Episode #045 Some Of Your Love With Me - Ada Limon

Many poems were shared online in the wake of Aretha Franklin's recent passing. Connor and Jack explore the emotional and poetic depths of this poem by Ada Limon, written ten years ago, which simultaneously celebrates Franklin and her music, shows the immediate impact hearing that music for the first time can have on an unsuspecting young listener, and also contains the contradictions and glories of Franklin herself. In the end, they decide the poem is simply a stunning work of astounding depth.

Find out more about Ada Limon, here: http://adalimon.com/

Find her new book, The Carrying, here: https://milkweed.org/book/the-carrying

Listen to her interview with NPR, here: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/19/639997901/ada-limon-on-poetry-collection-the-carrying

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Some of Your Love with Me

-For Aretha Franklin

By: Ada Limon

Miles of vinyl highways spun out

and steady round we went. Your first

note, boiled over and tough in its tender

bends, broke a ten year old kneeling

on a tile floor in two. Your record aching

round, stunned, plummeted, and dunked

me under a sound that seized hold

of my poor forming bird shell body who

would not even dare, dear diva, to mouth

your silence. Me, I became the shaking

speaker, all my hairs like lung’s thin cilia

waving in a whir of song that I would have

gone back and begged to be born in.