Words by Winter

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It's a Poetry Snack, featuring Sara Teasdale.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music composed and performed by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem, February Twilight,  is by Sara Teasdale and is in the public domain. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected].

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Sometimes a poem takes your breath away with the gorgeous sweep of its memory, and by its refusal to look away. 

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem, love & the memory of it, by Jay Hopler, is featured here with kind permission of the poet. Jay Hopler’s new book, Still Life, will be out from McSweeney’s in April. I’ve preordered it and you should too.  Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected].

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It's another poetry snack with Robert Frost, a New Englander whose poems often center on that solitary, sensory landscape.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost, is in the public domain. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected]. 

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A listener named Esty writes in about a tough work situation. Work, even work we love, takes up so much of our energy and time, and when things go south, it's painful. I went in search of a poem to help Esty through.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem is The World We Make, by Alfred Grant Walton. I searched and searched for how to obtain copyright permission but I couldn’t find any information – if someone knows, please let me know.. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected].

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Today's poetry snack is adapted from a poem by Carl Sandburg.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  The original version of today's poem (below) is titled A Father to His Son, by Carl Sandburg, and is in the public domain.  Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected].


(Original, unadapted version of the poem)

A Father to His Son, by Carl Sandburg

A father sees his son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
"Life is hard; be steel; be a rock."
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum monotony
and guide him among sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
"Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy."
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
and left them dead years before burial:
the quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
has twisted good enough men
sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.
Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use against other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.

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Today's featured poem, Wondrous, encompasses so much about life as a child and life as a grownup. That long tunnel of years between childhood and the point at which you look back on it and think Now I know why my mother was crying, because you yourself now cry at the same thing.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry. Today’s poem, Wondrous, by Sarah Freligh, is from her book Sad Math, published by Moon City Press, and was read with the poet’s kind permission. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected].

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It's a poetry snack, with Robert Frost, a New Englander whose poems often center on that solitary, sensory landscape.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  Today’s poem, My November Guest, by Robert Frost, is in the public domain. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected]. 

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Who were your childhood friends? Do you remember them? Much happens in childhood, much good, much bad, much of it experienced with the friends we had back then. Sometimes my childhood friends and I look back through the lens of time and talk about long-gone days. 

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  Today’s poem, “Indian Creek,” is by Robin Rosen Chang, from her book The Curator’s Notes, published by Terrapin Books, and is read with the poet’s kind permission. Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected]. 

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It's a post-Halloween poetry snack, with Edgar Allan Poe.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  Today's poem, "Annabel Lee, by Edgar Allan Poe, is in the public domain.  Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected]. 

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It's a poetry snack, with Edward Estlin Cummings, who went by his initials, always lowercased, ee.

Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through.

Original theme music for our show is by Dylan Perese. Additional music by Kelly Krebs. Artwork by Mark Garry.  Today's poem, "All in green went my love riding," by ee cummings, is in the public domain.  Words by Winter can be reached at [email protected].