Friendship

Oh, the comfort—
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake is an Indigenous poet from the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma. Winner of the 2024 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award for poetry and the recipient of the 2023 Indigenous Nations Poets fellowship, they live in St. Louis.

Portrait by Erin Lewis Photography

The poem was featured on Poem-a-Day and can be found at the Academy of American Poets.

See here for the poem online.

Someday I’ll Love—

Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake
—after Frank O’Hara

like I dreamt of the lamb—slaughtered,
forgotten,
lying on porcelain tile, on crimson-filled grout—
and woke up thinking of my grandmother,
of her Betty Boop hands that held
marbled stone, held dough-balled flour,
held the first strands of my hair floating atop the river—

like winter apples, the ones that hang outside
my living room window and survive first snowfall
to feed the neighborhood crows,
how they fall
beneath my boots, staining my rubber
soles with epigraphs of rot, epigraphs
of fors, of dears, of holding on till frost’s end.

Someday I will see long-forgotten fingerprints
on the inside of my eyelids as I go to sleep,
as I close my eyes for silence on a Wednesday,
mourning—seeking—creases and smile lines,
porch lights and swing sets,
summer nights of lightning bugs and Johnny Cash.

I think it will be a Tuesday, or maybe someday
is yesterday, is two months from now, is going
to be a day when I forget what I’m supposed
to be remembering.

For now, I will paint my nails cradle, adorn
my skin in cloth that doesn’t choke,
tell my bones that they are each
a lamb
remembered.

Copyright © 2024 by Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. Used by permission.

Dorianne Laux is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Life on Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of a new craft book titled Finger Exercises for Poets.

“Singer” appears in LIFE ON EARTH by Dorianne Laux. Copyright © 2024 by Dorianne Laux. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Professor Kirk read Edith Grossman's translation of "Sonnet 189" from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works. Copyright (c) 2014 by Edith Grossman. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

To learn more about Stephanie Kirk’s scholarship, you can click here.

Cover image: Miguel Cabrera, posthumous portrait of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, 1750. Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City, Mexico. Public domain.

We link our discussion to present-day concerns about social media, the Surgeon General's warning about an epidemic of loneliness in this country, and a long-term Harvard study of happiness. Links below.

Here is the poem:

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Links to the Surgeon General's Warning about Social Media

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/23/1177626373/u-s-surgeon-general-vivek-murthy-warns-about-the-dangers-of-social-media-to-kids#:~:text=Social%20media%20can%20present%20a,a%20new%20advisory%20released%20Tuesday.

Various Links on the Harvard Happiness Study

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/harvard-happiness-study-relationships/672753/

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/10/85-year-harvard-study-found-the-secret-to-a-long-happy-and-successful-life.html

https://www.reuters.com/markets/wealth/what-worlds-longest-happiness-study-says-about-money-2023-02-06/

Links:

• Sonnet 29
• Surgeon General on Loneliness
• Surgeon General on Social Media
• Harvard Study of Happiness

"The Raincoat" appears in Ada Limón's book The Carrying by Milkweed Editions. Thank you to Milkweed Editions for permission to read the poem on this podcast.

You can find the "The Raincoat" on the Poetry Foundation website.

To learn more about Ada Limón, the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, visit the Library of Congress website.

Ada Limón's author website includes information about her six books of poetry as well as interviews, press releases, and her calendar of events.

Photo credit: Shawn Miller, Library of Congress

(For the text of the poem, scroll to the bottom.)

In this episode, we attempt to describe the magnificence of some of Queen Elizabeth's portraiture. To learn more, visit the National Portrait Gallery of London:

To learn more about Petrarch and his poems that were such an enormous influence on English poets of the sixteenth century, please read this book, which provides Petrarch's original poems in Italian and Robert Durling's stunning translations into English.

To learn more about what it meant to "fashion a self" in the Renaissance, see Stephen Greenblatt's foundational work on this idea .

On Monsieur’s Departure
BY QUEEN ELIZABETH I

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

To learn more about Shakespeare's sonnets, visit Folger Shakespeare page.

Our favorite editions of Shakespeare's sonnets are edited by Colin Burrow and Stephen Booth.

Sir Patrick Stewart's reading of Sonnet 73 is one of our favorites.

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:

• spring song by Lucille Clifton | Poetry Foundation
• Poetry Foundation
• About Lucille Clifton | Academy of American Poets
• Lucille Clifton 101 by Benjamin Voigt | Poetry Foundation

For the text of this poem, click here.

Colin Burrow and Stephen Booth's editions of Shakespeare's sonnets are essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about this amazing sonnet sequence.

During the pandemic, Sir Patrick Stewart has read one Shakespeare sonnet each day and share it on YouTube. To hear him read Sonnet 116 and so many others, click here.

To learn more about Laura's work, check her website.

Click here to see the version of the poem that appeared in Prairie Schooner.

Our two favorite books on elegy are Jahan Ramazani's Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney and Peter Sacks's The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats.

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.

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

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.

For the sonnet in full, see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45087/sonnet-18-shall-i-compare-thee-to-a-summers-day

For helpful works on Shakespeare's sonnets, see:

Stephen Booth's edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets

and

Helen Vendler's edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets.