanks to Harold Ober Associates, Inc., for granting us permission to read this poem on our podcast.

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Episode 22: Two Poems of World War I

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 13:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk with Vince Sherry about two poems of WWI: Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" and Ivor Gurney's "To His Love." The first poem, a stately beauty, imagines war almost peacefully; the second poem, scarred by combat, speaks back nervously and angrily. We talk through this remarkable set of poems and experiences and examine how a careful use of language conveys their effects.

"The Soldier"
by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

To His Love
by Ivor Gurney

He's gone, and all our plans
Are useless indeed.
We'll walk no more on Cotswold
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed.

His body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn river
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through.

You would not know him now ...
But still he died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride
Purple from Severn side.

Cover him, cover him soon!
And with thick-set
Masses of memoried flowers—
Hide that red wet
Thing I must somehow forget.

For more on Rupert Brooke, see The Poetry Foundation.

For more on Ivor Gurney, see The Poetry Foundation.

Gurney was also a prolific composer. For a sample of his music, see his Goucestershire Rhapsody.

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Episode 12: James Merrill, Christmas Tree

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 14:00:00 -0500

In this episode, Spencer Reece guides us through a reading of "Christmas Tree," one of the last poems that James Merrill wrote before his death. We learned so much through this conversation--about the friendship between James Merrill and Spencer Reece, the rhetorical force of visual poems, and the emotional power of elegy during the AIDS pandemic as well as in our own moment.

For the full text of "Christmas Tree," please see this page from the September 1995 issue of Poetry magazine.

For more on James Merrill, please see this page from the Poetry Foundation website.

For more on Spencer Reece, please see this page from the Poetry Foundation website.

Episode 5: Claude McKay, "America"

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 10:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we discuss Claude McKay, an influential poet of the Harlem Renaissance, taking a close look at his incredible sonnet "America."

For help in our preparations for this podcast, we want to thank Professors Bill Maxwell and Vince Sherry at Washington University in St. Louis, both of whom have often taught Claude McKay and this poem in particular. Bill Maxwell in addition has written extensively on McKay, and we encourage you to look up his work.

For the complete collection of McKay's poetry, see Bill Maxwell's edited volume:
Claude McKay, Complete Poems

And for more information on McKay, please visit the Poetry Foundation:

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Episode 1: Seamus Heaney, Digging

Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 12:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we begin learning about poetry through Seamus Heaney's great poem "Digging."

For the text of Heaney's poem, please see: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47555/digging

To hear Seamus Heaney reading this poem himself, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNRkPU1LSUg

For more on Seamus Heaney, please visit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/seamus-heaney

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