Focus on Flowers

On this extended web edition of The Poets Weave, Alyce Miller reads from the series "The Pacific is a Woman Just Like Me," as well as the poems "Gift," "On Finding A Legless Doll at the Beach Called Park Facing Southeast California," "Heirlooms," and "Sisters to the Bone."

All types of bulbs have one thing in common and that is that they are self contained storehouses of energy. They burst forth and bloom at their appointed time when the moisture and temperature levels trigger their respective awakenings. It is orchestrated in a way that seems quite miraculous.

Robert Wistrich holds the Neuberger chair for Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author and editor of two dozen books.

Born in Warsaw, Poland, Magda Sokolowski is currently an MFA poetry student at Indiana University. She was the 2009 recipient of the Creative in Kathmandu Fellowship to study and write in Nepal. On this edition of The Poets Weave, she reads her poems "Dreamscape," "On the Empire Builders," "Implements," and "Saturday Reversal."

Tina Chancey performs on the pardessus de viole, Opera Lafayette explores "Zelindor," and Les Inventions discovers little-known works by Touchemoulin.

Music written by some of the most significant female composers of the baroque era.

Christopher Smart was incarcerated from 1756 to 1763 for a form of religious madness that compelled him to pray constantly, often in the street. During this confinement for religious mania, he wrote the long poem Jubilate Agno (Rejoice in the Lamb) from which our poem today is taken.

Our winter homes are not ideal environments for cut flowers to flourish in. Fortunately, there are still ways to make sure they have a long life.