Human Voices Wake Us

Anthology: Poems About Childhood & Youth


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An episode from 1/19/24: Tonight, I read a handful of poems about childhood. How does poetry capture our earliest memories, and how can it express the act of remembering itself, of nostalgia? The poems are:

  • The Pennycandystore Beyond the El, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
  • "Other echoes/Inhabit the garden," from Burnt Norton, by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
  • Squarings #40, by Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
  • A Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England, by Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
  • Those Winter Sundays, by Robert Hayden (1913-1980)
  • Learning to Read, by Laurie Sheck (1953-)
  • My Papa's Waltz, by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)
  • The Latin Lesson, by Eavan Boland (1944-2020)
  • Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
  • The Leaving, by Brigit Pegeen Kelly (1951-2016)
  • The Month of June: 13 1/2, by Sharon Olds (1942-)
  • Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio, by James Wright (1927-1980)
  • "I'm ceded" (#508), by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
  • Soap Suds, by Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)
  • You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.

    Email me at [email protected].

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