On this theme-based show, host Brian Dillon reads and comments on poems from the ancient world to the present. Topics include Unlived Lives, Inanimate Objects, Swimming, Advice, and Unrequited love, among many others.
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“Insects Among Us”: All four poems place insects on center stage. Our first opens with a question: “Don’t you remember them?” These are poems of memory and poems of the present, with speakers who are descriptive and very curious. Danusha Lameris, “The Bugs of Childhood,” from Blade By Blade (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). Robert Wrigley, “I Want...
“Stephen Dunn’s Dilemmas”: All three poems are by the late contemporary poet Stephen Dunn. In each poem, the speaker faces a concern that challenges his sense of who he is and what he thinks he knows. The circumstance may seem mundane, but the concern is profound. If, that is, we are inclined to empathize with the speaker. “At...
“Gone Parents“: Poets featured today consider deceased parents, somewhat sentimentally or as mysterious dream figures. Ted Kooser, “Mother” and “Father,” from Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004). Seamus Heaney, “Uncoupled,” from Selected Poems 1988-2013 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014; originally published in Human Chain (2010). Kathleen Flenniken, “The Sound of a Train,” from Famous (U. of Nebraska Press, 2006), used with the kind...
“What’s So Funny?”: Will any of today’s poems make you laugh? Billy Collins, “To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl,” from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2013). Stephen Dunn, “John & Mary,” from The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022). Caroline Bird, “Little Children,” from The Air Year (Carcanet, 2020), https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109028/the-air-year/ Would you like to share with me...
“Wake Up: Modern Aubades”: Traditionally, aubades are lyrics announcing the arrival of dawn all too soon for lovers who want the night to be prolonged. The twentieth-century poems featured here take some liberties with that tradition. After an excerpt from John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” (1633), Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, “Aubade,” from Pharaoh’s Daughter (Wake Forest U. Press,...
“Neighbors”: When you recall the places where you lived, do you inevitably reflect on who else was in close proximity? This episode presents three distinct ways of thinking about one’s neighbors. Robert Frost, “Mending Wall.” John Heywood, “A Quiet Neighbour.” Robert Wrigley, “Praise Bob,” from The True Account of Myself as a Bird (Penguin Books, 2022),...
“Revised Bible Stories”: Poets give voice to characters who are silent in the Bible, and they speculate on what the Bible left out. They allow us to imagine less conventional roles for certain characters, as these three poems suggest. Molly Twomey, “Noah’s Wife,” from Raised Among Vultures, and used by kind permission of the author and...
“Parents Viewed Unconventionally”: Three contemporary female poets comment on one or more parents in somewhat unexpected ways. Molly Twomey, “The Drop Off,” from Raised Among Vultures, and used by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, 2022 (www.gallerypress.com). Kathleen Flenniken, “Married Love,” from Post Romantic, used by kind permission of the author (U. of Washington Press, 2020). ...
“Friendship”: Three poems consider the shared activities, the camaraderie, the tensions, and the goofiness of friendships. Ada Limon, “Blowing on the Wheel,” from The Hurting Kind (Milkweed, 2022). Delmore Schwartz, “Do the Others Speak of Me Mockingly, Maliciously?” from Selected Poems, copyright 1959 by Delmore Schwartz. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. Sharon Olds, “Best Friends,”...
“Narrative Poems”: These poems offer at least an outline of a story, with a plot and some time references. Like many successful stories, substantial relevant questions may remain unanswered, requiring some speculation on our part. John Greenleaf Whittier, “Telling the Bees.” Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Mr. Flood’s Party.” Our theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the-Sun” from Live from...
“Remembering the First World War”: Our first poem details the life of a veteran who managed to survive the carnage and reflects on–or tries not to reflect on–his specific experiences during the war. The next two poems depict civilians beginning to come to terms with their memories of the suffering shared throughout England. Edmund Blunden,...
“Unrequited Love (Part Two)”: A previous episode in March ’23 dealt with this same theme and featured poems by both men and women. This episode considers unrequited love primarily from the woman’s point of view. Guys in my audience may need to listen in. Ellen Bass, “Can’t Get Over Her,” from Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002). Sappho,...
“Wandering and Roving”: When you wander in the woods, how do you decide which way to go when you arrive at a fork in your path? The first of today’s poems offers a playful response to that question, and the other poems also reflect in various ways on the act of wandering. Robert Frost, “The...
“Exile and Return”: What is it like to try to enter and exit Middle Eastern countries, especially Palestine? Today’s poems offer glimpses, even before the most recent spasm of violence that ripped it apart in October 2023. Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, “Upon Arrival” and “Immigrant,” from Water and Salt (Red Hen Press, 2017). Mosab Abu Toha, “Things You...
“One Word”: The poems on today’s show implicitly urge us to consider how strange language is when we examine it up close. Each of today’s poems puzzle over an individual word. Billy Collins, “Tension,” from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2013). Shakespeare, “Sonnet 135.” Robert Wrigley, “Lovely,” from The True Account of Myself as a...
“Three Controversial Musicians”: Today’s three poems spotlight three individuals known for their musical talents, as well as the controversy they provoked. Naomi Shihab Nye, “Cross That Line,” from You and Yours (BOA Editions, 2011), used by kind permission of the author. Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died,” from Lunch Poems (City Lights Books, 1964). William Matthews, “Mingus at the...
“Gifts”: One poet recalls her complex strategies as a teen gift-giver, a second recalls the gift his parents bestowed on him when he was eleven and about to move away from home, and the third imagines the circumstances in which her father gave a gift to her mother before they were married, before they became her...
“A Redwood, an Ancient Orchard, a Sequoia”: Do you have a favorite tree you pay special attention to when you take a routine walk? Is it older than you? We project so many attributes on to trees, including longevity and strength. We develop an emotional attachment to trees. Today’s episode considers such attachments and features two...
“Running on Empathy”: Three authors display various degrees of empathy in their depictions of Abraham Lincoln. Walt Whitman, prose passages from Specimen Days, and “O Captain! My Captain.” Kathleen Flenniken, “To Ease My Mind,” from Famous (U. of Nebraska Press, 2006), and used with kind permission of the author. Leigh Stein, “Lincoln, Abraham, Melancholy Of,” from What To Miss When (New...
“Mysterious Encounters”: Three sing-songy poems are featured on today’s episode. All three depict encounters between two individuals: all three resist our efforts to make total sense of their motives and actions. We may think we know what happens between the couples, but the poems seem to run ahead of our ability to catch up to them...
“Children Thinking”: This episode features the voices of children–filtered through adult poets–in three poems that express a variety of insights. These poems may prompt you to wonder, did you once think like these three children? The poems are read in this order: William Wordsworth, “We Are Seven” (originally published in 1798). Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Waiting Room,” from The...
“Desk Jobs”: Did you ever have a job you abruptly quit soon after it began? Why did you do that? The first three lines of our first poem refer to a job the speaker quit after just one shift. The next two poems feature office interactions between the speaker and a work colleague and boss. ...
“Manual Labor”: What do you remember from your first paid job? Did you develop any work-habits that you carried into adulthood? From your twenties on, has much of your identity been shaped by your work? Poems on this and next month’s episodes offer a variety of perspectives on work. Three poems are featured: Jericho Brown’s...
“Swimming”: We dive in with two action-packed excerpts from ancient poetic narratives. Both depict heroic swimmers moving through dangerous waters. This episode concludes with a contemporary American poet’s solitary naked swim in a pond in the early morning mist. Homer, The Odyssey (trans. Robert Fitzgerald), from Book V, lines 403-408, 415-437, 441-486. Beowulf (trans. Seamus Heaney), lines 506-510, 515-518, 532-581...
“Meta-Verse”: The four poems on this episode make a virtue out of being self-conscious. Each poem comments on the very poem we’re reading. The poem pulls back the curtain and reveals the composing process. Or at least that’s what the poem pretends to do. Billy Collins, “The Suggestion Box,” from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random...
