Poetry For All

Episode 69: Live with Marilyn Nelson!

February 11th, 2024  |  Season 6  |  55 mins 17 secs

21st century, anger, ars poetica, black history month, children, guest on the show, poet laureate, sonnet, surprise, wonder

Our first live performance of the podcast, featuring Marilyn Nelson and a discussion or her amazing poem "How I Discovered Poetry."

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.

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.

Episode 63: Rumi, Colorless, Nameless, Free

August 29th, 2023  |  Season 6  |  29 mins 56 secs

13th century, ghazal, guest on the show, islam, joy, poetry in translation, restlessness, rhymed verse, spirituality, surprise, wonder, world poetry

In this episode, poet and translator Haleh Liza Gafori joins us to closely read and discuss a poem by Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (1207-1273 CE), one of the greatest of all Sufi poets. We discuss the poetic constraints of the ghazal form, Rumi's encounters with the divine, and the significance of his friendship with Shams, a man who transformed his life and poetic practice.

Episode 58: Richie Hofmann, Things That Are Rare

February 27th, 2023  |  Season 5  |  23 mins 57 secs

21st century, eros and desire, free verse, guest on the show, intimacy, lgbtqia month, night, sonnet

Episode 54: Carl Phillips, To Autumn

November 21st, 2022  |  Season 5  |  24 mins 47 secs

21st century, autumn, black history month, city, free verse, guest on the show, intimacy, lgbtqia month, nature poetry, night, ode, restlessness, spirituality

In this episode, we talk with David Baker about "To Autumn" by Carl Phillips, exploring the way Phillips masterfully achieves a sense of intimacy and restlessness in a lyric ode that tosses between two parts while incorporating the sonnet tradition.

Episode 53: Carter Revard, What the Eagle Fan Says

November 7th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  25 mins 38 secs

20th century, alliterative verse, guest on the show, native american heritage month, nature poetry, spirituality

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.

Episode 51: Martín Espada, Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge

October 10th, 2022  |  Season 5  |  30 mins 20 secs

21st century, anger, city, guest on the show, hispanic heritage month, laborers, narrative, repetition or refrain, social justice and advocacy

In this episode, we talk with the 2021 winner of the National Book Award, Martín Espada, about narrative poetry, poetry of engagement, and the witness of poetry as a work of advocacy.

Episode 47: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

April 22nd, 2022  |  Season 4  |  26 mins 39 secs

19th century, ars poetica, children, free verse, guest on the show, nature poetry, repetition or refrain, spirituality, wonder

In this episode, Christopher Hanlon joins us to discuss an excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. We discuss the poem's prophetic voice, its patterns of repetition, the connective tissue that binds his ideas and invites readers in, and the cultural context in which Whitman produced his work.

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.