Poetry For All
Finding Our Way Into Great Poems
We found 10 episodes of Poetry For All with the tag “grief and loss”.
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Episode 66: Katy Didden, The Priest Questions the Lava
November 21st, 2023 | Season 6 | 26 mins 10 secs
21st century, christianity, climate change, erasure, grief and loss, guest on the show, nature poetry, spirituality, visual poetry, word and image
In our discussion of "The Priest Questions the Lava," Katy describes her interest in the sentience of the natural world, her erasure of documentary texts, her interest in visual poetry, and the importance of poems that examine ethical and spiritual questions in an era of climate change.
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Episode 65: Du Fu, Facing Snow
October 19th, 2023 | Season 6 | 23 mins 57 secs
8th century, grief and loss, guest on the show, poetry in translation, rhymed verse, world poetry
In this episode, Lucas Bender guides us through his translation of Du Fu's "Facing Snow," one of the most famous poems in the Chinese language.
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Episode 59: Tichborne's Elegy
April 7th, 2023 | Season 5 | 21 mins 25 secs
16th century, christianity, elegy, grief and loss, repetition or refrain, rhymed verse
In this episode, we read the elegy of Chidiock Tichborne, written the night before his execution, and contemplate the power of repetitions, the balanced precision of a man facing his end, and the drumbeat of monosyllables that takes his imagination beyond the moment of his death.
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Episode 49: Lisel Mueller, When I am Asked
September 12th, 2022 | Season 5 | 19 mins 57 secs
20th century, ars poetica, elegy, free verse, grief and loss, repetition or refrain
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.
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Episode 48: Joy Harjo, An American Sunrise
April 28th, 2022 | Season 4 | 21 mins 47 secs
21st century, anger, golden shovel, grief and loss, hope, joy, native american heritage month, poet laureate, social justice and advocacy, spirituality
In this episode, we examine The Golden Shovel form and discuss the idea of "survivance" through the work of Muscogee (Creek) poet Joy Harjo, the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States.
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Episode 45: Ben Jonson, On My First Son
March 23rd, 2022 | Season 4 | 21 mins 18 secs
17th century, children, christianity, elegy, grief and loss, loneliness, rhymed verse
In this episode, we look at Ben Jonson's elegy for his son who died of the plague at the age of 7. This poem is so brief, and yet, it manages to cross a lot of emotional terrain as Jonson struggles to understand the profundity of his loss.
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Episode 44: Ann Hudson, Soap
March 16th, 2022 | Season 4 | 23 mins 19 secs
21st century, body in pain, grief and loss, guest on the show, laborers, narrative, science and medicine, social justice and advocacy, women's history month
In this episode, Ann Hudson joins us to read her poem “Soap” and discuss how its narrative structure allows her to explore the history of science, technology, and our notions of progress and beauty, even when those notions do great harm to ordinary workers.
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Episode 39: Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear The Mask
February 2nd, 2022 | Season 4 | 22 mins 9 secs
19th century, anger, black history month, grief and loss, guest on the show, repetition or refrain, rhymed verse, rondeau, social justice and advocacy
This week, Rafia Zafar joins us to discuss "We Wear the Mask" by the great poet and writer Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906). Rafia leads us in a discussion of Dunbar's fame and influence while opening up broader themes of African American history and literature.
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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.
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Episode 34: Tracy K. Smith, Declaration
December 7th, 2021 | Season 3 | 23 mins 10 secs
21st century, anger, black history month, erasure, grief and loss, poet laureate, social justice and advocacy
In this episode, we discuss erasure poetry and its power to reveal hidden histories and redacted stories through Tracy K. Smith's erasure of the Declaration of Independence.