Poetry For All

Episode 92: Dorianne Laux, Singer

May 8th, 2025  |  Season 6  |  25 mins 44 secs

21st century, elegy, free verse, gratitude, joy, love, mother's day, narrative, ode, women's history month

In this episode, we read and discuss "Singer," a narrative poem that creates a catalog of details that celebrates the poetic speaker's mother in all of her complexity.

Episode 74: Diane Seuss, [The sonnet, like poverty]

July 26th, 2024  |  Season 6  |  24 mins 22 secs

21st century, ars poetica, elegy, gratitude, grief and loss, labor day, laborers, repetition or refrain, sonnet

This remarkable sonnet dives into issues of poverty, poetry, and grief. We talk about the pedagogy of constraint, while exploring the achievements, including the hardbitten gratitude, embedded in this poem.

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."

Episode 50: Rafael Campo, Primary Care

September 26th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  22 mins 24 secs

21st century, aging, blank verse, body in pain, gratitude, hispanic heritage month, repetition or refrain, science and medicine, spirituality, wonder

In this episode, we discuss how Rafael Campo, a practicing physician, uses blank verse to explore the experience of illness and suffering.

Episode 42: Robert Hayden, Frederick Douglass

February 23rd, 2022  |  Season 4  |  17 mins 58 secs

20th century, anger, black history month, blank verse, gratitude, hope, repetition or refrain, restlessness, social justice and advocacy, sonnet

In this episode, we offer a close reading of "Frederick Douglass," a poem in which Hayden channels the prophetic energies of his subject in order to imagine what freedom might one day mean.

Episode 38: Laura Van Prooyen, Elegy for My Mother's Mind

January 26th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  29 mins 16 secs

21st century, aging, children, elegy, free verse, gratitude, grief and loss, guest on the show, love, mother's day

In this episode, our guest Laura Van Prooyen reads "Elegy for My Mother's Mind," a poem that navigates the complexities of memory, loss, and familial relationships. Laura's poem gives us an opportunity to think about the deep sources of poetic inspiration, the revision process, and the power of metaphor.

Episode 24: Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

June 14th, 2021  |  Season 2  |  20 mins 49 secs

20th century, aging, black history month, children, father's day, gratitude, love, sonnet, surprise, winter, wonder

Episode 18: Jenny Johnson, Dappled Things

March 2nd, 2021  |  Season 2  |  27 mins 25 secs

21st century, gratitude, guest on the show, joy, lgbtqia month, nature poetry, thanksgiving, wonder

In this episode, Jenny Johnson discusses the sources of inspiration for her poem "Dappled Things," her love of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the incredible diversity--and fragility--of the natural world.

Episode 17: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty

February 23rd, 2021  |  Season 2  |  14 mins 35 secs

19th century, alliterative verse, gratitude, joy, nature poetry, rhymed verse, sonnet, thanksgiving, wonder

In this extraordinary curtal sonnet (a shortened sonnet, curtailed), Hopkins packs immense power. He uses the shortened form to heighten the emotion, drawing himself up short in the end with nothing else that can be said other than "Praise him." This week, we walk through these short lines and unfold some of the ways that Hopkins works.