Poetry Unbound

As appealing as it may sound, is it really possible to live in a world completely free of conflict? No. And since differences and disagreements are inevitable and natural, Joy Harjo gives ground rules in “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.” Her call to us echoes across time and space — a call to listen, to humility, to justice, and to recognizing the land, the living, the dead, the not-yet-living.

Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and the 23rd Poet Lau­re­ate of the Unit­ed States. She is the author of 10 books of poet­ry, including An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, and She Had Some Horses, and the memoirs Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior. Her most recent poetry collection is Weav­ing Sun­down in a Scar­let Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years. She’s also produced several award-winning albums of music, including her most recent, I Pray for My Ene­mies.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer two sections of Joy Harjo’s longer poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

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Host Pádraig Ó Tuama gives an overview of this Poetry Unbound mini season that's devoted to poems with wisdom to offer about conflict and humanity. He also brings us Wisława Szymborska’s “A Word on Statistics,” translated by Joanna Trzeciak, which covers statistics of the most human kind — like the number of people in a group of 100 who think they know better, who can admire without envy, or who could do terrible things. Listen, and ask yourself: Which categories do I belong to? Which do I believe?

Wisława Szymborska was a Polish poet and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, and she lived from 1923 to 2012. Her poetry is collected in numerous volumes including View with a Grain of Sand, Poems New and Collected, Miracle Fair, and Map.

Joanna Trzeciak is professor of Russian and Polish Translation and Translation Studies at Kent State University. She has translated two poetry collections: Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska, which was the winner of the Heldt Prize for translation, and Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems of Tadeusz Różewicz, which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and winner of the Found in Translation Award and the AATSEEL Award for Best Scholarly Translation.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Wisława Szymborska’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

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If your home were a museum — and they all are, in a way — what would the contents of your refrigerator say about you and those you live with? In his poem “Refrigerator, 1957,” Thomas Lux opens the door to his childhood appliance and oh, does a three-quarters full jar of maraschino cherries speak volumes. 

Thomas Lux was an American poet and professor. He was the author of several collections of poetry, including To the Left of Time (Ecco, 2016), Child Made of Sand (Houghton Mifflin, 2012), God Particles (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), and New and Selected Poems of Thomas Lux: 1975-1995 (Ecco Press, 1999). Lux taught for many years at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he held the Bourne Chair in Poetry and directed the McEver Visiting Writers Program.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Thomas Lux’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

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The word “flush” is a verb, as in an activity that we do umpteen times a day. It’s also an adjective that conveys abundance. Fittingly, Rita Wong’s poem “flush” offers a praise song to water’s expansive and unceasing presence in our lives — from our toilets to our teacups, from inside our bodies to outside our buildings, and from our soil to our skies. 

Rita Wong is the author of several poetry collections, including monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998), forage (Nightwood Editions, 2007), and undercurrent (Nightwood Editions, 2015). Wong is an associate professor at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Rita Wong’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

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Bro — this is definitely not the “Beowulf” that you read back in school. Maria Dahvana Headley’s gutsy, swaggering translation brings the Old English epic poem roaring into this century, showing you why this tale of fraught family ties, power plays and posturing, and mighty, imperfect people is as relevant as ever.  

Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times-bestselling author of eight books, most recently Beowulf: A New Translation (MCD X FSG Originals, 2020). Her novel The Mere Wife (MCD X FSG, 2018), an adaptation of the Beowulf poem set in suburban America, was named by The Washington Post as one of its Notable Works of Fiction in 2018. Her essays on gender, chronic illness, politics, propaganda, and mythology have been published and covered in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Nieman Storyboard, and elsewhere. She grew up in the high desert of Idaho on a survivalist sled dog ranch, where she spent summers plucking the winter coat from her father’s wolf.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Maria Dahvana Headley’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A horse race from the 1980s may not seem like the obvious inspiration for a poem that celebrates so many of the things that make our lives worth living — good company (human and animal), good books, good food, and honest work — and that is just part of the surprise, delight, and surging joy of Michael Klein’s “Swale.” 

Michael Klein is a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for poetry and is the author of five books of poetry and two memoirs. His work has appeared in many places, including Poetry, Tin House, The Paris Review, and Bennington Review. His newest book is The Early Minutes of Without: New & Selected Poems (Word Works, 2023). 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Michael Klein’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

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What holds our bodies together? Yes, there are the biological components, such as the cells, fluids, fibers, but what about the bone-deep stuff, the histories, myths, aches, resolves? In “Our Bird Aegis,” poet Ray Young Bear evokes an adolescent eagle to show how this blend of the visceral, the inherited, and the self-made abides in each of us, no matter our form, wherever we go. 

Ray Young Bear is a Meskwaki poet and fiction writer. He is the author of several books of poetry including, The Invisible Musician (Holy Cow Press, 1990), The Rock Island Hiking Club (University of Iowa Press, 2001), and Manifestation Wolverine (Open Road Media, 2015). Young Bear is also the author of two novels, Black Eagle Child: The Facepaint Narratives (University of Iowa Press, 1995) and Remnants of the First Earth (Grove Atlantic, 1996).

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Ray Young Bear’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

While disputes over contested lands result in damage that can be seen and documented, they also create countless unseen ruptures in the hearts, minds and souls of the humans caught in the chaos. By giving voice to yearning, Suji Kwock Kim’s poem “Search Engine: Notes from the North Korean-Chinese-Russian Border” shows how bearing witness and asking the impossible are acts of profound courage, creativity, and defiance. 

Suji Kwock Kim is a poet and playwright. Her debut poetry collection, Notes from the Divided Country (Louisiana State University Press, 2003), was the recipient of the 2002 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and was also shortlisted for the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection is Notes from the North (The Poetry Business, 2022). 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Suji Kwock Kim’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

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In “ROLL CALL: NEW TAROT NAMES FOR BLACK GIRLS,” Amber McBride treats us to a playful litany of language that twists and leaps and never stumbles. Flavored with old-time Christianity, old-time hoodoo, and a modern alchemy all her own, it talks back to prejudice, reclaims the words meant to take people down, and forges new identities that shimmer with strength and strangeness. 

Amber McBride is an English professor at the University of Virginia. She is the author of several books, including the forthcoming poetry collection, Thick with Trouble (Penguin Books/Penguin Random House, 2024). Her debut young adult novel, Me (Moth) (Square Fish/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, 2023) was a finalist for the National Book Award, and it also won the 2022 Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe Award for New Talent. McBride low-key practices hoodoo and high-key devours books (100 or so a year keep her well fed). She is a bit of a book dragon; she collects more than she reads. In her spare time, she enjoys pretending it is Halloween every day, organizing her crystals, watching K-dramas, and accidentally scrolling through TikTok for 3 hours at a time. She believes in ghosts, and she believes in you.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Amber McBride’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A fragile and wondrous technology that we all possess, the human breath powers any number of things in our lives — speeches, feats of music, athleticism, and more. Carl Dennis’s powerful and meditative poem “Breath” calls on us to take a moment, give our breath our full attention, and celebrate it. 

Carl Dennis is the author of 13 works of poetry, including Earthborn (Penguin Books/Penguin Random House, 2022), as well as a collection of essays called Poetry as Persuasion (University of Georgia Press, 2001). In 2000, he received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for his contribution to American poetry. His 2001 collection Practical Gods (Penguin Books/Penguin Random House) won the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Buffalo, New York.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Carl Dennis’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.