Read Me a Poem

Amanda Holmes reads Dorothea Grossman’s poem, “The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: [email protected]. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads John Donne’s poem, “The Canonization.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: [email protected]. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Philip Levine’s poem, “Let Me Begin Again.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: [email protected]. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem, “Spring and Fall.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: [email protected]. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads William Wordsworth’s poem, “Tintern Abbey,” formally entitled “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798.” Plus, read her essay on the poem for the Washington Independent Review of Books. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: [email protected]. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Vasko Popa’s poem, “The Quartz Pebble,” translated by Anne Pennington. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: [email protected]. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “A Psalm of Life.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: [email protected]. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, “To the Young Who Want to Die.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: [email protected]. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Walt Whitman’s poem, “O Captain! My Captain!” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: [email protected]. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.

This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we have a special bonus interview with host Amanda Holmes, in conversation with Stephanie Bastek, the show’s producer and the host of The American Scholar’s Smarty Pants podcast. For the past year and a half, Holmes has recited poems ranging from English classics by W. B. Yeats and Maya Angelou to works in translation by Kamala Das and Wislawa Szymborska to mournful sonnets by Rupert Brooke and lighthearted romps by Kenneth Patchen and Laura Riding. Holmes’s gift lies in treating each poem with equal attention, whether it’s by a new poet she’s just encountered or a canonical master. These days, with listener requests flooding in during the pandemic, the show’s tagline seems truer than ever: we all need more poetry in our lives.

Go beyond the episode:

• Subscribe to Smarty Pants: Spotify • iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast
• Read Amanda Holmes’s book reviews and feature column at the Washington Independent Review of Books

Poems mentioned:

• Robert Browning, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”
• Jane Hirshfield, “For What Binds Us”
• W. H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues”
• Rabindranath Tagore, “Dungeon” and an excerpt from Gitanjali
• Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”
• Emily Dickinson,“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”
• Kamala Das, “Summer in Calcutta”
• Toru Dutt, “Our Casuarina Tree”
• Leonardo Sinisgalli, “Elderly Tears”
• Rainer Maria Rilke, “Archaic Torso of Apollo”

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.