Poems for Company

“Bodies from the First World War”: Between 1914 and 1918, British newspapers published poems on a regular basis.  Less experienced writers often promoted the war, relying on jingoism.  This episode samples one such poem and then shifts to more accomplished poems, all written in the nineteen-teens and all focusing on alterations in the bodies of...

“Unrequited Love (Part Three)”: Three poems written by men reveal curious responses to the phenomenon of being rejected in love.  Then we close with a female poet witnessing the consequences of romantic rejection for various men she knows.  Michael Drayton, Sonnet #61–“Since there’s no help” (1619).  Ben Jonson, “My PIcture Left in Scotland” (1640-41).  Sir...

“Insects Among Us”: All four poems place insects on center stage.  Our first opens with a question: “Don’t you remember them?”  These are poems of memory and poems of the present, with speakers who are descriptive and very curious.  Danusha Lameris, “The Bugs of Childhood,” from Blade By Blade (Copper Canyon Press, 2024).  Robert Wrigley, “I Want...

“Stephen Dunn’s Dilemmas”: All three poems are by the late contemporary poet Stephen Dunn.  In each poem, the speaker faces a concern that challenges his sense of who he is and what he thinks he knows.  The circumstance may seem mundane, but the concern is profound.  If, that is, we are inclined to empathize with the speaker.  “At...

“Gone Parents“: Poets featured today consider deceased parents, somewhat sentimentally or as mysterious dream figures.  Ted Kooser, “Mother” and “Father,” from Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004).  Seamus Heaney, “Uncoupled,” from Selected Poems 1988-2013 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014; originally published in Human Chain (2010).  Kathleen Flenniken, “The Sound of a Train,” from Famous (U. of Nebraska Press, 2006), used with the kind...

“What’s So Funny?”: Will any of today’s poems make you laugh?  Billy Collins, “To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl,” from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2013).  Stephen Dunn, “John & Mary,” from The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022).  Caroline Bird, “Little Children,” from The Air Year (Carcanet, 2020), https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109028/the-air-year/   Would you like to share with me...

“Wake Up: Modern Aubades”: Traditionally, aubades are lyrics announcing the arrival of dawn all too soon for lovers who want the night to be prolonged.  The twentieth-century poems featured here take some liberties with that tradition.  After an excerpt from John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” (1633), Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, “Aubade,” from Pharaoh’s Daughter (Wake Forest U. Press,...

“Neighbors”: When you recall the places where you lived, do you inevitably reflect on who else was in close proximity?  This episode presents three distinct ways of thinking about one’s neighbors.  Robert Frost, “Mending Wall.”  John Heywood, “A Quiet Neighbour.”  Robert Wrigley, “Praise Bob,” from The True Account of Myself as a Bird (Penguin Books, 2022),...

“Revised Bible Stories”: Poets give voice to characters who are silent in the Bible, and they speculate on what the Bible left out.  They allow us to imagine less conventional roles for certain characters, as these three poems suggest.  Molly Twomey, “Noah’s Wife,” from Raised Among Vultures, and used by kind permission of the author and...

“Parents Viewed Unconventionally”: Three contemporary female poets comment on one or more parents in somewhat unexpected ways.  Molly Twomey, “The Drop Off,” from Raised Among Vultures, and used by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press, 2022 (www.gallerypress.com).  Kathleen Flenniken, “Married Love,” from Post Romantic, used by kind permission of the author (U. of Washington Press, 2020). ...