In this episode, our podcast host Elizabeth Renker introduces Stephanie Burt to her own favorite poem of Sarah’s, “Mock Diamonds,” one of her great poems of the Reconstruction period immediately following the U.S. Civil War. Elizabeth reads the poem aloud and tells us about the historical background.  She and Stephanie break the poem down stanza by stanza, exploring how Sarah created an appealing surface for general readers and a simultaneous deeper layer that scrutinizes white nostalgia for the Old South, the emergent Lost Cause ideology, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.  Stephanie calls “Mock Diamonds” “a poem for our time.”



Interview date: 26 September 2025

In this episode, our podcast host Elizabeth Renker introduces Stephanie Burt to her own favorite poem of Sarah’s, “Mock Diamonds,” one of her great poems of the Reconstruction period immediately following the U.S. Civil War. Elizabeth reads the poem aloud and tells us about the historical background. She and Stephanie break the poem down stanza by stanza, exploring how Sarah created an appealing surface for general readers and a simultaneous deeper layer that scrutinizes white nostalgia for the Old South, the emergent Lost Cause ideology, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Stephanie calls “Mock Diamonds” “a poem for our time.” Interview date: 26 September 2025

In this episode, our podcast host Elizabeth Renker introduces Stephanie Burt to her own favorite poem of Sarah’s, “Mock Diamonds,” one of her great poems of the Reconstruction period immediately following the U.S. Civil War. Elizabeth reads the poem aloud and tells us about the historical background.&nbsp; She and Stephanie break the poem down stanza by stanza, exploring how Sarah created an appealing surface for general readers and a simultaneous deeper layer that scrutinizes white nostalgia for the Old South, the emergent Lost Cause ideology, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.&nbsp; Stephanie calls “Mock Diamonds” “a poem for our time.”



Interview date: 26 September 2025

Mock Diamonds

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836-1919) was a popular, prolific, and well-regarded poet during her lifetime, writing more than 600 poems across more than half a century. Her earliest work, composed when she was still the unmarried Kentucky teenager Sallie M. Bryan, was published by the most influential newspaper editors in the nation. She married Ohio poet John James Piatt in 1861. In the tumultuous decades ahead, her work met with robust national and transatlantic acclaim. She fell into obscurity upon her death and was rediscovered only in the 1990s, by numerous scholars working independently of one another. Since that time, she has quickly gained stature as a major artist, now standing at the brink of the American canon. In this collection of interviews, scholars who contributed to Piatt’s rediscovery tell their stories about how they came to “find” Piatt—and why she merits status as one of America’s great authors.

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Mock Diamonds

Mock Diamonds

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