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Poems for Company
Poems for Company episodes
- Poems for Company - January 27th, 2025“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 and make complete sense of them. Robert Burns, “Coming Through the Rye.” John Keats, “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad.” Padraic Colum: “She Moved Through the Fair.” The show’s theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the Sun,” from his CD Live from Montana, available at sweetgrassmusic.com and used with Mr. Aaberg’s...29 min
- Poems for Company - December 23rd, 2024“Why Serve?: First World War Poems of Internal Conflicts”: Young men in the 19 teens attempted to rationalize whether serving in the military during wartime was the right thing to do. What’s in it for them? Are they under peer pressure to enlist? What do they see as the likely outcome if they do enlist? Their answers are not predictable. W.B. Yeats, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” Edward Thomas, “As the Team’s Head Brass,” Wilfred Owen, “Disabled.” Various anthologies of First World War Poetry or devoted to work by the individual author include these poems. The show’s theme music...29 min
- Poems for Company - October 28th, 2024“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 Complete Poems 1927-1979 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979, 1983). Seamus Heaney, “Death of a Naturalist,” from Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998). The show’s theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the Sun,” from his CD Live from Montana (available at Sweetgrassmusic.com) and used with kind permission of Philip...29 min
- Poems for Company - September 23rd, 2024“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. Dorianne Laux, “What I Wouldn’t Do,” from What We Carry (BOA Editions, 1994), and used with the kind permission of the author. Deborah Garrison, “Superior,” from A Working Girl Can’t Win (Random House, 1998), and used with kind permission of the author. Stephen Dunn, “The Last Hours,” from Different Hours (Norton,...29 min
- Poems for Company August 26, 2024“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 “Labor”, from The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). Seamus Heaney’s “Thatcher,” from Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998). Mary Robinson, “London’s Summer Morning.” The show’s theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the-Sun,” from his CD Live from Montana (available at sweetgrassmusic.com) and used...30 min
- Poems for Company - July 22nd, 2024“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 (Norton, 2000). Maxime Kumin, “Morning Swim,” from Selected Poems 1960-1990 (Norton), used by kind permission of the Maxine Kumin Literary Trust. {Splash!, by Howard Means, provided useful, entertaining context.} The show’s theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the-Sun,” from his CD Live from Montana (available at sweetgrassmusic.com) and used with kind permission of...29 min
- Poems for Company - June 24th, 2024“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 House, 2013). Stephen Dunn, “Bad,” from The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2022). W. B. Yeats, “When You Are Old.” Lawrence Raab, “Request,” from Visible Signs (Penguin, 2003) and used with kind permission of the author. The show’s theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the-Sun,” from...29 min
- Poems for Company - May 27th, 2024“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 together over many years. W. B. Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” T’ao Ch’ien, “Moving House,” from A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, translated by Arthur Waley (Knopf, 1919). Linds Sanders, “Those Places We Melt Into,” from Quibble Lit, Issue 4: Muddle, Summer 2022 (see lindssanders.com), and used...29 min
- Poems for Company - April 22nd, 2024“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 come to a close, is truly his home. Or was he more at home when cast away on his other unnamed, totally remote island? Elizabeth Bishop, “Crusoe in England,” from The Complete Poems 1927-1979 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979, 1983). Our second poem depicts Irish expatriates in...29 min
- Poems for Company - February 26th, 2024
"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 on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit." The first poem sampled on this episode, Paul Dunbar's 1896 "Frederick Douglass," depicts the former slave turned writer, orator, and powerful force for a wide range of civil rights in a heroic light. The following two poems lower the pedestal on which Dunbar had placed him and offer insights into the private lives of Frederick and his first wife Anna Murray Douglass. What would it have been like to be the overlooked wife to a man so frequently absent from home and so immersed in the historical moment? Both are persona poems, the first in the voice of Anna: M. Nzadi Keita, "Stirring," from Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the life of Anna Murray Douglass (Whirlwind Press, 2014), available at spdbooks.org and used with kind permission of the author. The second poem is in the voice of Frederick Douglass himself: Evie Shockley, "from The Lost Letters of Frederick Douglass," from the new black (Wesleyan UP, 2011), and used with kind permission of the author. (The show's theme music is Philip Aaberg's "Going-to-the Sun," from his CD Live from Montana, available at sweetgrassmusic.com, and used with kind permission of Philip Aaberg.)
29 min
About Poems for Company
From the publisher's feed
On this theme-based show, host Brian Dillon reads and comments on poems from the ancient world to the present. Topics include Unlived Lives, Inanimate Objects, Swimming, Advice, and Unrequited love,…
among many others.