A daily love poem for February — with gentle commentary after each reading.

February Love Poem Series – Day 24: “Without” by Donald Hall

Welcome to The Porcupine Presents and our month-long celebration of love in all its forms.

Each day of February, we bring you a new poem — romantic, bittersweet, playful, or aching — followed by a brief reflection to deepen your listening experience.

Today’s poem is “Without” by Donald Hall, one of the most unflinching depictions of grief in modern poetry. Written after the death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, the poem gathers the disorientation, emptiness, and surreal exhaustion of mourning into a rolling, breathless litany of absence. Hall recreates a world stripped of seasons, punctuation, color, and meaning — a landscape reshaped entirely by loss.

After the poem, stay tuned for a short commentary discussing

• how Hall uses repetition and collapsed syntax to mirror grief’s overwhelming texture,

• the way medical language merges with imagery of war to portray emotional devastation,

• and how the poem’s brief moment of light — a sparrow, a dog, a loaf of bread — gestures toward the faintest possibility of return.

Originally published: 1998

Approx. runtime: 10 minutes

Music: “A Very Brady Special” by Kevin MacLeod

A classic radio adventure from the golden age — plus bonus commentary and trivia after the show.

The Adventures of Superman – Episodes 1–5 (1940)

Step back into the golden age of radio with The Adventures of Superman, the groundbreaking serialized drama that brought America’s first superhero into homes night after night. In these opening episodes from 1940—beginning with The Baby from Krypton—listeners are introduced to Superman’s origin, his mild-mannered alter ego Clark Kent, and the early dangers that establish his role as a protector in a world that doesn’t yet understand him.

After the broadcast, stay tuned for bonus commentary and behind-the-scenes trivia — including how radio shaped Superman’s mythology, why serialized storytelling was essential to his success, and what these early episodes reveal about American anxieties and hopes at the dawn of a new decade.

Originally aired: February 1940

Approx. runtime: 62 minutes

A daily love poem for February — with gentle commentary after each reading.

February Love Poem Series – Day 23: “Valentine” by Carol Ann Duffy

Welcome to The Porcupine Presents and our month-long celebration of love in all its forms.
Each day of February, we bring you a new poem — romantic, bittersweet, playful, or aching — followed by a brief reflection to deepen your listening experience.

Today’s poem is “Valentine” by Carol Ann Duffy, a sharp, witty, and subversive dismantling of traditional romantic clichés. Rejecting roses and chocolates, Duffy offers an onion instead — a symbol that captures love’s intensity, its sweetness, its sting, and its many layered truths. The poem blends humor with emotional honesty, challenging us to rethink what genuine love looks like.

After the poem, stay tuned for a short commentary discussing

• why Duffy replaces Valentine’s tropes with a raw, domestic metaphor,

• how the poem uses humor and directness to reveal deeper emotional truths,

• and what this rejection of cliché says about honesty, intimacy, and vulnerability.

Originally published: 1993

Approx. runtime: 5:30 minutes

Music: “A Very Brady Special” by Kevin MacLeod

A daily love poem for February — with gentle commentary after each reading.

February Love Poem Series – Day 22: “Love and Harmony” by William Blake

Welcome to The Porcupine Presents and our month-long celebration of love in all its forms.
Each day of February, we bring you a new poem — romantic, bittersweet, playful, or aching — followed by a brief reflection to deepen your listening experience.

Today’s poem is “Love and Harmony” by William Blake, a brief but radiant meditation on the healing power of affection. In just a few lines, Blake imagines love as a force that softens harshness, restores balance, and returns the world to a gentler, more harmonious state. It is a tiny lyric carrying an enormous spiritual truth.

After the poem, stay tuned for a short commentary discussing

• how this piece reflects Blake’s larger symbolic universe,

• why he saw love as a cosmic force rather than just a human emotion,

• and how the poem’s simplicity functions almost like a proverb or blessing.

Originally published: 1783

Approx. runtime: 6 minutes

Music: “A Very Brady Special” by Kevin MacLeod

A daily love poem for February — with gentle commentary after each reading.

February Love Poem Series – Day 21: “Never the Time and the Place” by Robert Browning

Welcome to The Porcupine Presents and our month-long celebration of love in all its forms.
Each day of February, we bring you a new poem — romantic, bittersweet, playful, or aching — followed by a brief reflection to deepen your listening experience.

Today’s poem is “Never the Time and the Place” by Robert Browning, a tender meditation on longing, timing, and the imaginative spaces where love can still flourish even when real life refuses to cooperate. Browning explores the tension between the external world, full of obstacles and interruptions, and the inner world lovers build when reality gives them no room to exist together.

After the poem, stay tuned for a short commentary discussing

• how Browning turns longing into a creative force through imagined landscapes,

• the Victorian conflict between public duty and private desire,

• and why the poem’s shift from frustration to quiet affirmation feels so deeply relatable.

Originally published: 1883

Approx. runtime: 6 minutes

Music: “A Very Brady Special” by Kevin MacLeod

A daily love poem for February — with gentle commentary after each reading.

February Love Poem Series – Day 20: “Love’s Philosophy” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Welcome to The Porcupine Presents and our month-long celebration of love in all its forms.
Each day of February, we bring you a new poem — romantic, bittersweet, playful, or aching — followed by a brief reflection to deepen your listening experience.

Today’s poem is “Love’s Philosophy” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, a lyrical and persuasive Romantic poem that argues—quite charmingly—that love is not just a personal desire but a natural law of the universe. Shelley reminds us that everything in nature seeks union: rivers mingle with oceans, winds meet in the sky, and mountains lean toward each other. If the cosmos is built on connection, why should two people be any different?

After the poem, stay tuned for a short commentary discussing

• how Shelley uses natural imagery as rhetorical persuasion,

• why the Romantics saw nature as a reflection of human emotion,

• and how the poem’s final question distills its flirtation into a single, memorable moment.

Originally published: 1819

Approx. runtime: 6 minutes

Music: “A Very Brady Special” by Kevin MacLeod

A classic radio Western from the golden age — plus bonus commentary and trivia after the show.

Have Gun, Will Travel – “Three Bells to Perdido” (1958)

Step back into the golden age of radio with Have Gun, Will Travel, the philosophical Western centered on Paladin—a gun-for-hire whose work is governed as much by moral code as by skill with a weapon. In this 1958 episode, “Three Bells to Perdido,” timing and inevitability shape a tense situation, as choices narrow and the moment for action draws closer.

After the broadcast, stay tuned for bonus commentary and behind-the-scenes trivia — including the episode’s use of inevitability as moral tension, how Have Gun, Will Travel distinguished itself from traditional Westerns, and why the series worked especially well in radio form.

Originally aired: 1958
Approx. runtime: 28 minutes

A daily love poem for February — with gentle commentary after each reading.

February Love Poem Series – Day 19: “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” by Ocean Vuong

Welcome to The Porcupine Presents and our month-long celebration of love in all its forms.
Each day of February, we bring you a new poem — romantic, bittersweet, playful, or aching — followed by a brief reflection to deepen your listening experience.

Today’s poem is “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” by Ocean Vuong, a raw, intimate piece written as a letter from a future self to a younger, hurting one. It explores trauma, identity, self-forgiveness, and the long journey toward learning to inhabit your own name — and your own body — with tenderness.

After the poem, stay tuned for a short commentary discussing

• why Vuong writes to himself in the second person,

• how the poem’s fragmented structure mirrors the experience of trauma and healing,

• and what it means to promise oneself a future where self-love is finally possible.

Originally published: 2015

Approx. runtime: 6:30 minutes

Music: “A Very Brady Special” by Kevin MacLeod

A daily love poem for February — with gentle commentary after each reading.

February Love Poem Series – Day 18: “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Welcome to The Porcupine Presents and our month-long celebration of love in all its forms.

Each day of February, we bring you a new poem — romantic, bittersweet, playful, or aching — followed by a brief reflection to deepen your listening experience.

Today’s poem is “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, a profound meditation on compassion and the intimate relationship between kindness and sorrow. Nye explores how grief and loss deepen our capacity to recognize and respond to the suffering of others — how vulnerability opens the door to a more spacious, more generous understanding of what it means to care.

After the poem, stay tuned for a short commentary discussing

• why Nye believes true kindness can only be understood through the experience of loss,

• how the poem blends personal emotion with universal human wisdom,

• and why this piece has become a touchstone for readers seeking solace and grounding in difficult times.

Originally published: 1980

Approx. runtime: 7:30 minutes

Music: “A Very Brady Special” by Kevin MacLeod

A daily love poem for February — with gentle commentary after each reading.

February Love Poem Series – Day 17: “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound

Welcome to The Porcupine Presents and our month-long celebration of love in all its forms.
Each day of February, we bring you a new poem — romantic, bittersweet, playful, or aching — followed by a brief reflection to deepen your listening experience.

Today’s poem is “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound, his luminous adaptation of a classical Chinese poem attributed to Li Bai. This is a quiet, heartbreaking meditation on transformation, longing, and the deepening of love across time and distance. Through restrained, vivid imagery, the poem captures a young woman’s evolving devotion as she writes to her absent husband.

After the poem, stay tuned for a short commentary discussing

• how Pound’s translation preserves the emotional subtlety of classical Chinese poetry,

• the poem’s delicate portrayal of a love that strengthens in absence,

• and why this intimate, centuries-old letter continues to resonate so powerfully with modern readers.

Originally published: 1915

Approx. runtime: 7 minutes

Music: “A Very Brady Special” by Kevin MacLeod