Works by Geoffrey Chaucer, Brian Bilston and others. Sally and Paula do their best with Middle English and discuss a popular form. Can you write a poem in which line 1 starts with “A,” line 2 with “B” and so on?

Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” is read and discussed, along with work by Whitman and Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” (Statue of Liberty poem)

The late Fulbright Scholar, poet/translator Diana Der-Hovanessian’s work and career is discussed, and many of her poems about her family and heritage are read.

Paula and Sally explore how poetic language is an under-appreciated aspect of our Democratic tradition and read work by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes and “In Flanders’ Field.”

Fernando Pessoa, brilliant and under-appreciated Portuguese poet and master of the “heteronym” (identical words with different definitions extended to personnas as poets). Paula and Sally read aloud from his work, including “The Tobacco Shop.”

Yona Vaughan, writer, artist, filmmaker, and Lieutenant in the Fitchburg Fire Department shares his work.

Paula and Sally read poems by Oxford mathematician Lewis Carroll and discuss including early work and Jabberwocky.

Poems inspired by months, written in the past two centuries, including William Moore, Philip Freneau, Edgar Guest and Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Paula and Sally speak about the poetry they enjoy writing, and read some of their own verse.

Paula and Sally read poems inspired by home, and homecoming, beginning with Homer’s “Odyssey” - Episode 12