Open Windows Podcast

I continue my late summer hiatus and now present a few programs that were the least listened to during the past two and a half years, with the hope that I might inspire some additional interest in them. My program today is about how heaven may be used in poetry as an essential structural motif and as part of an organizing metaphoric and thematic literary frame. The program takes a look at various depictions of heaven in the work of four Lithuanian poets – both in their pagan and in their Christian iterations – and in three of my own poems.

I continue my late summer hiatus and now present a few programs that were the least listened to during the past two and a half years, with the hope that I might inspire some additional interest in them. My program today continues my consideration of how poets use references to the senses as essential structural motifs and as parts of organizing metaphoric and thematic literary frames. This program – about the sense of smell – takes a look at the possible meanings of smell, in their various explications, and how they might be used in poetry to create mood and modulate tone. I read and consider two of my translations of Lithuanian poems, each of which presents different perspectives on smell, and a poem by Jamie Stern. I end the program with two of my own poems.

I continue my late summer hiatus and now present a few programs that were the least listened to during the past two and a half years, with the hope that I might inspire some additional interest in them. My program today -- originally broadcast -- is the second program in which I focused on New England urban poets and the complex range of human issues unfolding in urban settings.  I read poems by Julia Alvarez, Ocean Vuong, Richard Wilbur, Martin Espada, and Maya Williams.

It's late summer and I continue time my short hiatus, replaying a few of my most popular programs during these weeks (and starting next week the least popular, with the hope that they might find some rekindled interest). Today’s program --originally broadcast in December 4, 2019 -- considers poetry as a counterpoint and antidote to the misuse of power, and how poetry is a source of truth in the face of the corruption and lies that political power – and especially today – succumbs to.  I begin with a consideration of the Elizabethan idea that poetry rouses us to virtue and then include an excerpt from President John F. Kennedy’s remarkable speech – delivered on the occasion of the dedication of the Robert Frost Library – on the role of poetry and of the artist in a free society.  I read poems by Robert Frost, Michelle Hartman, Brazilian poet Ferreira Gullar, Michael Casey, and Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert to illustrate that poetic exhortation to truth. 

It's late summer and time for a short hiatus, so I will be replaying a few of my most popular programs in the next few weeks (and after that, the least popular, with the hope that they might find some rekindled interest).

Today’s program, which dates back to March 2019, focuses on longing, love, pagan romantic relationships, and the Odyssey. It includes my translations of poems by Lithuanian poets Sigitas Geda and Judita Vaičiūnaitė.  It ends with two poems of my own from my book The Kingfisher's Reign (2012).  

It's late summer and time for a short hiatus, so I will be replaying a few of my most popular programs in the next few weeks (and after that, the least popular, with the hope that they might find some rekindled interest).

 Today’s program is about poems written about other works of art. Such poems are part of a long literary tradition called the “ekphrastic tradition” and they provide a different perspective on how we might experience works of art generally. The program includes a brief literary history of the form, including comments about Homer’s The Iliad, Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and Pictures from Brueghel by William Carlos Williams. It also includes my translations of ekphrastic poems by three Lithuanian poets as well as two of my own ekphrastic poems.

To continue my discussion of poetry as a transformation of experience that is a product of the lyrical imagination, and to wrap up my consideration of surrealist and magical realist poetry, I read poems from my book Three White Horses.    

To continue my discussion of poetry as a transformation of experience that is a product of the lyrical imagination, I follow up my consideration of surrealistic poetry with examples of magical realist and fantasy poems. These three threads are layerings of the essential core of imaginative writing and affirm how poetry is a form of transformative aesthetic expression that enables us to explore the world beyond the limits and constraints of what we individually know about it. I read poems by Pattiann Rogers, Elise Cowen, Benjamin Péret, David Gascoyne, William Butler Yeats, and Kerry Shawn Keys.  I end the program with one of my own poems. 

To follow up on my comments last week about differences between poetry as a recording of experience and poetry as a transformation of experience, I read surrealistic poems to affirm the importance of getting beyond the self-indulgent confessional voice that dominates (and, as I suggested last week, that suffocates) so much contemporary poetry. I read poems by André  Breton, Hans Arp, Andrei Codrescu, Helen Ivory, Philip Lamantia, James Tate, and Joyce Mansour.  I end the program with one of my own poems.

I consider differences between poetry as a recording of experience and poetry as a transformation of experience and focus on poems about exploration in various forms. In those contexts, I read poems by Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Theodore Roethke, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Michael Jennings, and Lauren Camp. I end the program with one of my own poems.