Words on a Wire

79: Robin Scofield's new book, Sunflower Cantos, is poetry as incantation and trickster. This poet discusses this collection as well as Tumblewords, a weekly writing workshop held in El Paso.

78: This show is devoted towards happiness and its brilliant relationship to sadness, anger or bitterness. Emotions are gifts; Ben reads about pursuing a range of emotions through poetry, painting or sunlight. Daniel reads a piece about spots of light inside dark buildings.

76: David Shapiro's contemporary poets are Keats and Stevens. Listen to this episode to learn how this prodigy of the violin and poetry showed his teenage work to Frank O'Hara or to hear what he means by "Proust on the side of the starless chaos of the social, and Kafka on the starless eyes of the interior." His latest collection of poetry is titled, "New & Selected Poems (1965-2006)."

In this episode, he plays his bat mitzvah violin piece and reads "Falling Upwards."

74: Melinda Palacio talks about her latest poetry collection, "How Fire is a Story, Waiting," a book organized into the elements, earth, air, water and fire. Palacio understands her "crowded" ancestry and family landscape as "found" poems.

Melinda Palacio reads this week’s Poem of the Week: “How Fire is a Story, Waiting,” from the book of the same name.

In this week’s Poetic License, Benjamin Alire Saenz reflects on well-earned rest.

72: Lee Herrick talks about his latest book of poetry, "Gardening Secrets of the Dead" and what it has meant to be Korean American and a Korean adoptee. The authors discuss creating poetry collections and how poetry reopens memory .

Herrick reads his own, "Circle," as the poem of the week and Daniel Chacón reads "Upside Down Broom" as this week's Poetic License.

71: Daniel & Ben talk with author Gabe Gomez, whose latest poetry collection is entitled "The Seed Bank." Gomez talks about winning the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize for his first book, and how it coincided with his displacement from New Orleans after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Gomez also talks about the differences between his first collection and his latest, "The Seed Bank." www.gabegomez.com

For this week's Poem of the Week, Gabe Gomez reads "Clovis Culture" from his newest collection of poetry, "The Seed Bank."

69: Daniel interviews his co-host, Benjamin Alire Saenz, whose latest collection of stories is entitled "Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club." Ben talks about how he came to write these stories, and why the Kentucky Club, a famous bar in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, plays a part in each story. He also talks about some of the stories in the collection and why they often touch upon the subject of addiction. Ben closes out the interview by reading an excerpt from one of the stories in the collection, "The Hurting Game."

For this week's Poem of the Week, Daniel reads "The Joy of Writing" by Wislawa Szymborska.

68: Daniel & Ben present a special holiday program. Meet the authors at age six.

Ben remembers his mother's kitchen and how she cooked chicharones as he watched the men outside slaughter a hog. He reflects upon his ambivalences toward the gendered spaces.

Daniel recalls the childhood terror of seeing the image of a man in his backyard. He reflects on how imagination, fear and storytelling occur in family and holidays.

Daniel & Ben also read the poem “Journey of the Magi” by TS Eliot.

66: This show discusses "Intimate; An American Family Photo Album," and its collage of memoir, non-fiction, photography and poetry. The book weaves Rekdal's personal life with that of Native American photographer, Edward Curtis and his interpreter, Alexander Upshaw. Complexities of race and intimacy, travel and criminalization come out in the conversation.

Rekdal reads her own, "Why Some Girls Love Horses," as this week's poem.

Benjamin Alire Saenz reads about age and aging, fashion, and youthfulness!

64: Kafka visits the studio during this interview with Rita Mae Brown. The authors talk about animal intelligence and how Brown's feline co-author, Sneaky Pie Brown, has political and environmental health answers in "Sneaky Pie Runs for President." Ben reads "Pointing to the Place of the Pain," from Karen Fiser's collection, "Words Like Fate & Pain" and Daniel shares this week's Poetic License about all of the dogs in his life.