In this episode, we offer close readings of poems from Ted Kooser's_ Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison_. Kooser's poems allow us to think about the poem as a social act, as a form of healing, and as a kind of meditation.

To learn more about Ted Kooser, visit his website.

If you like these poems that we discussed in this episode, please read Ted Kooser's Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001). Thanks to Carnegie Mellon Press for granting us permission to read these poems aloud.

In this episode, we read and discuss Emily Dickinson's poem about the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We discuss Dickinson's innovative syntax, her use of deep pauses, and her meditations on death and grief that create surprising effects in this short lyric.

I went to thank Her

I went to thank Her—

Who went to thank Her—

Psalm 52 concerns a lying tyrant and God's impending judgment. Mary Sidney, who lived 1561-1621, was an extraordinary writer, editor, and literary patron. Like many talented writers of her time, she translated all the psalms. Here we talk about translation, early modern women's writing, religious engagements with politics, and the power of Psalm 52.

For more on Mary Sidney, see The Poetry Foundation page: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-sidney-herbert

For the Geneva translation of Psalm 52, which Mary Sidney would have known, see here:

For a new collection of English translations of the psalms in the early modern era, see The Psalms in English 1530-1633 (Tudor and Stuart Translations), edited by Hannibal Hamlin.

Psalm 52

Tyrant, why swell’st thou thus,

Lewd lies thy tongue contrives,

Falsehood thy wit approves,

Not words from cursed thee,

Think’st thou to bear it so?

The just shall fearing see

Lo, lo, the wretched wight,

I as an olive tree

My trust in his true love

Thee will I honour still,

Thy saints trust in thy name,

In this episode, Niki Herd joins us to read and discuss an excerpt from The Stuff of Hollywood, a collection in which Herd experiments with a range of forms and procedures to examine the history of violence in America.

To learn more about Niki Herd, you can visit her website.

The Stuff of Hollywood was just published by Copper Canyon Website. Please visit their website to purchase a copy.

Photo credit: Madeline Brenner

In this episode, we closely read Shelley's "Ozymandias," a poem written in a time of revolution and social protest. We focus on the poem's sonnet structure, its engagement with--and critique of--empire, its meditation on the bust of Ramses II, and its afterlife in an episode of _Breaking Bad. _

To learn more about Percy Bysshe Shelley, click here.

Here is the text of the poem:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Photo: Ramses II, British Museum

In this episode, Shankar Vendantam joins us to read and discuss "Musee des Beaux Arts," a poem that explores the ways in which humans become indifferent to the suffering of others.

To learn more about Shankar Vendantam and the Hidden Brain podcast, visit his website.

To read Auden's poem, click here.

Thanks to Curtis Brown Ltd. for granting us permission to read this poem.

In this episode, we read and discuss Jericho Brown's "Duplex," a poetic form that he created in order to explore the complexities of family, violence, and desire.

This is one of several duplex poems that you can find in The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for granting us permission to read this poem.

To learn more about Jericho Brown, visit his website.

To learn more about the duplex form, you can read Brown's essay on the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog. We also love Jericho Brown's interview with Michael Dumanis in the Bennington Review.

Cover art: Lauren “Ralphi” Burgess. To learn more about her work, visit her website.

Poetry engages in conversation. Today, we explore a long, beautiful, narrative poem weaving together the work of fellow poets while looking carefully at a Caravaggio painting, all reflecting on illness, death, and friendship.

For the poem, see here: https://www.nereview.com/vol-40-no-1-2019/the-conversion-of-paul/

For Grotz's incredible book, Still Falling, see Graywolf Press here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/still-falling

“Still Falling is an undeniably gorgeous book of love poems full of grief. In these pages, Jennifer Grotz writes line after line of direct statement in rhythms that would leave any reader breathless and wanting more. . . . I am in awe of Grotz’s power to grow and transform book after book. I cannot read Still Falling without crying.”—Jericho Brown

For the Caravaggio painting, The Conversion on the Way to Damascus, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_on_the_Way_to_Damascus

For more episodes on ekphrasis, please see our website and keywords here:

Thanks to Graywolf Press for permission to read this poem on the podcast. Jennifer Grotz's "The Conversation of Paul" was published in her collection titled Still Falling (Graywolf, 2023).

In this episode, we read and discuss Philip Levine's most famous poem, "What Work Is." We consider his deft use of the second-person perspective, the sociability and narrative energy of his poetry, and his deep concern for the insecurity that defines the lives of so working-class laborers.

Click here to read "What Work Is": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52173/what-work-is

Photo credit: Geoffrey Berliner

"What Work Is" was published in What Work Is (Knopf, 1991). Thanks to Penguin Random House for granting us permission to read this poem.

What is a good life, and how do we make sense of the world when it seems like society is collapsing? In this episode, Lucas Bender joins us once again to discuss the work of Du Fu (712-770 C.E.), the great Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty. Luke helps us to see how Du Fu’s “Passing the Night by White Sands Post Station” can be read in multiple ways depending on how one translates each word of the poem. In doing so, he reveals the poem’s concerns with aging, disappointment, and the possibility of hope in difficult times.

Click here to learn more about Du Fu.

Lucas Bender is the author of Du Fu Transforms: Tradition and Ethics amid Societal Collapse (Harvard University Press, 2021).

To learn more about Luke Bender, visit his website.

Cover art: Wang Hui, Ten Thousand Li up the Yangtze River, Qing Dynasty. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.