Poetry For All

Episode 84: Ted Kooser, excerpts from Winter Morning Walks

December 12th, 2024  |  Season 6  |  21 mins 10 secs

free verse, loneliness, nature poetry, poet laureate, winter, wonder

In this episode, we offer close readings of poems from Ted Kooser's Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison. Kooser's poems allow us to think about the poem as a social act, as a form of healing, and as a kind of meditation.

Episode 81: Niki Herd, The Stuff of Hollywood

October 31st, 2024  |  Season 6  |  37 mins 37 secs

21st century, black history month, found poetry, free verse, guest on the show, social justice and advocacy, violence, word and image

In this episode, Niki Herd joins us to read and discuss an excerpt from The Stuff of Hollywood, a collection in which Herd experiments with a range of forms and procedures to examine the history of violence in America.

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

October 3rd, 2024  |  Season 6  |  39 mins 1 sec

20th century, ekphrasis, free verse, guest on the show, lgbtqia month, modernism, word and image

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.

Episode 77: Jennifer Grotz, The Conversion of Paul

September 5th, 2024  |  Season 6  |  26 mins 14 secs

21st century, body in pain, christianity, ekphrasis, free verse, friendship, grief and loss, narrative

Poetry engages in conversation. Today, we explore a long, beautiful, narrative poem weaving together the work of fellow poets while looking carefully at a Caravaggio painting, all reflecting on illness, death, and friendship.

Episode 72: Victoria Chang, My Mother--died unpeacefully...

May 22nd, 2024  |  Season 6  |  20 mins 1 sec

21st century, aging, asian american, elegy, free verse, grief and loss

In this episode, we read one of Victoria Chang’s moving poems from her collection OBIT, and discuss how the poem explores the interplay between life, death, grieving, and memory as the poet tries to process her mother’s passing.

Episode 70: Lauren Camp, Inner Planets

March 19th, 2024  |  Season 6  |  28 mins 29 secs

21st century, free verse, nature poetry, night, poet laureate, wonder

Episode 68: W.S. Merwin, To the New Year

January 18th, 2024  |  Season 6  |  22 mins 48 secs

21st century, free verse, hope, nature poetry, new year’s day, ode, poet laureate, spirituality, surprise, winter, wonder

In the first episode of 2024, we read one of the great poets of the past century, W.S. Merwin, and his address to the new year, considering his attentiveness, his style, and his wondrous mood and mode of contemplation and surprise.

Episode 67: Alex Dimitrov, Winter Solstice

December 18th, 2023  |  Season 6  |  24 mins 27 secs

21st century, city, free verse, hope, intimacy, lgbtqia month, loneliness, night, winter

In this episode, we read and discuss a poem that provides a powerful meditation on the longest night of the year.

Episode 61: Ada Limón, "The Raincoat"

May 11th, 2023  |  Season 6  |  18 mins 34 secs

21st century, body in pain, children, free verse, gratitude, hispanic heritage month, love, mother's day, poet laureate, surprise, wonder

With her quality of attention and focus on vivid, specific images, Ada Limón brings us to a moment of surprising insight in "The Raincoat."

Episode 60: Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms

May 2nd, 2023  |  Season 5  |  19 mins 7 secs

20th century, asian american and pacific islander month, free verse, gratitude, joy, repetition or refrain, summer, wonder

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."