Roxanne Jones: I want to talk about this longing we have for people who are gone. She says there's a song by Mark Knopfler that he wrote called Piper to the End. A Piper is a bagpipe player of bagpipes, and your poem reminded her of his song. Jones: You could struggle, but I'm sure you could excerpt it. It's very un-military way to be a soldier.
When he was a child, poet Dana Gioia's mother would come home from a long day of work and recite poems while she cleaned. It was a way, he realized later, for her to express the feelings she didn't want to describe directly, and to vent her sorrows without burdening her son. This, he believes, is what makes poetry so compelling: It's the secret language of emotions, a bit of magic that gets us through the day. Listen as Gioia speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about poems, mortality, and loved ones who died too young. Gioia also explains the fundamental role of allusions in poems, and how--if they’re really good--they have the power to summon the dead.