“Wandering and Roving”: When you wander in the woods, how do you decide which way to go when you arrive at a fork in your path?  The first of today’s poems offers a playful response to that question, and the other poems also reflect in various ways on the act of wandering.  Robert Frost, “The...

“Exile and Return”: What is it like to try to enter and exit Middle Eastern countries, especially Palestine?  Today’s poems offer glimpses, even before the most recent spasm of violence that ripped it apart in October 2023.  Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, “Upon Arrival” and “Immigrant,” from Water and Salt (Red Hen Press, 2017).  Mosab Abu Toha, “Things You...

“One Word”: The poems on today’s show implicitly urge us to consider how strange language is when we examine it up close.  Each of today’s poems puzzle over an individual word.  Billy Collins, “Tension,” from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2013).  Shakespeare, “Sonnet 135.”  Robert Wrigley, “Lovely,” from The True Account of Myself as a...

“Three Controversial Musicians”: Today’s three poems spotlight three individuals known for their musical talents, as well as the controversy they provoked.  Naomi Shihab Nye, “Cross That Line,” from You and Yours (BOA Editions, 2011), used by kind permission of the author.  Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died,” from Lunch Poems (City Lights Books, 1964).  William Matthews, “Mingus at the...

“Gifts”: One poet recalls her complex strategies as a teen gift-giver, a second recalls the gift his parents bestowed on him when he was eleven and about to move away from home, and the third imagines the circumstances in which her father gave a gift to her mother before they were married, before they became her...

“A Redwood, an Ancient Orchard, a Sequoia”: Do you have a favorite tree you pay special attention to when you take a routine walk?  Is it older than you?  We project so many attributes on to trees, including longevity and strength.  We develop an emotional attachment to trees.  Today’s episode considers such attachments and features two...

“Running on Empathy”: Three authors display various degrees of empathy in their depictions of Abraham Lincoln.  Walt Whitman, prose passages from Specimen Days, and “O Captain! My Captain.”  Kathleen Flenniken, “To Ease My Mind,” from Famous (U. of Nebraska Press, 2006), and used with kind permission of the author.  Leigh Stein, “Lincoln, Abraham, Melancholy Of,” from What To Miss When (New...

“Mysterious Encounters”: Three sing-songy poems are featured on today’s episode.  All three depict encounters between two individuals: all three resist our efforts to make total sense of their motives and actions.  We may think we know what happens between the couples, but the poems seem to run ahead of our ability to catch up to them...

“Children Thinking”: This episode features the voices of children–filtered through adult poets–in three poems that express a variety of insights.  These poems may prompt you to wonder, did you once think like these three children?  The poems are read in this order: William Wordsworth, “We Are Seven” (originally published in 1798).  Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Waiting Room,” from The...

“Desk Jobs”: Did you ever have a job you abruptly quit soon after it began?  Why did you do that?  The first three lines of our first poem refer to a job the speaker quit after just one shift.  The next two poems feature office interactions between the speaker and a work colleague and boss. ...