Poetry For All
Finding Our Way Into Great Poems
Displaying Episode 1 - 10 of 16 in total of Poetry For All with the tag “repetition or refrain”.
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Episode 90: N. Scott Momaday, The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee
April 16th, 2025 | Season 6 | 20 mins 23 secs
21st century, free verse, joy, native american heritage month, repetition or refrain, spirituality, wonder
This episode explores the incantation and mystic union of Momaday's famous delight poem, ending with a recorded recitation in his own rich voice.
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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.
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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."
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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 57: Edna St. Vincent Millay, She had forgotten how the August night
February 14th, 2023 | Season 5 | 23 mins 46 secs
20th century, eros and desire, modernism, night, repetition or refrain, rhymed verse, sonnet, summer, women's history month
Edna St. Vincent Millay was the emblem of the "New Woman" and one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. In this episode, we focus on a sonnet that showcases how Millay approached desire and eros in her poetry.
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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.
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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.
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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 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.
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Episode 46: Lucille Clifton, spring song
April 13th, 2022 | Season 4 | 17 mins 35 secs
20th century, black history month, christianity, easter, free verse, hope, joy, love, repetition or refrain, spring, wonder
Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) was one of the most powerful poets of the twentieth century. This joyful poem caps a sequence of sixteen poems called "some jesus," which walks through biblical characters (beginning with Adam and Eve) and ends on four poems for Holy Week and Easter.