Poetry For All

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

In this episode, we read and discuss the influential modernist poet Marianne Moore and her witty, wonderful poem called "Poetry," a classic ars poetica (a poem about writing poetry). This poem has gone through many different editions. We take an earlier, longer version and ask how it participated in the modernist practice of "making it new" in the early 1900s. Marianne Moore was a technical master with widespread influence who was at the very center of American modernism -- friends with William Carlos Williams (see episode 25), Ezra Pound, H.D., and many others, as well as a mentor to Elizabeth Bishop (who we'll have an episode on soon!). An ardent Presbyterian who wore a cape and tri-cornered hat and who carefully curated her public image, Marianne Moore became a sought-after celebrity in her own day. For more on Marianne Moore, see the Poetry Foundation. For the text of "Poetry," see here.Links:Marianne Moore | Poetry FoundationPoetry by Marianne Moore - Poems | Academy of American Poets

In this episode, Brenda Cárdenas guides us through a reading of "Our Lady of Sorrows," an ekphrastic poem that is inspired by the work of Ana Mendieta. To read more of Brenda Cárdenas's work, click here: https://uwm.edu/english/our-people/cardenas-brenda/ To learn more about Ana Mendieta's work, click here: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/ana-mendieta

In this episode, we discuss a simple, iconic, "sorry-not sorry" poem from the early age of American modernism, which has taken on new life in the age of Twitter and the pandemic. For more on William Carlos Williams, see the Poetry Foundation. See the text of "This is Just to Say" there as well. “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909-1939, copyright ©1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Robert Hayden was one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. His poems are known for their formal grace and his deep and broad explorations of the African American experience. "Those Winter Sundays" is one of our all-time favorite poems. We hope you enjoy this conversation. 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

In this episode, we discuss social poetics, the poetry of witness, and the way poets can speak of the failure of language and the need for silence in the face of trauma. "The worst is not, so long as we can say, 'This is the worst.'" For the text of Langston Hughes's poem "Johannesburg Mines," see here. For more on Langston Hughes, see the Poetry Foundation. For more on social poetics, see Mark Nowak's book by that name. For more on the poetry of witness, see Sandra Beasley's essay "Flint and Tinder." For Anna Akhmatova's "Instead of a Preface" in her great work Requiem as an alternative approach, see here. Thanks to Harold Ober Associates, Inc., for granting us permission to read this poem on our podcast.Links:Poem: Johannesburg Mines by Langston HughesLangston Hughes | Poetry FoundationSocial Poetics – Coffee House PressSandra Beasley: “Flint and Tinder – Understanding the Difference Between ‘Poetry of Witness’ and ‘Documentary Poetics’”Requiem Poem by Anna Akhmatova - Poem Hunter

In this episode, we talk with Vince Sherry about two poems of WWI: Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" and Ivor Gurney's "To His Love." The first poem, a stately beauty, imagines war almost peacefully; the second poem, scarred by combat, speaks back nervously and angrily. We talk through this remarkable set of poems and experiences and examine how a careful use of language conveys their effects. "The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. To His Love by Ivor Gurney He's gone, and all our plans Are useless indeed. We'll walk no more on Cotswold Where the sheep feed Quietly and take no heed. His body that was so quick Is not as you Knew it, on Severn river Under the blue Driving our small boat through. You would not know him now ... But still he died Nobly, so cover him over With violets of pride Purple from Severn side. Cover him, cover him soon! And with thick-set Masses of memoried flowers— Hide that red wet Thing I must somehow forget. For more on Rupert Brooke, see The Poetry Foundation. For more on Ivor Gurney, see The Poetry Foundation. Gurney was also a prolific composer. For a sample of his music, see his Goucestershire Rhapsody.Links:The Soldier by Rupert Brooke | Poetry MagazineTo His Love by Ivor Gurney | Poetry FoundationIvor Gurney: A Gloucestershire Rhapsody - YouTubeVincent Sherry | Arts & SciencesRupert Brooke | Poetry FoundationIvor Gurney | Poetry Foundation

In this episode we talk with Christian Wiman about the arc of a book of poetry, the structure of an individual poem, the desire for openness and accessibility, and the surprising shifts from levity to seriousness that take even the writer by surprise. The episode considers how poets construct and organize their poems, and it also touches on differing approaches poets take across their career. Christian Wiman is the Clement-Muehl Professor of Communication Arts at Yale Divinity School, the former editor of Poetry magazine, and the author, editor, and translator of multiple books. He has won countless awards for his poetry and also has extraordinary books of prose, including My Bright Abyss and He Held Radical Light. Today, we talk with him about his poem “I Don’t Want to be a Spice Store” from his latest book of poetry, Survival is a Style. For more on Christian Wiman, please see The Poetry Foundation. This poem comes from Survival is a Style.Links:Survival Is a Style | Christian Wiman | MacmillanChristian Wiman | Poetry Foundation