Poetry For All

Joanne and Abram launch the fourth season of Poetry For All with a short discussion about what this podcast is all about and how it relates to all the other great poetry podcasts in the world. This conversation is an excerpt from our virtual visit with the students in Grace Talusan's creative writing workshop at Brandeis University. Grace uses our podcast in her course, and her students have gone on to create their own podcasts that focus on close readings of poems. If you want more information on how to use our podcast in the classroom, please reach out to us via Facebook, Twitter, or our gmail account (poetryforall2020). For more on Grace Talusan and her excellent work, please see here.Links:Writer | Grace Talusan

In this episode, we discuss Denise Levertov's powerful meditation on the horrors of the twentieth century, and how the mystery of the incarnation might provide humanity with some hope. Our close reading of this poem is informed by Eavan Boland's Preface and Anne Dewey and Paul A. Lacey's Afterword in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov (New Directions, 2013). To read "On the Mystery of the Incarnation," click here. To read Levertov's essay "Some Notes on Organic Form," click here. ''On the Mystery of the Incarnation'' by Denise Levertov comes from her book A DOOR IN THE HIVE, copyright ©1989 by Denise Levertov. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. Photo of Denise Levertov © David Geier. For more information see National Portrait Gallery at The Smithsonian Institution: https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2011.103

In this episode, we discuss the way in which Matthew Zapruder attends to vivid, specific details to create a sense of wonder, connection, and surprise. To read "Poem for Wisconsin," click here. "Poem for Wisconsin" originally appeared in the collection Sun Bear. Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for granting us permission to read this poem on the podcast. For a glimpse of the "Bronze Fonz," click here. To see how the Milwaukee Art Museum opens its wings, watch this time-lapse video. For a sense of the "many moods" of Lake Michigan, see the photography of the wonderful Jin Lee.

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. For the poem (including a reading and discussion of the poem by Tracy Smith), see the Poetry Foundation. For Solmaz Sharif's discussion of the political implications of erasure poetry, see "The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure": https://thevolta.org/ewc28-ssharif-p1.html See also "Erasure in Three Acts" by Muriel Leung. For more on Tracy K. Smith, see The Library of Congress. For a look at the various drafts of the Declaration of Independence, visit this page on the Library of Congress website: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jeffdec.html Thanks to Graywolf Press for granting us permission to read this poem, which appears in Wade in the Water (2018). Thanks to Harvard University and photographer Stephanie Mitchell for granting us permission to reproduce Tracy Smith's photo.Links:Declaration by Tracy K. Smith | Poetry FoundationTracy K. Smith | Library of CongressLook | Graywolf PressErasure in Three Acts: An Essay by Muriel Leung | Poetry Foundation

This week, the poet and scholar Stephanie Burt joins us to discuss the extraordinary power of Adrienne Rich. We think through how the spacing and stanzas of a poem can draw out denials and divulgences, while also exploring the life and writing of Rich. Stephanie Burt's excellent book Don't Read Poetry ends with an examination of this poem by Adrienne Rich. The book, which can be found at the link, offers an introduction to reading poems and different ways of approaching them. For the text of the poem, see here. For more on Adrienne Rich, please see the Poetry Foundation. For more on Stephanie Burt, please see the Poetry Foundation. Photograph of Adrienne Rich by Robert Giard.Links:Power by Adrienne Rich - Famous poems, famous poets. - All PoetryAdrienne Rich | Poetry FoundationStephanie Burt | Poetry Foundation

In this episode, poet Rick Barot guides us in our reading of his poem "Cascades 501" from The Galleons, his most recent collection. Rick's insights into how poets engage with place, create juxtapositions, and arrive at insights taught us so much about how poets create their best work. To learn more about Rick Barot, you can visit his website: https://www.rickbarot.com/about/ To learn more about The Galleons, you can visit the Milkweed Editions website: https://milkweed.org/book/the-galleons To read "Cascade 501," visit the Academy of American Poets website: https://poets.org/poem/cascades-501

This week we take a closer look at another autumn poem, this one by Jane Kenyon from her wonderful book Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Kenyon builds from and transforms the same tradition of the autumn ode we examined last week with John Keats. Thank you to Graywolf Press for permission to read this poem from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems by Jane Kenyon. Click here for the full text of Twilight: After Haying. See the Poetry Foundation for more on Jane Kenyon.Links:Twilight: After Haying by Jane Kenyon - Poems | poets.orgOtherwise | Graywolf PressJane Kenyon | Poetry Foundation

To Autumn by John Keats Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. For more on John Keats, see the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats Further Resources: Keats's Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives, ed. Brian Rejack and Michael Theune: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/keatss-negative-capability-9781786941817?cc=us&lang=en& Keats Letters Project: https://keatslettersproject.com/ Anahid Nersessian, Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo77573957.htmlLinks:To Autumn by John Keats | Poetry FoundationJohn Keats | Poetry FoundationKeats's Negative Capability - Hardcover - Brian Rejack; Michael Theune - Oxford University PressThe Keats Letters Project – Corresponding with KeatsKeats’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse, Nersessian

Elizabeth Bishop was one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, and "One Art" is certainly one of the greatest villanelles. In this episode, we talk about the poetic form and its constraints. We also draw upon recent scholarship that has revealed a great deal about Elizabeth Bishop's life and work in order to understand the power of poetic constraint. 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.

Countee Cullen was a major voice of the Harlem Renaissance. Joined by the renowned cultural critic Gerald Early, we here examine together story of Countee Cullen and the astounding sonnet that opens his main collection of poetry, My Soul's High Song. For more on Countee Cullen, see the Poetry Foundation. Here is the text of the sonnet: Yet Do I Marvel Countee Cullen I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing! For the main collection of Countee Cullen's poetry, edited by Gerald Early, see My Soul's High Song.Links:Countee Cullen | Poetry FoundationYet Do I Marvel by Countee Cullen | Poetry FoundationMy Soul's High Song: 9780385412957: Cullen, Countee: Books