“Manual Labor”: What do you remember from your first paid job? Did you develop any work-habits that you carried into adulthood? From your twenties on, has much of your identity been shaped by your work? Poems on this and next month’s episodes offer a variety of perspectives on work. Three poems are featured: Jericho Brown’s...

“Swimming”: We dive in with two action-packed excerpts from ancient poetic narratives. Both depict heroic swimmers moving through dangerous waters. This episode concludes with a contemporary American poet’s solitary naked swim in a pond in the early morning mist. Homer, The Odyssey (trans. Robert Fitzgerald), from Book V, lines 403-408, 415-437, 441-486. Beowulf (trans. Seamus Heaney), lines 506-510, 515-518, 532-581...

“Meta-Verse”: The four poems on this episode make a virtue out of being self-conscious.  Each poem comments on the very poem we’re reading.  The poem pulls back the curtain and reveals the composing process.  Or at least that’s what the poem pretends to do.  Billy Collins, “The Suggestion Box,” from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random...

“Where Is My Home?” (Part 2): The four poems on this episode address this question from a variety of perspectives: home as an imaginary place; home valued for the quality of one’s neighbors; home as a portable existence, a van; and home as the indoor / outdoor zone where multiple generations in a family live...

“Where Is My Home?”: Do you carry in your mind images of a former landscape you lived in, an extended area you called home?  The first poem is spoken in the voice of Robinson Crusoe as a old man back in England, wondering if this island of his origin, the place where his life will...

“Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass”: Though Frederick Douglass grew up not knowing his exact birthdate and even uncertain just how old he was, historians presume he was born in February 1818.  Douglass wrote, “I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday.”  His master “deemed all such inquiries...

“Imagining Our Parents Before We Were Born”: What do you know about the life of either of your parents before you were born?  The three contemporary poems featured on this episode suggest the poets knew just a few facts, perhaps derived from family lore.  Then they speculated or fabricated the rest to achieve some coherent...

“Some Horses, Some Oxen”: Four poems are featured on this show, three about horses and one about oxen.  All of the horse poems tell us as much about the speaker as they do about the horses, and the final poem details a most curious Christmas folk belief.  What are all these animals thinking?  The poems...

“Responding to Loss”: All three poems in this episode reflect on the loss of a person, when loss is final.  Perhaps one or more of these poems speak to feelings you have experienced but could not define quite like these poets do.  Are poems and songs useful for facing one’s own demise or for dealing...

“Civilians in the First World War”: All four poems on today’s episode focus on civilians in the First World War, particularly women: how were they affected?  Jessie Pope, “War Girls.”  Siegfried Sassoon, “Glory of Women.”  May Wedderburn Cannan, “Rouen.”  E. E. Cummings, “my sweet old etcetera.”  There are many fine anthologies that present poetry from...