Open Windows Podcast: Recent Episodes
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"Remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There are essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories often use. I take a look today at another one of those focuses, memories of loss and especially the loss of home. I read poems by Nijolė Miliauskaitė, Elizabeth Bishop, Abraham Lincoln, Zeina Azzam, and Rainer Maria Rilke. I end the program with one of my own poems.
I am happily spending time on the coast of Maine, and so read poems about Maine and about the ocean by Robert Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Pam Burr Smith, George Oppen, and Louise Bogan. I end the program with three of my own poems.
My programs each week typically illustrate a theme or poetic focus. From time to time, however, I read some of my own poems that do not have such a defined focus but which have helped present my work as a poet over the years more generally. Today, as part of such a presentation of my work, I read poems from my book Salt, which was published in 2007. The poems of Salt affirm my longstanding commitment to expanding the use of anonymous lyric narrators.
In celebration of my 50th Yale College Reunion, and to affirm the literary bonds I forged then and have continued with other poets in my class, I read poems by my Yale classmates: William Logan, Timothy Murphy, Cal Nordt, James Stephenson, and Jamie Stern. I end my program with my own poems. I include, too, a poem for Ukraine by Ihor Kalnyets.
I continue my presentation of Australian poets today and read poems by Bronwyn Rodden and Les Wicks. I also read poems by New Zealand poet Lisa Samuels. I begin with a poem for Ukraine by Volodymyr Sosiura.
I continue my presentation of Australian poets today and read poems by Cassandra Atherton, Peter Boyle, MTC Cronin, Philip Hammial, Dominique Hecq, and S.K. Kelen. I begin with a poem for Ukraine by Ania Chromova.
Poetry written in English thrives across the world. Those of us in the United States often forget that we are not the only voices of poetry in our native language. And we forget, too, that the Northern Hemisphere is not the only locus for English language poetry. So today I read poems by three Australian poets who have been strong voices on the Australian poetic stage: Robert Drummond, Grant Fraser, and Edward Reilly. I begin with a poem for Ukraine by Halyna Kruk.
This week marks the 77th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. It's an anniversary during which another European war is being fought. So today I read poems about World War II, in commemoration of the end of that war but also as a reminder that such a war can happen again. I begin with a poem for Ukraine by Serhiy Zhadan and read poems by John Ciardi, Harry Rosolenko, John Frederick Nims, Randall Jarrell, Miklós Radnóti, and Ephim G. Fogel.
I begin my program with a poem for Ukraine by Vasyl Holoborodko. I then read poems about spring, and particularly about dogwood trees and flowers, by George Marion McClellan, Roy Sheele, Martin Willitts, Jr., William Johnson, and David Baker. I end the program with two of my own poems.
I begin my program with a poem for Ukraine by Taras Shevchenko. I then talk about the oneiric tradition in poetry -- poetry that is written about dreams -- and read poems from my book The Woman on the Bridge, which began as a dream.
I begin my program with a poem for Ukraine by Vasyl Stus. I then read poems about the moon by Sappho, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, Jean Toomer, e.e. cummings, Philip Larkin, and Larry D. Thomas. I end the program with one of my own poems.
The idea of new beginnings, of initiation after conclusion -- and in this program linked to the symbols and signs of Easter -- guides my selection of poems today. I read poems by Kim Stafford, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, William Butler Yeats, Claude McKay, Amy Clampitt, Charles Wright, and Anne Sexton. I end the program with one of my own poems.
April is celebrated as “National Humor Month.” It is also the only month of the year that begins with a Fool's Day, a day celebrated in many countries with sanctioned frivolity and pranks ever since the 1500s. So today I want to lighten the moment and read some humorous poetry by Ogden Nash, Philip Larkin, Shel Silverstein, "Anonymous," Pamela Ayres, and Stuart McLean.
I am part of a small press called Black Spruce Press, which publishes collections of poetry by established poets and by young poets who have not yet had a full book. Today I read poems by four of the poets published by the Press: Kerry Shawn Keys, Michael Jennings, Alan Berecka, and Susana Cuartas-Ordoñez.
My programs each week typically illustrate a particular theme or poetic focus. From time to time, however, I have read some of my own poems that do not have such a defined focus but which have helped present my work as a poet over the years more generally. So today, as part of such a presentation of my work, I read poems from my book White, which was published in 2004.
My program today features poems by men Native American poets: Simon Ortiz, Orlando White, Sherman Alexie, Ray Young Bear, Mark Turcotte, Gordon Henry, Jr., and Adrian C. Louis.
Today I read poems about the beginning and ending of war. I focus on poets whose families and whose countries have been victims of various kinds of wars: Kornelijus Platelis, Wisława Szymborska, Yehuda Amichai, Mahoud Darwish, Seamus Heaney, and Lawson Fusao Inada. I end the program with one of my own poems about the beginning of war.
Today I read poems by Ukrainian poets, in support of the Ukrainian fight against brutal Russian invasion. The poets are Iya Kiva, Boris Khersonsky, Vasyl Makhno, Borys Humenyuk, and Natalka Bilotserkivets.
My program today features poems by women Native American poets: Tacey Atsitty, Esther Belin, Diane Burns, Laura Da', Roberta Hill Whiteman, Linda Hogan, Lois Red Elk, and Ofelia Zepeda.
I read poems in today's program, and in one or two programs to come, written by indigenous people of North and South America. I begin today with lyric poems written in the Mayan and the Aztec languages.
Sounds are incorporated into poems as part of a poet's observational paradigm and thereby shape the meanings of poems. Because many of us are especially attentive to sounds at night and of the night, today I read poems about night sounds by Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Robert Frost, Maxine Kumin, Carolyn Kizer, and Alejandra Piznarik. I end the program with two of my own poems.
In my program today, I consider paradox and contradiction -- what the Romantic poets referred to as "the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant elements or qualities" -- and the roles they may play in poetry. I read poems by Catullus, an Unknown Poet, Emily Dickinson, Wilfred Owen, Wallace Stevens, and Bob Dylan. I end the program with two of my own poems.
My program today follows up on my programs about the whiteness and cold of winter. The physical and emotional and aesthetic contexts of winter at the ocean are powerful affirmations of life experienced, so today I read poems about the ocean in winter, celebrating the clarities made possible by whiteness and cold that wraps the sands and waters. I read poems by Walt Whitman, Sara Teasdale, John Betjeman, Thomas McGrath, and Joseph Millar. I end the program with two of my own poems.
My program today is about how poets incorporate the idea of cold and coldness into their poems, to create texture, to control mood and tone, to provide symbolic or metaphoric significances, and to create and direct images that resonate connotatively for different readers. I read poems by Annie Lennox, D.H. Lawrence, Federico Garcia Lorca, William Carlos Williams, Roberta Hill Whiteman, and James Wright. I end the program with two of my own poems.
We had our first significant snowfall and the horizon is white. I was struck by that whiteness, so I read poems today that use the color white -- directly or indirectly -- to create texture, to control mood and tone, to provide symbolic or metaphoric significances, and to create and direct images that resonate connotatively for different readers. I read poems by Emily Dickinson, A.E. Housman, Robert Frost, Philip Larkin, W.S. Merwin, Sylvia Plath, and Wisława Szymborska. I end the program with two of my own poems.
I read poems about the Brooklyn Bridge today, during the beginning of the month named for the two-faced god Janus, and ask you to consider how both this month and bridges point in two directions, both forward and backwards, to the past and to the future, to memory and to prophecy. I read poems by Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, Jack Kerouac, Harvey Shapiro, and Alfred Corn. I end the program with one of my own poems.
Today’s program continues my consideration of December as a time of reflection and remembrance and focuses on several poets we lost this year. I read poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Adam Zagajewski, Friederike Mayröcker, Jean Binta Breeze, Robert Bly, and Thomas Kinsella.
Today’s program continues my consideration of December and focuses on poems that incorporate an actual or a metaphorical hearth or fireplace into their lyrical or narrative frames. I read poems by J.R.R. Tolkien, William Butler Yeats, C.K. Williams, Robert Hayden, and Ken Hada. I end the program with two of my own poems.
Today’s program continues my consideration of the end of the calendar year and is the second of several programs that focus on poets born in December. I read poets who were born in the second week of December, during various decades and in various countries: Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Padraic Colum, Delmore Schwartz, Emily Dickinson, Nelly Sachs, and Grace Paley.
Today’s program continues my consideration of the end of the calendar year and is the first of several programs that will focus on poets born in December. I begin with poets who were born in the first week of December, during various decades and in various countries. I read poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Alfred Corn; William Stanley Braithwaite, Joyce Kilmer, Ira Gershwin, Yosano Akiko, and Pearl Cleage.
Today’s program considers the end of the calendar year and some of its significances. Today, December 1, is the first day of winter in the meteorological calendar. This is the month of the winter solstice; it’s the time of Advent and Christmas in the Christian calendar, Hannukah in the Jewish calendar, and Yule for pagans. It’s the time when daylight is short and the end of the calendar year, we believe, promises the return of light. So today I’d like to read some poems that consider the idea of light returning to the world. The coming of light, of course, means that there is also darkness that must be conquered or dispelled. That tension between darkness and light is what gives the return of light its ultimate power. I read poems by Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, Wendell Berry, and Latvian poet Inara Cedrins. I end with one of my own poems that considers the tension between light and dark as well.
I conclude my readings of poems from books published by Virtual Artists Collective during the course of the past two decades. I read translations into English of poems by women poets of the Tang Dynasty in China: Xue Tao, Li Ye, Yu Xuanji, Cheng Changwen, and palace maid Tianbao.
I continue my reading of poems from books published by Virtual Artists Collective during the course of the past two decades. I read poems by Scott Wiggerman, David Wright, and Agnė Žagrakalytė. I end the program with three of my own poems.
I continue my reading of poems from books published by Virtual Artists Collective during the course of the past two decades. I read poems by Wally Swist, Larry Thomas, Judith Valente, Sarah Webb, and Arisa White.
I continue my reading of poems from books published by Virtual Artists Collective during the course of the past two decades. I read poems by Elizabeth Raby, Li Sen, Steven Schroeder, and Jamie Stern.
I continue my readings of poems from books published by Virtual Artists Collective during the course of the past two decades. I read poems by Lorraine Henrie Lins, Katia Mitova, Li Nan, Donna Pucciani, and Matthias Regan.
I continue my reading of poems from books published by Virtual Artists Collective during the course of the past two decades. I read poems by Albert DeGenova, Ken Hada, Laurynas Katkus, Christopher Kelen, and Kerry Shawn Keys.
I continue my reading of poems from books published by Virtual Artists Collective during the course of the past two decades. I read poems by Jerry Craven, Sherry Craven, Nitoo Das, Paul Friedrich, and Patricia Goodrich.
I continue my reading of poems from books published by Virtual Artists Collective during the course of the past two decades. I read poems by Sandra Becker, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Daniel Bowman, David Breeden, and Inara Cedrins.
In my program today, and in several of my programs to come, I will be reading from books published by Virtual Artists Collective during the course of the past two decades. I read poems by Nina Corwin, Christopher Gallinari, Lu Wei, Scott Wiggerman, Tang Danhong, Li Sen, and Steven Schroeder.
I continue my late summer hiatus and now present a few programs that were the least listened to during the past two and a half years, with the hope that I might inspire some additional interest in them. My program today is about how heaven may be used in poetry as an essential structural motif and as part of an organizing metaphoric and thematic literary frame. The program takes a look at various depictions of heaven in the work of four Lithuanian poets – both in their pagan and in their Christian iterations – and in three of my own poems.
I continue my late summer hiatus and now present a few programs that were the least listened to during the past two and a half years, with the hope that I might inspire some additional interest in them. My program today continues my consideration of how poets use references to the senses as essential structural motifs and as parts of organizing metaphoric and thematic literary frames. This program – about the sense of smell – takes a look at the possible meanings of smell, in their various explications, and how they might be used in poetry to create mood and modulate tone. I read and consider two of my translations of Lithuanian poems, each of which presents different perspectives on smell, and a poem by Jamie Stern. I end the program with two of my own poems.
I continue my late summer hiatus and now present a few programs that were the least listened to during the past two and a half years, with the hope that I might inspire some additional interest in them. My program today -- originally broadcast -- is the second program in which I focused on New England urban poets and the complex range of human issues unfolding in urban settings. I read poems by Julia Alvarez, Ocean Vuong, Richard Wilbur, Martin Espada, and Maya Williams.
It's late summer and I continue time my short hiatus, replaying a few of my most popular programs during these weeks (and starting next week the least popular, with the hope that they might find some rekindled interest). Today’s program --originally broadcast in December 4, 2019 -- considers poetry as a counterpoint and antidote to the misuse of power, and how poetry is a source of truth in the face of the corruption and lies that political power – and especially today – succumbs to. I begin with a consideration of the Elizabethan idea that poetry rouses us to virtue and then include an excerpt from President John F. Kennedy’s remarkable speech – delivered on the occasion of the dedication of the Robert Frost Library – on the role of poetry and of the artist in a free society. I read poems by Robert Frost, Michelle Hartman, Brazilian poet Ferreira Gullar, Michael Casey, and Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert to illustrate that poetic exhortation to truth.
It's late summer and time for a short hiatus, so I will be replaying a few of my most popular programs in the next few weeks (and after that, the least popular, with the hope that they might find some rekindled interest).
Today’s program, which dates back to March 2019, focuses on longing, love, pagan romantic relationships, and the Odyssey. It includes my translations of poems by Lithuanian poets Sigitas Geda and Judita Vaičiūnaitė. It ends with two poems of my own from my book The Kingfisher's Reign (2012).
It's late summer and time for a short hiatus, so I will be replaying a few of my most popular programs in the next few weeks (and after that, the least popular, with the hope that they might find some rekindled interest).
Today’s program is about poems written about other works of art. Such poems are part of a long literary tradition called the “ekphrastic tradition” and they provide a different perspective on how we might experience works of art generally. The program includes a brief literary history of the form, including comments about Homer’s The Iliad, Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and Pictures from Brueghel by William Carlos Williams. It also includes my translations of ekphrastic poems by three Lithuanian poets as well as two of my own ekphrastic poems.
To continue my discussion of poetry as a transformation of experience that is a product of the lyrical imagination, and to wrap up my consideration of surrealist and magical realist poetry, I read poems from my book Three White Horses.
To continue my discussion of poetry as a transformation of experience that is a product of the lyrical imagination, I follow up my consideration of surrealistic poetry with examples of magical realist and fantasy poems. These three threads are layerings of the essential core of imaginative writing and affirm how poetry is a form of transformative aesthetic expression that enables us to explore the world beyond the limits and constraints of what we individually know about it. I read poems by Pattiann Rogers, Elise Cowen, Benjamin Péret, David Gascoyne, William Butler Yeats, and Kerry Shawn Keys. I end the program with one of my own poems.
To follow up on my comments last week about differences between poetry as a recording of experience and poetry as a transformation of experience, I read surrealistic poems to affirm the importance of getting beyond the self-indulgent confessional voice that dominates (and, as I suggested last week, that suffocates) so much contemporary poetry. I read poems by André Breton, Hans Arp, Andrei Codrescu, Helen Ivory, Philip Lamantia, James Tate, and Joyce Mansour. I end the program with one of my own poems.
I consider differences between poetry as a recording of experience and poetry as a transformation of experience and focus on poems about exploration in various forms. In those contexts, I read poems by Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Theodore Roethke, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Michael Jennings, and Lauren Camp. I end the program with one of my own poems.
As I discussed in my program last week, highways lead us to new destinations and to new discoveries there, so today I reconsider one such recent destination and read poems about Maine and about the ocean by Robert Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Pam Burr Smith, George Oppen, and Louise Bogan. I end the program with three of my own poems.
The search for something new, the act of going somewhere, is a foundational part of our country's identity and poets have explored its attractions and impacts. Today I read poems about highways and roads and journeys, about leaving a place and going to a different place to find something new, by Walt Whitman, Willie Nelson, James Wright, James Applewhite, Gregory Corso, and Bruce Springsteen. I end the program with one of my own poems.
To celebrate midsummer and the summer solstice -- and the mix of pagan and Christian elements in some of those celebrations, particularly in Northern Europe -- today I read poems about John the Baptist and about Salome by Vachel Lindsay, Conrad Aiken, Thomas Merton, Ai, Carol Ann Duffy, Eric Pankey, and Dorothy Parker. I end the program with one of my own poems.
I talk about the translation of poetry today because I have a new book of my translations now available. It is titled Alternating Masks: Selected Poems of Kornelijus Platelis and is the comprehensive translation into English of poems by the most acclaimed contemporary Lithuanian poet and one of the most accomplished of contemporary European poets. So I read my translations of Platelis' poems to celebrate the appearance of this new book.
In my program last week, I talked about how monuments create symbolic significance in our lives. They are objects specifically made to create such meanings. Today I consider how we endow things of the natural world with symbolic significances. I use the cormorant as an example of imposed symbolic meaning on natural objects and read poems by Robinson Jeffers, Eavan Boland, Kobayashi Issa, Macdara Woods, Li-Young Lee, and Christopher Isherwood. I begin the program with two of my own poems.
Poets and other writers have considered the role of monuments in human society and human history. So today, to commemorate Memorial Day, and to follow up on my concluding poem about a Civil War monument from last week's program, I read poems about monuments by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and Gordon Henry. I end the program with one of my own poems.
To follow up on last week's program about one of the joys of my childhood, I read poems about being a boy, about boyhood, including positive memories and some that are less so. I include poems by Ken Hada, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Matthews, e.e. cummings, Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, and Gwendolyn Brooks. I end the program with one of my own poems.
The wonderful colors of May -- beginning with delicate greens and then deepening to fuller textures and hues blossoming everywhere -- are one of the reasons why May is my favorite month. Lilacs are another. To celebrate the return of all of the natural joys of May, I read poems about lilacs by Walt Whitman, Amy Lowell, Philip Levine, John Hiatt, and Kornelijus Platelis. I end the program with one of my own poems.
Today, as an adjunct to my programs last fall about poverty, and to continue my look at poetry inspired by immigration, I read poems about the conditions and destinies of working people. They are by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Philip Levine, Kenneth Patchen, Langston Hughes, Rose Pastor Stokes, and Bob Hicok. I end the program with one of my own poems.
Today, as a continuation of my focus on immigration, and in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, I read poems by Chicano poets Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Sandra Cisneros, Juan Felipe Herrera, Tino Villanueva, and Daniel A. Olivas, and by Mexican poets Octavio Paz and Carmen Boullosa.
In my program today, as a follow up to last week's podcast, I explore immigration more widely and read poems by poets who consider the framework of immigration and the destinies of those who find themselves crossing borders, legally or illegally, to find a new home. I read poems by Woody Guthrie, Galway Kinnell, Blas Manuel de Luna, Tishani Doshi, Tracy K. Smith, Lory Bedikian, and Adrienne Su. I end the program with one of my own poems.
Today I read poems from my book Lithuanian Crossing. That book explores the immigrant experience in the United States as my wider family, and as I, have experienced its immediate and its long-term effects.
I continue my consideration of new beginnings today, particularly the new beginnings made possible when trees are planted. So today, in recognition of their many wondrous qualities, I read poems about trees, by Robert Frost, Joyce Kilmer, Federico Garcia Lorca, Rosanna Warren, W.S. Merwin, Jean Valentine, and Linda Pastan. I end the program with one of my own poems.
The idea of new beginnings, of initiation after conclusion -- and in this program linked to Easter -- guides my selection of poems today. I read poems by T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, William Butler Yeats, Claude McKay, Amy Clampitt, Charles Wright, Anne Sexton, and Elizabeth Raby. I end the program with one of my own poems.
On this last day of March, I have been thinking about time, particularly about endings and how they set the stage for beginnings. In that consideration, I read poems by T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, John Donne, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Strand, Howard Nemerov, and Mona van Duyn. I end the program with one of my own poems.
Today I read poems about the wind, some of them about March winds, to celebrate wind as a natural expression and as a symbolic representation of the actions of the world. In this view, nothing stays calm, but nothing, also, stays forever in motion. I read poems by Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Katharine Tynan, Sara Teasdale, Claude McKay, and Ted Hughes. I end the program with one of my own poems.
In celebration of the Ides of March (which marks the full moon) and in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I read poems about the moon and about Ireland by Irish poets: William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Amergin as translated by Lady Gregory, and Derek Mahon. I end the program with poems from my book St. Brigid's Well, written on and about the West Coast of Ireland.
I continue my look today at poems about March and include additional poems about transition and change, as affirmation and as challenge. I read poems by Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Lucille Clifton, May Swenson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Michael Jennings. I end the program with two of my own poems.
My program today considers transitions. Poems about the month of March often consider transitions from one state of being to another, from winter to spring on the outside and from various metaphoric and symbolic states on the inside. I read such poems today by William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Antonio Machado, Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, Philip Levine, and Kornelijus Platelis. I end the program with one of my own poems.
To follow up on my last program, I continue my look at opposites, of two things both operating at the same time, and consider how inherent contradiction leads to unity in duality, to an affirmation of the cosmology of the Yin-yang. I read poems by Walt Whitman, "Anonymous," Paul Laurence Dunbar, Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke, and Alice Walker. I end the program with two of my own poems.
My program today presents poems about February, about midwinter, as a time that stands as a kind of fulcrum for the season, as a point of transition between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. I read poems by Ezra Pound, Boris Pasternak, James Schuyler, Margaret Atwood, Ted Kooser, Jayne Cortez, and Patricia Goodrich. I end the program with one of my own poems.
My program today considers how poetry uses rhyme to reinforce theme and how rhyme can be an important part of the aesthetic experience of reading a poem. I read poems by Chaucer, Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wilbur, Howard Nemerov, Mona van Duyn, and Rachel Hadas. I end the program with one of my own poems.
My program today continues my consideration of the two faces of poetry -- poem as memory and poem as anticipation -- and presents poems about things that are awaited, that are anticipated, even if their contours are not always clearly visible. I read poems by Emily Dickinson, D.H. Lawrence, Amy Lowell, Lisel Mueller, Andrei Voznesensky, Wislawa Szymborska, and Bob Dylan. I end the program with one of my own poems.
My program today considers the two faces of poetry -- poem as memory and poem as anticipation -- and presents poems about January, the month named for Janus, the two-faced Roman god of beginnings and endings who presided over every entrance and every departure, with his two faces looking simultaneously in two directions. I read poems by Jonathan Swift, Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams, John Updike, Denise Levertov, and W.S. Merwin. I end the program with one of my own poems.
My program today considers the relationship between poetry and prophecy. I read poems about prophecy, prophets, and poets as prophets by H.D., Louise Bogan, Robinson Jeffers, Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, Camille Rankine, and Bob Dylan. I end the program with one of my own poems.
Today, in the second in a series of programs that illustrate my work over the years, I continue to present some of my translations of Lithuanian poetry and to read my own poems. I begin with my translations of poems by Nijolė Miliauskaitė and end with two of my own poems. Both halves of this program include a focus on prophecy and on female figures from Greek mythology.
To mark my one hundredth program, and as the first of several programs to come that illustrate my work over the years, I read my translations of Lithuanian poetry and my own poems. I begin with my translations of poems by Kornelijus Platelis and end with a few of my own poems.
I end my consideration of December today, reading poems that are a bit more upbeat as we move next into a new year, poems about peace and harmony that may provide us with a different perspective on the many upheavals we faced in 2020. They include poems by John Lennon, Walt Whitman, Sara Teasdale, Anne Spencer, Wendell Berry, William Stafford, Denise Levertov, and James Simmons. I end the program with one of my own poems.
I continue my consideration of December today and read poems about winter, about ice and snow. They include poems by Dante, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Patchen, Wallace Stevens, Mark Strand, and Kobayashi Issa. I end the program with one of my own poems.
To continue my consideration of December and to mark this month's affirmation of the end of the year and the inevitable progression of time, I read poems about aging and old age today. They include poems by Sappho, Lu You, William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Stanley Kunitz, Julie Chappell, and Tautvyda Marcinkevičiūtė. I end the program with one of my own poems.
December can offer a full range of weather conditions in Connecticut, and the first week of this December here has seen two major storms, known as Nor'easters, marked by heavy rain and wind. Today I read poems about rain, including winter rain, by Matsuo Basho, William Shakespeare, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Carl Sandburg, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Creeley, and Ken Hada. I end the program with one of my own poems.
December is a month of anticipation and waiting. It is not only the season of Advent that defines this month, with its promise of new light and its groundwork of redemption as the month concludes, but it is also a month that clearly frames the idea and fact of waiting as an essential parameter of human life. I read poems about waiting in that light by William Butler Yeats, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Galway Kinnell, Pablo Neruda, Alice Walker, and Walt Whitman. I end the program with one of my own poems.
In my last program, as part of my focus on memory and on remembering November, I read poems about the results of struggle and adversity during this month. My youngest brother struggled and died in November, two years ago. I found a manuscript of poems at the bottom of one of the drawers in his desk, hidden under piles of other papers and folders. The book -- titled The Winds of Spirit Mountain --was published in 2019. I read several of the poems from his book today and end the program with one of my poems about my brothers.
As the November skies dull to a heavier gray, I have been thinking about the hard days we all have had and that we remember perhaps especially as the year draws to its close. So today I read poems about struggle and adversity by Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Derek Walcott, Miller Williams, Lucille Clifton, Charles Bernstein, and Javier Zamora. I end the program with one of my own poems.
In my last program I read poems about El Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead in Mexico, which takes place in early November. Today I read poems about November more generally, by Thomas Hood, Thomas Hardy, Adelaide Crapsey, Robert Frost, Tomas Transtromer, and Rita Dove. I end the program with one of my own poems.
In my last few programs I read poems about various places as they are remembered and presented. I want to continue that trajectory today, but turn my focus instead to people we remember. That is especially poignant today, two days after the holiday celebration of El Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, in Mexico. I read poems by Lope de Vega, Davina Guadalupe Ponce Martinez, William Butler Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Maya Angelou, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Sherry Craven. I end the program with one of my own poems.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. Today I read poems about being poor in America, living in and remembering a place that, at least in the popular imagination, is a place where poverty and its consequences seem to be endemic in profoundly visible ways. That is, living in Appalachia. I read poems by Hayden Carruth, Jean Ruth Ritchie, Loretta Lynn, Billy Edd Wheeler, Lee Howard, and Wendell Berry.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. Today I read poems about Oklahoma, focusing principally on poems that remember the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression there, and ending with a poem about contemporary Oklahoma. They are by Woodie Guthrie, Roy Turner, Langston Hughes, Donald Justice, Bruce Springsteen, and Ken Hada.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There are essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories often use. I took a look last time at remembered cities in general. Today I will read poems about San Francisco, by Vachel Lindsay, Robert Penn Warren, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Brautigan, Nellie Wong, Adele Foley, and Diane di Prima.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There are essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories often use. I take a look today at another one of those focuses, memories of places in our lives -- cities-- as sources of memory and as springboards for various thematic considerations. I read poems by Walt Whitman, William Blake, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, and Nijolė Miliauskaitė. I end the program with one of my own poems in which a city plays a visible and important role.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There are essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories often use. I take a look today at another one of those focuses, memories of places in our lives -- farms -- as sources of memory and as springboards for various thematic considerations. I read poems by Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, W.D. Ehrhart, and Timothy Murphy. I end the program with one of my own poems in which life on a farm plays a visible and important role.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There are essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories often use. I take a look today at another one of those focuses, memories of places in our lives -- today, mountains -- as source of memory and as springboard for various thematic considerations. I read poems by Li Po, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Gary Snyder, and Joni Mitchell. I end the program with two of my own poems in which mountains play a visible and important role.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There are essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories often use. I take a look today at another one of those focuses, memories of places in our lives. I begin with one of those places -- the ocean -- as source of memory and as springboard for various thematic considerations. I read poems by Matthew Arnold, Emily Dickinson, Robert Lowell, Pablo Neruda, and Penelope Pelizzon. I begin the program with two of my own poems about the ocean.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There are essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories often use. I take a look today at another one of those focuses, memories of people in our lives, particularly in our lives when we were children. This week I read poems about friends -- especially as friends are remembered -- by James Wright, Derek Walcott, Arisa White, and Vytautas Bložė. I end the program with one of my own poems.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There are essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories often use. I take a look today at another one of those focuses, memories of people in our lives, particularly in our lives when we were children. This week I read poems about family -- especially as families are remembered -- by Ogden Nash, William Wordsworth, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Michael Luis Medrano, John Yao, and Ruth Stone. I end the program with one of my own poems.
As I have suggested in my past few programs, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There are essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories often use. I take a look today at another one of those focuses, memories of loss and especially the loss of home. I read poems by Nijolė Miliauskaitė, Elizabeth Bishop, Abraham Lincoln, Zeina Azzam, and Rainer Maria Rilke. I end the program with one of my own poems.
As I suggested in my program last week, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There may be some essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories use. I take a look today at another one of those focuses, memories of childhood. I read poems by William Blake, Dylan Thomas, William Matthews, Seamus Heaney, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Mary Oliver. I end my program with two of my own poems.
As I suggested in my program last week, "remembering" and "memory" are major elements in the creation of poetry. There may be some essential focuses or common themes that poems that include memories use. I take a look today at one of those focuses, a theme that may be a principal dimension of what we write about, and that is love remembered because it has, somehow, been lost. I read poems by William Butler Yeats, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Lorraine Henrie Lins, Algirdas Zdanys, and Susana Cuartas. I end my program with two of my own poems.
My program today is about memories, things and people and events remembered. I try to affirm what I believe about the act of writing: that we shape the world through texts and use those texts to present or to hide truths. Those truths, in this context, are often things we remember and shape into something we can grasp and understand and accept or reject. Once they are on the page, they can be directed and controlled, much more than they ever were as they were unfolding. I read poems by William Shakespeare, Robert Lowell, Hugh Seidman, David Breeden, Patricia Goodrich, and Li Nan. I end my program with two of my own poems about the remembering.
I continue my programs about summer, today considering the silence and stillness of summer nights. A lovely quiet, a certain silence, outside, late at night, after midnight especially, fills the summer night air. It may be interrupted, here and there, now and then, by a passing and typically unexpected noise that we hear through open windows. The poems I read consider that: poems by Paul Simon, Cole Porter, T.S. Eliot, Ken Hada, Kerry Shawn Keys, and Antanas A. Jonynas. I end my program with two of my own poems about the silences of a summer night.
I continue my programs about summer. My program last week was inspired by one of the wonderful noises on a summer night -- the sound of trains passing in the distance. Today I read poems about another element that especially marks summer -- birds. I include poems by William Butler Yeats, Wallace Stevens, Steven Schroeder, Lauren Camp, and Fred Burstein. I end the program with two of my own poems about birds.
My last two programs have been about summer. One of the things I like to do in the summer is to open the windows at night and listen to all sorts of things humming and buzzing outside the window screens. One of the things I most love, among all those wonderful sounds and noises on a summer night, is the sound of trains passing in the distance. So today I read poems about trains by Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Bob Dylan. I end my program with two of my own poems about trains.
My program last week about summer received positive and encouraging responses, and some of my listeners suggested that I might continue that focus this week as well. The affirmation of light and warmth in a time when both of those -- at least metaphorically -- seem just beyond the bend in the road, would be a positive thing. So today I read more poems about summer, by Derek Walcott, Charles Wright, Carl Sandburg, Siegfried Sassoon, Dick Allen, and Judita Vaičiūnaitė. I end the program with two of my own poems.
I read poems about summer today. To celebrate this special time of year removed from the other three seasons. To affirm that there is joy and hope in the world around us even in what seems to us all to be a darker hour. I include poems by Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, Gail Mazur, Marie Ponsot, and Louise Gluck. I end the program with one of my own poems about summer.
In my last program, I talked about the year 1968 and read poems by several poets about 1968 or written in 1968. Today I continue that focus on 1968 and read a number of poems that I wrote in 1968. They are from a new book of mine -- titled Early Poems 1966-1969 -- which was published in April of this year.
My program today is about 1968. It was a year marked by astonishing and unforgettable and brutally painful events, in this country and across the world. It was a year in which so many of us thought that the world, as we knew it, was coming to an end. 2020 has been compared by some to 1968. There are differences. I read poems by Adrienne Rich, Rita Dove, Margaret Walker, Geoffrey Hill, Sharon Olds, W.H. Auden, and John Lennon/Paul McCartney. I end the program with one of my own poems.
My program today is dedicated to all those who believe, as do I, that if there is no justice, there can be no peace. My program today is in memory of George Floyd, Breonna Tayler, Ahmaud Arbery, and all the other American citizens who have been killed for no reason other than the color of their skin. I read poems by Langston Hughes, Gil Scott-Heron, Ntozake Shange, Nikki Giovanni, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Claudia Rankine.
My program last week presented poems by New England poets who considered some of the complex matters that are part of life in urban settings. Today I move to more rural settings and present equally complex poems by Vermont poets: Ellen Bryant Voight, John Engels, Major Jackson, Jay Parini, and Verandah Porche.
My program today is the second program to focus on New England urban poets and the complex range of human issues unfolding in urban settings. I read poems by Julia Alvarez, Ocean Vuong, Richard Wilbur, Martin Espada, and Maya Williams.
My last two programs focused on New England poets who wrote eloquently about the land -- Robert Frost -- and who wrote powerfully about the sea -- Robert Lowell. I mentioned, in passing, in my introductions to those programs, that New England also has important cities, sophisticated urban centers, in which the complex range of human life unfolds. I plan to present a couple of programs about that dimension, beginning today with a look at the poetry of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).
My program last week focused on the poet who, perhaps more than any other, used New England settings for his poems and who has become known as the quintessential New England poet. And that is Robert Frost. Frost presented us with visions of the natural landscape -- farms, hillsides, woods, the people who lived on and worked the land. New England surely is a place that is richly wooded and farmed. But New England is also a coastal region and its various poets write also about the sea. I think none do so more powerfully than Robert Lowell (1917-1977), and especially in his book Lord Weary's Castle. Other essential ocean poems by Lowell are in For the Union Dead and Near the Ocean. I read poems from those three books today.
My program last week presented poems about the pandemic and I hope you found them as powerful as I did. I mentioned, in that program, that I would be returning to my series of programs that have included poems by poets from various geographic regions of the country. I return today to New England and I focus on the poet who, perhaps more than any other, used New England settings for his poems and who has become known as the quintessential New England poet. And that is Robert Frost.
My program today considers the idea that writers try to make sense of things that often make no sense, that they try to give shape and articulate our need to understand what we see and live through as individuals and as members of communities. It is the calling of the writer to provide lessons about the human community, to teach us while delighting us, even if those lessons and delights are couched in metaphor and symbol or if they are stated directly and clearly in lyrical and narrative texts. Many writers from across the world are writing down what they see and hear and consider in this difficult time we are all living through. I read poems today written in response to this terrible pandemic, this distress that has caused so much heartache for so many, across the country and throughout the world. More such poems can be found at https://www.tejascovido.com/ TEJASCOVIDO is a splendid and timely online literary journal edited by Laurence Musgrove and published at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. I read poems by Ken Hada, Katherine Hoerth, Julie Chappell, Loretta Diane Walker, Jerry Bradley, Jerry Craven, Steven Schroeder, and Jamie Stern.
My program today is the twelfth in a series of programs that present poems written by poets living in various geographic regions of the country. Today's program is the second program that presents poets from Connecticut. I read poems by Kate Rushin, Edwina Trentham, J.D. "Sandy" McClatchy, Rennie McQuilken, and David K. Leff. I end the program with one of my own poems.
My program today is the eleventh in a series of programs that present poems written by poets living in various geographic regions of the country. Today's program is the first of two programs that present poets from Connecticut. I read poems by Vivian Shipley, Steven Campiglio, V. Penelope Pelizzon, Eddie Morales, Emily Creighton, and Giovanna Gatto.
My program today is the tenth in a series of programs that present poems written by poets living in various geographic regions of the country. Today's program is the fourth program focusing on New York. I read poems by Marie Ponsot, Jamie Stern, Audre Lord, and Sandra Maria Esteves.
My program today is the ninth in a series of programs that present poems written by poets living in various geographic regions of the country. Today's program is the third program focusing on New York. I read poems by poets who are part of the New York School of poetry, whose home was Manhattan: Frank O'Hara, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Bill Zavatsky, and Bernadette Mayer.
My program today is the eighth in a series of programs that present poems written by poets living in various geographic regions of the country. Today's program is the second program focusing on New York. I read poems by poets who lived or wrote in Brooklyn: Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, June Jordan, Vyt Bakaitis, and Suheir Hammad.
I’m delighted to offer Episode 58 of Open Windows. My program today is the seventh in a series of programs that present poems written by poets living in various geographic regions of the country. My six earlier programs in this series included poets from the Southwest, the South more broadly, the Midwest, the Mountain Region of the West, the Pacific Region, and from two of the Mid-Atlantic states, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Today's program is the first of two programs focusing on New York, which is the third Mid-Atlantic state. I read poems by poets from what is known as Upstate New York: Mary Panza, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anthony Hecht, Carl Dennis, and Robert Creeley.
My program today is the sixth in a series of programs that present poems written by poets living in various geographic regions of the country. My five earlier programs in this series included poets from the Southwest, the South more broadly, the Midwest, the Mountain Region of the West, and the Pacific Region. Today I read poems by poets from that part of the Northeast known as the Mid-Atlantic states, principally New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I will read poems from the third Mid-Atlantic state, New York, in my next program. Poets today are Peter Balakian, Joyce Kilmer, Alicia Ostriker, Patti Smith, Craig Czury, Kerry Shawn Keys, and Patricia Goodrich.
My program today is the fifth in a series of programs that present poems written by poets living in various geographic regions of the country. My four earlier programs in this series included poets from the Southwest, the South more broadly, the Midwest, and the Mountain Region of the West. Today I read poems by poets from that part of the West known as the Pacific Region, which includes the states of Alaska, Oregon, Washington, California, and Hawaii. They are Theodore Roethke, William Stafford, Jewel, Meliza Bañales, Garrett Hongo, and Clarissa Mendiola.