Open Windows Podcast

I begin my program with a poem for Ukraine by Vasyl Stus. I then read poems about the moon by Sappho, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, Jean Toomer, e.e. cummings, Philip Larkin, and Larry D. Thomas. I end the program with one of my own poems.

The idea of new beginnings, of initiation after conclusion -- and in this program linked to the symbols and signs of Easter -- guides my selection of poems today. I read poems by Kim Stafford, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, William Butler Yeats, Claude McKay, Amy Clampitt, Charles Wright, and Anne Sexton. I end the program with one of my own poems.

April is celebrated as “National Humor Month.” It is also the only month of the year that begins with a Fool's Day, a day celebrated in many countries with sanctioned frivolity and pranks ever since the 1500s. So today I want to lighten the moment and read some humorous poetry by Ogden Nash, Philip Larkin, Shel Silverstein, "Anonymous," Pamela Ayres, and Stuart McLean.

I am part of a small press called Black Spruce Press, which publishes collections of poetry by established poets and by young poets who have not yet had a full book. Today I read poems by four of the poets published by the Press: Kerry Shawn Keys, Michael Jennings, Alan Berecka, and  Susana Cuartas-Ordoñez.

My programs each week typically illustrate a particular theme or poetic focus. From time to time, however, I have read some of my own poems that do not have such a defined focus but which have helped present my work as a poet over the years more generally.  So today, as part of such a presentation of my work, I read poems from my book White, which was published in 2004.

My program today features poems by men Native American poets: Simon Ortiz, Orlando White, Sherman Alexie, Ray Young Bear, Mark Turcotte, Gordon Henry, Jr., and Adrian C. Louis.

Today I read poems about the beginning and ending of war. I focus on poets whose families and whose countries have been victims of various kinds of wars: Kornelijus Platelis, Wisława Szymborska, Yehuda Amichai, Mahoud Darwish, Seamus Heaney, and Lawson Fusao Inada. I end the program with one of my own poems about the beginning of war.

Today I read poems by Ukrainian poets, in support of the Ukrainian fight against brutal Russian invasion. The poets are Iya Kiva, Boris Khersonsky, Vasyl Makhno, Borys Humenyuk, and Natalka Bilotserkivets.

My program today features poems by women Native American poets:  Tacey Atsitty, Esther Belin, Diane Burns, Laura Da', Roberta Hill Whiteman, Linda Hogan, Lois Red Elk, and Ofelia Zepeda.

 I read poems in today's program, and in one or two programs to come, written by indigenous people of North and South America. I begin today with lyric poems written in the Mayan and the Aztec languages.