Poetry For All

In this episode, we look at "The Collar"--a famous single-stanza poem, playing with meter, rhythm, and rhyme by the seventeenth-century priest and poet, George Herbert. Here is the poem in full: THE COLLAR I struck the board, and cried, "No more; I will abroad! What? shall I ever sigh and pine? My lines and life are free, free as the road, Loose as the wind, as large as store. Shall I be still in suit? Have I no harvest but a thorn To let me blood, and not restore What I have lost with cordial fruit? Sure there was wine Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn Before my tears did drown it. Is the year only lost to me? Have I no bays to crown it, No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted? All wasted? Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, And thou hast hands. Recover all thy sigh-blown age On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage, Thy rope of sands, Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee Good cable, to enforce and draw, And be thy law, While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. Away! take heed; I will abroad. Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears; He that forbears To suit and serve his need Deserves his load." But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild At every word, Methought I heard one calling, Child! And I replied My Lord. For more on George Herbert, visit the poetry foundation.

In this episode, we discuss Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb," the poem that she recited at the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. We discuss how well suited the poem is to its occasion, Gorman's powerful use of sound, and the conversation that she engages in--with John Winthrop, the Constitution, the Bible, George Washington, Maya Angelou, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Like everyone else in America, we are in love with this poem and hope you enjoy the discussion.

In this episode, Spencer Reece guides us through a reading of "Christmas Tree," one of the last poems that James Merrill wrote before his death. We learned so much through this conversation--about the friendship between James Merrill and Spencer Reece, the rhetorical force of visual poems, and the emotional power of elegy during the AIDS pandemic as well as in our own moment. 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.

In this episode, we think with the inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona, Alberto Ríos, about the meaning of giving. Why do we give? What is giving? And what are its consequences? Ríos wrote this poem for a broad audience and has shared it with many different groups. It is, on the one hand, a very simple and accessible poem, easy to understand. And it is also, on the other hand, filled with rich layers, structures, images, and contexts. We explore here how simplicity and complexity work together. For the full text of the poem, see here. For more on Alberto Ríos, see the Poetry Foundation here. Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for granting us permission to read this poem in this episode. You can find "When Giving Is All We Have" in A Small Story about the Sky: https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/a-small-story-about-the-sky-by-alberto-rios/Links:When Giving Is All We Have by Alberto Ríos - Poems | poets.org — inaugural state poet laureate of ArizonaAlberto Ríos | Poetry Foundation

This week Mary Jo Bang joins us! We learn about the Bauhaus movement and an influential photographer named Lucia Moholy, whose works were largely stolen during her lifetime. Mary Jo Bang's collection, A Doll for Throwing uses ekphrastic prose poetry throughout to delve into the riches of the Bauhaus movement which flourished in Germany between the world wars and had longlasting consequences for modern art. With Mary Jo Bang's poem this week, we explore both ekphrasis (poetry about an image) and prose poetry (poetry with no line breaks). For the full text of the "Head of the Dancer," please see here. For the image by Lotte Jacobi about which this poem is written, please see here. For more on Lucia Moholy, please see the MoMA here.. For more on Mary Jo Bang, please see the Poetry Foundation here.Links:The Head of a Dancer | The New YorkerHead of a Dancer, Berlin | Saint Louis Art MuseumLucia Moholy | MoMAMary Jo Bang | Poetry FoundationA Doll for Throwing | Graywolf Press

This week we read Anne Bradstreet's elegy for her grandchild Elizabeth and draw out the multiple voices (both faith and doubt, both grief and consolation) and the tensions and deep emotions in the work of this talented Puritan poet--the first woman from British North America to publish a book of poems. "In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665 Being a Year and a Half Old" Farewell dear babe, my heart's too much content, Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye, Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent, Then ta'en away unto eternity. Blest babe why should I once bewail thy fate, Or sigh the days so soon were terminate; Sith thou art settled in an everlasting state. By nature trees do rot when they are grown. And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall, And corn and grass are in their season mown, And time brings down what is both strong and tall. But plants new set to be eradicate, And buds new blown, to have so short a date, Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate. For more on Anne Bradstreet, please see the Poetry Foundation. For an essay on Anne Bradstreet's art, please see this short piece by Kevin Prufer. For an essay on Anne Bradstreet's publication of The Tenth Muse (the first published book by a woman from British North America) and her ambitions as a poet, see this piece by Charlotte Gordon. For an understanding of Puritan spirituality, please see this short review essay by Abram Van Engen.Links:Anne Bradstreet | Poetry FoundationOn Anne BradstreetHumble Assertions: The True Story of Anne Bradstreet’s Publication of The Tenth Muse - Commonplace - The Journal of early American LifeThe Law and the Gospel - Commonplace - The Journal of early American Life

Carl Phillips joins us this week to take a close look at Toi Derricotte's "The Minks." Together we consider the art of narrative poetry, the movements of a single-stanza poem, and the meaning of line breaks. Toi Derricotte is the author of five books of poetry and a collection of prose called The Black Notebooks. She has won numerous awards and fellowhips, including the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists, the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, the PEN/Voelcker Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. With Cornelius Eady she co-founded Cave Canem in 1996, an organization committed to furthering the artistic and professional opportunities for African American poets. "The Minks" comes from her 1990 book Captivity, which explores the legacies of slavery and its impact on African American families in the present day. It is included in I: New and Selected Poems published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which granted us permission to read it for this podcast. Carl Phillips, our guest for this episode, is also an award-winning poet of multiple collections, most recently Pale Colors in a Tall Field (2020). He has had three books nominated for a National Book Award and has won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, a Pushcart Prize, the Kingsley Tuft Poetry Award, and numerous fellowships and other awards. Thank you to Carl for joining us today as our first guest! For more on Toi Derricotte, please see here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/toi-derricotte For more on Carl Phillips, please see here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/carl-phillips For the full text of "The Minks," please see here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42872/the-minksLinks:The Minks by Toi Derricotte | Poetry FoundationToi Derricotte | Poetry FoundationI - University of Pittsburgh PressCarl Phillips | Poetry Foundation — the Kingsley Tuft Poetry Award

This week we look at one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets from the seventeenth century. This famous poem (#14, "Batter my heart") turns a poetic tradition of love and longing to religious ends, earnestly seeking God and questioning whether union with God will ever be achieved. John Donne was an influential metaphysical poet who enjoyed wide fame in his own day, then went largely unread for two centuries, and then, saw his reputation radically revived in the early twentieth century. He was born into a Catholic family, converted to Anglicanism, and became a minister. Along the way, he wrote both "secular" erotic love poems and "religious" poems of many forms. This poem is one of the nineteen "Holy Sonnets" he wrote. For a sequence on sonnets, this episode caps a mini-sequence in Poetry For All, which included a sonnet of Shakespeare's (episode 4), a reconception of the sonnet tradition by the Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay (episode 5), a set of erasure poems drawn from Shakespeare's sonnets by Jen Bervin (episode 6), and a return to the seventeenth-century sonnet tradition with John Donne (episode 7). For more on John Donne, please see the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-donneLinks:John Donne | Poetry FoundationHoly Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God… | Poetry Foundation

Jen Bervin, an acclaimed author known for her erasure poetry, discusses her transformative work, NETS, which reimagines Shakespeare's sonnets. She shares fascinating insights into the technique of erasure, revealing how it can evoke vulnerability and challenge traditional formats. Bervin highlights themes of absence and feminist identity in her poetry, connecting it to contemporary issues of loss. The conversation beautifully illustrates how silence and minimalism in poetry can resonate deeply, urging listeners to rethink the classics.

In this discussion, Claude McKay, a pivotal figure in the Harlem Renaissance, shines a light on his iconic sonnet 'America.' Joined by experts Bill Maxwell, a McKay scholar and editor of his complete works, and Vince Sherry, a professor specializing in McKay, they delve into the poem’s complex emotional landscape during a time of racial tension. The conversation highlights themes of love and conflict, traditional literary forms, and the prophetic nature of McKay's insights on society, all while reevaluating the relationship between poetry and cultural identity.