Poetry For All

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.

This remarkable sonnet dives into issues of poverty, poetry, and grief. We talk about the pedagogy of constraint, while exploring the achievements, including the hardbitten gratitude, embedded in this poem.

Thank you to Graywolf Press for permission to read and discuss the poem. Diane Seuss's "[The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do]" was published in her collection titled frank: sonnets (Graywolf, 2021).

See the work (and buy it!) here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/frank-sonnets

For more on Diane Seuss, see here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/diane-seuss

For more on the Sealey Challenge, see here: https://www.thesealeychallenge.com/

In this episode, Professor Stephanie Kirk guides our reading of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz’s “Sonnet 189.” Her scholarly insights help us to appreciate the nuances of Sor Juana’s poetry and her importance in her own lifetime and beyond.

Professor Kirk read Edith Grossman's translation of "Sonnet 189" from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works. Copyright (c) 2014 by Edith Grossman. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

To learn more about Stephanie Kirk’s scholarship, you can click here.

Cover image: Miguel Cabrera, posthumous portrait of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, 1750. Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City, Mexico. Public domain.

We're interrupting your summer this week with a few exciting updates about Poetry For All and an excerpt from Abram Van Engen's newly released book, Word Made Fresh.

If you want to join Abram for a book launch online on July 9 at 4pm Eastern, register for free by clicking this link.

And if you want a free subscription to Image Journal, which is an incredible faith and arts magazine, check out this offer here by clicking this link.

You can see the book here: https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802883605/word-made-fresh/

Or at Amazon: https://a.co/d/0j5d3utJ

If you read it, leave a review!

Thanks for listening.

Links:

• Book Launch for Word Made Fresh — Book Launch for Word Made Fresh, July 9 at 4pm EST

In this episode, we read one of Victoria Chang’s moving poems from her collection OBIT, and discuss how the poem explores the interplay between life, death, grieving, and memory as the poet tries to process her mother’s passing.

Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for granting us permission to read this poem, which was originally published in OBIT.

Victoria’s newest collection of poems, With My Back to the World,was inspired by the work of Agnes Martin and published earlier this year.

To learn more about Victoria Chang, visit her website.

This episode dives into the wonderful world of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the musicality of his language, and the vision he has of becoming what we already are.

This poem illustrates the cover of Abram Van Engen's new book, Word Made Fresh. The book explores connections between poetry and faith, and it serves as an invitation to reading poetry of all kinds--with tools and tips for how to get started and explore broadly.

Special thanks to John Hendrix for the cover illustration of Word Made Fresh, which is an illustration of "As Kingfishers Catch Fire."

Here is the poem by Hopkins:

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

I say móre: the just man justices;

See the poem at the Poetry Foundation.

For more on Hopkins, see here.

The last chapter of Word Made Fresh dwells at length on this poem by Hopkins as an expression of what poetry does and can do in the world.

Links:

• Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church — Have you ever read a book that turned your world upside down? What about a poem?

In this episode, Lauren Camp joins us to read and discuss "Inner Planets," a poem that she wrote during her time as the astronomer in residence at Grand Canyon National Park. She describes her poetic process and the value of solitude in a place full of wonderment.

To learn more about the Grand Canyon Astronomer in Residence program, click here.

To learn more about Lauren Camp, visit her website.

Lauren's newest collection, In Old Sky, is a collection of the poems that were inspired by the Grand Canyon.