There's a Poem in That

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When a concert bassoonist is canceled for her refusal to get vaccinated, a whole new universe opens, her father’s star burning brightest.

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this episode about vaccines, medical care, and esotericism do not represent those on the TAPIT team.

Support the show

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

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A stroke victim must override paralysis to meet Todd halfway between hemispheres in this intimate exploration of nonverbal disability. But "any dance worth doing is struggle…"

Chapters in this Episode:

1. Our initiatives
2. The history of dance
3. Breaking down borders
4. Jackie joins in
5. The power of poetry
6. The poem: "In Praise of Your Aphasia"

Support the show

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

Follow TAPIT on Facebook.

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For those lucky enough to guest on the show, there's more than a poem in There's a Poem in That. 

"A revelation from an oracle," says Phillip. 

"The answer to a prayer," says Holly. 

Alexa says, "It changed my life."

Todd personally circles back, sometimes weeks later, sometimes years later, to check on the subjects of his poems, and to find out whether their experience on TAPIT had any lingering effects. 

Any beloved poem will evolve its meanings as it ages with you, as your relationship with it matures. A great poem, valued in youth, can appreciate to richer rewards at the end of life. A poem custom-written for you at a poignant moment of personal growth vests unforeseeable treasure.  

TAPIT enacts personal transformation, and Todd feels your listenership isn't complete without an insider's perspective on this aspect of it. 

So, in rather raw formats, depending on how our guests prepare them for us--whether as letters, meditations, or conversations--we present the most salient of guest reflections for further appreciation. 

If you're a listener supporter whose contributions (however small) help make TAPIT free for guests, these BONUS reflections serve as sincerest thanks. 

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

Follow TAPIT on Facebook.

Send us Fan Mail

Phillip's new US citizenship status is the celebratory focus of this episode of TAPIT. It's a celebration 30 years in the making, and it ends in a custom poem worthy of an inauguration. Join us on the journey of a lifetime, as Phillip overcomes rage, discovers love, changes careers, adopts a new name, and learns to see the beauty in his own immigration story.  Host Todd Boss traces Phillip's path of self-authorship from Vegas to Baja to Mexico City to Texas to Hollywood, and back to Vegas, in a tale filled with setbacks and surprises... then taps President Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural poet Richard Blanco to guest write an extraordinary poem of rejoicing and recognition, that elicits a tear for every step along the way. 

Chapters in this episode: 

1. What's in a name?
2. How a place makes (and unmakes and remakes) a person
3. Phillip finds himself in fiction and film
4. The intricacies of immigration and the Texas/Mexico divide
5. Learning and loving in Las Vegas
6. Carving a path to citizenship and the truth about timing
7. Taking the law into his own hands
8. Bringing in Blanco
9. The poem, Your Name :: My Name
10. A wordless reaction says it all

This episode is dedicated to Phillip's mother, Olivia de Lourdes Meneses Moguel, and to mothers everywhere who read to their children.

Support the show

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

Follow TAPIT on Facebook.

Send us Fan Mail

Some of America’s most celebrated poets are standing by to write poems for you on commission. Together, they form The International Bureau of Custom Poetry. More about the Bureau here.

In this special introductory episode, Bureau agent Dorianne Laux recounts her path from gas station attendant to Pulitzer Prize finalist, including a cameo of her mother at the sewing machine in Dorianne’s poem, “Singer.”

Do you have a loved one you’d like memorialized in a poem? Or a precious memory you’d like preserved for the ages? Dorianne Laux and the other professional poets in the Bureau are standing by to work with you. Sessions can be private or taped for potential use on TAPIT. Visit our website to enquire. Or call our listener line at 808-300-0449.

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

Follow TAPIT on Facebook.

Send us Fan Mail

Some of America’s most celebrated poets are standing by to write poems for you on commission. Together, they form The International Bureau of Custom Poetry. More about the Bureau here.

In this micro-episode, Bureau agent Sasha LaPointe shares her writing process, the breadth of her essays, and her focus on personal and shared experiences, all aimed at trying to 'make sense of the madness' in the world. It culminates in Sasha's poem, “S.O.T.D.”

Do you have a loved one you’d like memorialized in a poem? Or a precious memory you’d like preserved for the ages? Dorianne Laux and the other professional poets in the Bureau are standing by to work with you. Sessions can be private or taped for potential use on TAPIT. Visit our website to enquire. Or call our listener line at 808-300-0449.

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

Follow TAPIT on Facebook.

Send us Fan Mail

Inspired by a poem of Todd’s in Poetry Magazine, “The Hush of the Very Good” in 2007, Connie became Todd’s very first private commission. The project ended with an unforgettable encounter in the snow-filled forests of northern Wisconsin. In this special holiday episode of TAPIT, Todd reaches back out to Connie after all these years, to revisit the magic they made together. 

Chapters in this episode:

1. How Todd came to take commissions
2. A blossoming friendship
3. Modeling a relationship & making a family
4. Rosamond's resilience
5. A poet's breakthrough
6. The poem: A Deer

Support the show

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

Follow TAPIT on Facebook.

Send us Fan Mail

For those lucky enough to guest on the show, there's more than a poem in There's a Poem in That. 

"A revelation from an oracle," says Phillip. 

"The answer to a prayer," says Holly. 

Alexa says, "It changed my life."

Todd personally circles back, sometimes weeks later, sometimes years later, to check on the subjects of his poems, and to find out whether their experience on TAPIT had any lingering effects. 

Any beloved poem will evolve its meanings as it ages with you, as your relationship with it matures. A great poem, valued in youth, can appreciate to richer rewards at the end of life. A poem custom-written for you at a poignant moment of personal growth vests unforeseeable treasure.  

TAPIT enacts personal transformation, and Todd feels your listenership isn't complete without an insider's perspective on this aspect of it. 

So, in rather raw formats, depending on how our guests prepare them for us--whether as letters, meditations, or conversations--we present the most salient of guest reflections for further appreciation. 

If you're a listener supporter whose contributions (however small) help make TAPIT free for guests, these BONUS reflections serve as sincerest thanks. 

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

Follow TAPIT on Facebook.

Send us Fan Mail

Host Todd Boss converses with Holly about the tragic loss of her son Killian. Her changing relationship and communion with God and His will for her life inspire a graceful, grateful hymn.

Chapters in this episode:

1. Holly catalogs her losses
2. A bit of background
3. Killian's silence
4. Finding peace in a new place
5. A shifting sense of identity and God
6. Telling the truth about grief
7. The poem: Hymn

Support the show

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

Follow TAPIT on Facebook.

Send us Fan Mail

Host Todd Boss enlists the help of Indigenous poet Sasha LaPointe to  motivate Bonnie on her journey of healing and exploration, through the inspiring Skagit Valley landscape.  

Chapters in this episode:

1. One more great feat
2. Pain, glory, and a conservative church
3. Two worlds: Transformation is real
4. Skagit Valley and its heritage
5. However: Two worlds
6. Bonnie meets Sasha
7. Sasha LaPointe reads "Cycles"
8. A circle of fir trees in prayer

Support the show

TAPIT is listener supported. Listeners like you help make TAPIT's services available FREE to anyone who calls the listener line. Join the movement and get bonus content available nowhere else, by contributing as little as $1 a month, here.

Some contributors support the show at $5,000 a year, assuring TAPIT's continued growth as nonprofit arts organization with vision. To join these visionaries, visit us here, or send a message to [email protected]. 

Read the poems and access more bonus content at poeminthat.com. Or shop our merch!

Is there an unwritten poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line, and tell him why: 808-300-0449.

Follow TAPIT on Facebook.