A Practical Poetry Podcast With Dale Biron: Recent Episodes
Dale Biron
Poems are practical. They have sharp elbows and can take care of themselves. Poems help us in many ways. Still, you can't force a poem to do anything. However, once it decides, you can't stop it either. Join me at the intersection of poetry and remembrance, understanding, growth, balance, inspiration, gratitude, and healing. Here you'll find poetry earning a living, one word at a time.
I think we need more creativity in every aspect of our lives—as individuals, community members, workers, and especially as Earthlings. Among the qualities that creativity demands, an appetite for uncertainty is high on that list. Moreover, it is true that creativity is the key to our freedom.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s prospects of securing victory in the upcoming Senate Primary seem promising, despite the seemingly insurmountable odds stacked against him. His relatively new political status and the opposition from corporate-backed politicians of both parties who oppose his stance on universal healthcare present significant challenges. Dr. El-Sayed’s stance advocates for supporting average working people and keeping money within the country to fund programs that benefit US citizens.
So much adds to the noise, so little strengthens the signal. Here's a poem to bring you back to yourself...
Music. Magic. Meaning. A fresh new way to look at the poems you love or may soon discover that you love...
Hummingbirds never do this. They don’t land on trails and simply sit there. But that’s only half the story. The other half is about poetry’s fierce way of confronting whatever life presents—joy, happiness, awe, loss, and grief. Yes, loss and grief in particular.This video is about My Movie
The political slogan “other people’s money” has persisted because it taps into our innate sense of fairness. However, it falters when it assumes that wealth is created independently of the society that facilitates, produces, and protects it.
Of course, prosperity is individually earned, but it is also collectively enabled. Moreover, we haven’t even touched on how wealth concentration tends to “rig the game” economically and politically, resulting in an increasing burden on average people while fewer societal benefits accrue to them.
In this context, let’s embark on a new conversation about fairness. This week’s poem is dedicated to an emerging politician, Abdul El-Sayed, who is leading this new conversation on fairness with remarkable skill.
I am aware of no other poet who has delved into the profound depths of human emotions with such remarkable skill as Rainer Maria Rilke.
Nine Proven Ways To Be More Human
- Practice loving kindness, first as an inside job.
- Cherish and serve your sentient Mother Earth.
- Feel life as deeply and fully as you can.
- Walk straight. Don’t wobble. One thing at a time.
- Let your art come from and teach you silence.
- Believe, not in your own press clippings.
- Grow organic tomatoes, and share them.
- Always remember, awareness is curative.
- Love the world as the whole self we are.
–Dale Biron
There is compelling research that supports this notion. This week’s episode features an exceptionally talented poet who elucidates just one of the numerous ways individuals are captivated by poetry…
How Are You?
Every time you ask a stranger,
this: How are you? And a smile
comes galloping back your way.
And in that moment, of only
seconds really, where two people
have passed on a path or a sidewalk?
Their answer: Fine, how are you?
Just know that you are not tearing
or ripping at the fabric of us all.
But that you are gently repairing,
weaving, healing ever so slightly,
small patches in the family of things.
– Dale Biron
What part of yourself do you treat like a stranger? Here is a poem for you that might help. I mean help you welcome that part back...
What’s the heart’s intelligence and how does it work on those locked places inside you? Not sentimentality or impulsiveness. But the mysterious human capacity to: intuit, risk, feel, trust, and remain open, even after disappointment. By the way, all things AI cannot do.
Picture credit for lock and key: karthick Narain
I believe there is a thing in all of us that "dreams of trees," as Mary Oliver so wonderfully describes in this week's poem. A part of us that yearns for some peace and quiet. And yet, the world, both outside us and inside, rarely cooperates. And especially not these days.
Being wrong while also being certain is an unskilled combination. Most of us know people who exhibit this tendency. A pertinent question arises: can humility be cultivated, learned, privileged, and culturally supported? I do hope the answer is yes? Are you with me?
Humility
Some people,
we would love it,
if they had a little more.
Maybe even the false kind,
would be better than none,
Humility, it’s kryptonite for hubris,
those, never right, but always certain.
So attention please, all you AI CEOs
and soulless BOT machines too!
We will gladly provide you
copyright permission
to train on this poem.
You’re welcome!
Sign here.
–Dale Biron
Of course, it’s all in the news for good reason. Time to hear from Mother Earth about what AI expert Tristan Harris describes as AI's infinite curve of possibility, juxtaposed right up against its infinite curve of risk...
"There is an intelligence deep down
below the surface called stories,
but if told wrong, they can kill you..."
Did the renowned poet Rilke realize by the time he passed away in 1926 that one of his famous poems would be recited a century later and would serve as a catalyst for a significant change in your life?
There need not be an exact fit here, with this self-guided poetry test. A partial one will do. The main thing I look for, is what I call poetry’s small but persistent tug. Do you feel such a thing? It can come with joy and celebration or equally with pain and grief. Either way, if poems find their way to you, even a few times a month or year or decade, you might be some kind of poetry person, one who needs a few good lines from time to time...
Imagine transforming into a wolf for a year, not forever. Your life would become exhilarating yet perilous. Would you endure? And if you did, how might this transformative experience alter you? Before you answer, contemplate its potential impact on your standing within the pack. Also, remember that your howling communication could travel up to ten miles in open spaces. Go ahead, we're listening...!
Not every human need is served by markets and market efficiency. Take love for example...
How do you honor the passing of a dear friend, a friend of many years? If you’re a lover of poetry, you’ll likely find a poem that captures the moment. Alternatively, you can write one with great humility, gratitude, and love.
Maybe we ought not fight our overwhelm. At least not so hard. Perhaps it is better to flow with it, ride it, simply let it be. This week’s poem says let your overwhelm compost and transform you. It says permission granted to be overwhelmed any time needed.
No not truth with a capital "T" which words can never capture. Rather words that point toward the truth and help us find it more easily. Words that can help us see illusion and then tiptoe around it with a little more ease.
Bad Bunny was right about the power of love over hate. But how do we bring that wisdom into our own daily lives? How can we do our own heart work, bringing more empathy, vulnerability, intuition, and deep connection into our lives? How can we fully tap into all the gifts of our logical, linear strategic minds, without shortchanging our hearts? So many of the world's challenges are the result of leaving the heart out of our core life decisions.
What Is True Is Already So
So Might As Well Speak It
My heart is a small quivering hand,
planting seeds in the dead of winter.
My days are an old dog, prone to wagging,
then quietly laying down to escape in sleep.
My hope is a tall hill of hurt, a train
run off its tracks. A scared squirrel
staring back thru a January window.
Consider how music redeems everything.
How its inner light excites. The way our
bodies know exactly what to do with rhythm.
My courage is a slow sunset, ocean waves
barely singing, the cold sand under my feet,
stretching out for miles. That’s my new home.
–Dale Biron
How I Feel About Politics
in America These Days…
OK, I’ll tell you how I feel.
I feel as frustrated as Sisyphus carrying that boulder.
I feel a fear trembling, on a crowded tongue of silence.
I feel rusty chains rattling in a pitch black basement.
Who knows what else is lurking down there? Still,
I make no proselytizing statements or political claims,
so I feel like a tender seed planted in frozen ground.
Like a lone wolf, helplessly howling in those hills.
Like a starving whale filled with plastic trinkets.
Like ten thousand dead leaves that refuse to fall.
I feel like straining sunlight never reaching the ground.
I feel the depths of the ocean destroying its own town.
Absurd as Keystone Cops, but without their laughter.
I feel like a good try in the land of never enough.
Oh, but don’t mistake any of this for giving up.
You see if I were indigenous, I would be called,
“Loses Every Battle Except For The One That Matters.”
–Dale Biron
I’m not sure which battle I mean here at the end of the poem? The one I won’t lose? The line wonderfully surprised me. Maybe it has something to do with awareness? Maybe it’s the battle with numbness and despair. Maybe it’s certainty? Maybe it regards hopium? Let’s go for real and grounded hope instead. It’s not the battle with fear, I’m definitely keeping that one. Maybe it’s the battle with insisting on being right. That’s a tough one. Maybe it’s the battle against battles? Un-win-able.
It’s 2026, and a friend asks how you’re doing with politics these days. You just shake your head, thinking, “Well, maybe, as the poet Wendell Berry said, ‘The mind that is not baffled is not employed.’ Especially these days.”
Obscurity is not freedom. Freedom is also no being a slave to attention or fashion. Mostly, freedom is freedom...
Laboring In Obscurity
In some circles,
this is considered real freedom
or better than freedom—
whatever that is?
No clicking cameras, no paparazzi,
no emails crushing your crowded inbox
asking about the next time you’ll be
in New York or London?
I declare that poetry is in no danger
of being sullied by money or fame.
Still, my next book of poems
will be available soon.
Stay tuned.
Oh, and follow
me on Instagram.
You know, the algorthum.
By Dale Biron
This poem invites us to imagine a different kind of enemy—one that doesn’t oppose or hate us, doesn’t rush us, and doesn’t need to negotiate. An enemy that patiently waits to help us become more authentic, more grounded, more humble, and human.
There’s a strange moment when trying harder actually makes everything worse—and most of us don’t realize we’re in it. What happens when we stop performing, persuading, and proving—and allow life to meet us where we are?
This deceptively brief poem, “Kind” by Leonard Nathan, holds immense depth and healing power.
Close friends reveal new worlds within us—more creative, wise, and kind versions of ourselves that might never exist without them. Express your deep gratitude to them. You could pick up the phone, write a letter, or even send this poem as a token of your appreciation.
One of the most powerful and poetic essays I've ever read. Featured this week, "Thinking Like A Mountain" by Also Leopold. Bukle up if you are ready to shift your thinking, and more importantly, your feeling about your embedded place in the natural world.
Poems are not mechanical things. Their math is a math of the heart. However, some poems are built in such a way that they are very likely to move people. Many people. Perhaps you?
Why trust this poem? It's grounded, honest, humble, no posturing. It's a poem that honors what is true and difficult, yet offers real, simple, unfettered healing advice. A poem serving up good firm support. A poem you can lean your whole weight on...
How Not To Struggle So Much In Dark Times
Friends, we’re just trying to understand, as one, as many, as Earth.
To hold things a little more lightly. Sincere? Yes. But not so serious.
To hold our fears close, where we can keep a close eye on them.
Slow our lives and bodies down, feel the sky, trees, seek more silence.
Listening for small islands of coherence, places promised by wisdom.
And may we also be humble, surprised, uncertain as the teeth are big.
So won’t you join us, help us feel the way, bore through solid rocks.
Help us acknowledge but not indulge, the bone-deep weariness
of one catastrophe after another. So that a wild untrammeled awareness,
might find us again, tethering ourselves to a fire-tested hope. And inside us,
these simple desires, to glimpse the actual thing of it, the real, the flow.
The place where spirit rises up, without struggle, to see, to feel, to know.
–Dale Biron
Here’s a poem for Zohran Mamdani. It’s not about traditional politics, billionaires, or big money. Especially, not about billionaires. It's not about political labels, often used to confuse and anger people. It is about average citizens, the hardworking folks, and everyone who just wants a good life, done the right way.
Zohran Mamdani is modeling a possible future in American politics, that is more wise, just, and affordable. In short, a pro-social vision. A future certain about its values and goals, yet wisely demonstrating the inclusive art of "maybe" regarding how to get there. (Hint: Many heads, hearts, and hands are needed.) This week's episode and poem feature a way forward, where the loud, vexatious, and pathologically certain do not rule the day.
Listen, if you’ve been waiting for special permission, here it is. If you have longed for your political perspectives to be officially declared, “Good enough to have and speak?” Then consider yourself officially supported. Maybe you’re wanting the universe to grant you a special ticket, an “eat-all-you-want” pass to the great buffet of your life? Granted! And especially if you’re waiting for fashion to change, so that how your heart hurts and breaks, becomes suddenly in style? Well, wait and wish and long, no more. For God has spoken!
Your life cannot be separated from all else, including art and all life for that matter. In this way, each of us is being called to more and deeper connections. We're being asked to grow, evolve, and become increasingly aware. Art reflects this, in plain, simple, and sometimes profoundly beautiful ways. Each of us is invited to open our minds and hearts just a little more each day. Art can't help but help.
Stories age out. Their prescribed rituals grow demented and destructive. Stories become untethered from reality, serving no one, including the Earth and all inhabitants. Turns out, hospicing these stories is the price of our passage to a more life- and planet-affirming future.
The 85%/15% Rule Of Effective Citizen Action. It says to marinate your mind and heart in 85% beauty, art, nature, and nurturing relationships to inform your best, most skillful, most inspired 15% actions you take in the world...
PATHMAKER THERE IS NO PATH WE MAKE THE PATH BY WALKING… –Antonio Machado / Robert Bly Translation
The practice of unrestrained, uber-criticism towards ourselves and others is almost never helpful. Very often, we are well-oiled machines of criticism, again aimed at ourselves first and foremost, then others as a byproduct. Why? Often it stems from a desire to be perfect.
The writer Anne Lamott put it this way: "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people."
Our minds are increasingly becoming domesticated, taken over by prescribed strategies, markets, algorithms, clocks, bureaucracies, and conformity. Of course, we need productivity and a degree of control in order to live our lives. But our many complex challenges – climate collapse, ecological overshoot, increasing isolation and loneliness, vulnerability to demagogues – their politics of scapegoating... will not be resolved by our domesticated minds.
There’s been a palace coup. For fifty years, our logical, linear, analytical selves have been in charge. It’s not wrong or bad in and of itself. At least until this side of us gained a kind of absolute “monopoly” power. It’s turned into a profound overreach. In essense, we’ve domesticated ourselves and are headed for catastrophe, politically and ecologically. My new course, begs to differ, challenge, and balance. Most important, it seeks to renew, revive, and rewild.
At The Fromm Institute in San Francisco, starting on Thursday September 11th and continuing for 8 weeks – In person, on-line, and recorded. Link for registration: https://lnkd.in/g4PYuCm8
I say argue with poems not people. First of all, you’ve got to get clear about how you actually think and feel before you go blathering away at others. And that’s huge and potentially helpful no matter what else you do. Second when you argue inside a poem, it let’s others see your perspective without making it personal. Even when your perspectives are strong and doctrinaire, people can hear them with a little more objectivity when they themselves are not being attacked.
A good poem invites you to walk inside and have your own experience. It becomes a room to wander, feel, and carry with you. Savor that gift—and pass it on.
The last few lines are often where poems bloom or detonate. Slow down. Let them land. Even the poet, maybe especially the poet, must be surprised.
These are the lines that shimmer with more-than-words, inviting you to stop, feel, and be changed. Not every poem has a heartline—but the ones that stay with you always do.
Silence speaks volumes—before, between, and after words and lines. Listen carefully to what poems don't say, as much as what they do. Sometimes a pause will include repeating a line or lines, and playing with inflection. And if we listen deeply, poems will signal precisely where the quiet wants to be.
Don’t Perform – Speak The Poem… Let the poem live and breathe through you.Speak as if sharing something private and true, not putting on a show.
Despair is that feeling of "ending" full stop. As if nothing can, or will ever change again. Cahnge can, and will happen. No feeling is final... Just begin again!
Stay tuned for a new format and new episodes beginning July 4, 2025. In the meantime, I'll be giving talks and teaching at The Fromm Institute. More details here: https://courses.fromminstitute.org/posts/84396387?utm_source=manual
This poem is wonderfully subversive when it comes to exposing the biggest lie reinforced by our cultural stories...
A good poem will interest, excite, and move you. You don’t need to “try” to like a good poem. So if a poem does not move you… move on! There is so much poetry, you can be picky.
A greatefulness practice can transform your life. But what happens when feeling grateful seems difficult, or even impossible? Here's a story and a poem that may help. (PS: GRATEFUL.ORG is an amazing resource for your gratefulness practice, co-founded by Brother David Steindl-Rast)
Some poems are so good... they can give us a kind of fresh start. Deliver gifts for the head and heart. Help us change our minds and moods...
"Heroes are all about straightening things out.
The courageous love the curves as much as the straights..."
–Dale Biron
That old kind of hope, "hope 1.0" is no longer up to the task. It is being replaced, and not a second too soon...
Use this poem to regain your center, agency, and way... even in these most difficult times!
"Friends, we’re trying to understand, as one, as many, as Mother Earth.
And it can be as daunting as catching smoke with our bare hands."
–Dale Biron
Asking Me To "Stand With The Dems"
You keep asking for more money, and for me to “stand with the Dems.” I’ll stand with the Dems when they actually take a stand for us all. I’ll stand with the Dems when they break a few rules, peacefully yes, creatively for sure, forcefully, of course, as when dealing with any bully. I’ll stand with the Dems when they clean up their own act, rejecting our billionaire-backed political system, a.k.a. the coin-operated, oligarch plan. I’ll stand with the Dems when they stand for something real. I’ll stand with the Dems when they stop focusing on how bad “they” are and start focusing on how good “we all” could be. Which reminds me, where’s the Dem Party’s version of a Project 2025 Plan? Repeat after me, “ecological sanity, healthcare for all, bribery out of politics, ERA finally done, democracy at work, fair taxes, zero tolerance for monopolies and oligarchs, fair pay for fair work, robust peace process, applied equality.” Also, remember that political election outcome you were so afraid of? Me too! Well, it’s happened, now what? Why not say and do things that are pro-human, and pro-earth? Why not say and do things that aren’t hedge-fund approved, or billionaire-purchased, nor focus-group-backed, or sanctioned by political consultants, and please, no more tiny, “moving the Titanic deck chairs” incremental steps that keep serving up all that milquetoast, “business as usual” disappointment. Listen Dems, you feel me? I’ll stand up tall with you, even give a little money, if you’ll just keep it real. I mean really real.
–Dale Biron
We are helpless mapmakers. We can’t stop drawing lines, creating meaning, and shaping stories to explain the world around us. It’s how we navigate life—through beliefs, assumptions, and the mental landscapes we construct. But if we combine this irresistible human trait with the deepest wisdom we have—the kind that recognizes our profound interconnectedness—then maybe, just maybe, we can chart a path toward survival, even flourishing.
The most pressing question is: What kind of maps are we making? And where are they leading us?
If we look inside ourselves, each of us has places in our lives of brokenness, sorrow, and grief. Places that have strung us out to dry... What then? That's when this week's poem comes in handy.
Can a humorous poem make serious points? Yes. Poems can help us make sense of the world. Poems can help us ask new, sometimes uncomfortable questions. A just right poem can help us write whole new ways of seeing and feeling the world, and what's going on in it...
How To Be Less Fearful (to remind myself)
"What if we, are the only Calvary that’s actually coming?
What if the kindness we seek, we must bring ourselves...?"
–Dale Biron
Finding moments of sanity, refuge, and even joy, is more critical than ever. This week's special poem is a potent reminder of this...
Listen to one of the most popular poems, from one of the most popular poets in the last 100 years...
"There is no requirement to read, or hear, or write anything!
But why not? If I were empowered by The Great Gods
of Permission, I would provide you vast Amazon rivers of it.
Baptize, forgive, and bless you with it. After all, language is
your human super power, the only tool you can’t put down...."
–Dale Biron
Of all the things poems can do, one of them is to help us work with catastrophic loss, to grieve and make sense of the senseless...
We would be shocked and eventually saddened to hear someone say this to us. Everyone has a favorite song, right? Of course, they do! But today, let's go beyond our favorite songs and ponder our favorite poems. I want us to be equally shocked if someone cannot name their favorite poem. It may actually become even more critical in our lives.
Also, we'll feature a brilliant poem for we mortals, we who are confronting greater and greater levels of difficulty and vulnerability in this world. Who knows, maybe this featured poem will become one of your favorites?
How can we weave more beauty and meaning into our lives in 2025, in the face of so many profound challenges and difficulties?
Thanks so much to each of you who have been on this poetry-based journey during 2024. In case you're in need of a collection of essays that hitches up some amazing poems with those traits that are most needed by leaders, here it is. The book is a few years old, but the poems and leadership qualities featured are timeless. Stay tuned for 2025 and a whole new series of poetry enhanced podcasts...
Find the Book here: (https://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Leader-Inside-You Mission/dp/1421837978)
"The world is not made of atoms but of stories," said poet Muriel Rukeyser. This means good, beautiful, pro-social stories (which are often poems!) can help overcome the most unjust, anti-social, and destructive stories. Here's a poem that does just that...
Perhaps we need to be a bit more humble, more careful, before we declare that we've won or lost. In this cast, the west. Turns out winning and losing may have everything to do with our timeframe, and that these binary categories we so often use, may not be up to the task. Here's a poem that muses on this very subject...
Your true story is important. I don’t know its contents and contours, but I’m certain it exists. It reflects the world, and your uniquely entangled and wondrous place within it. Your true story lies deep within your body, at a kind of soul level, we might say. It has something to do with what gives you joy, satisfaction, and clarity, combined paradoxically, with what, over the years, has also scared you, and broken your heart wide open. You may have heard parts of this story, but there's always more to discover and tell if fully, and wholeheartedly invited. You are hereby fully, and wholeheartedly invited.
Let's start a small, but significant political revolution with poetry. When someone asks you for your money and support, first give your heartfelt ideas, feelings, and opinions about what is right and wrong with politics. If they listen and respond well, then consider your support and money.
Write your own special declaration to Mother Earth and to the sanctity of your own interior self, meaning your heart and imagination...
A Paradox After the Election
It is 7:27 PM, Wednesday, November 6th, and I am tired, even of hope.
Or maybe it is hope, that’s grown old, and now helplessly tired of me.
I long for a place of equanimity, where nothing can easily attach itself
to what feels like permanently me. Choosing “now,” is likely all there is.
And suspecting that at least half of this feels like some kind of paradox,
I must first choose “yes,” and then at the same time “no,” as is needed.
–Dale Biron
Could it be we do not trust some things that we should, and do trust other things that we should not?
To scapegoat. To play fast and loose with the truth and especially with blame. To add insult to injury. To ignore any and all logical and systemic connections between cause and effect. To refuse any chance for deep, just, and real solutions. These are the dangerous moves of the demagogue...
To "know about" something is largely an intelectual endevor. It's helpful, but incomplete. To actually "know" something deep in our bones, we must "feel" it more fully, which invites both the head and the heart to the party. This merging of our intellect with our emotions provides the possibility of wisdom. Poetry can help.
The world is made of stories. You are a story. Everyone you know and love is a story. Let's not accept stories about ourselves, others, or the world that are old, tattered, and no longer work...
Does Mother Earth need a restraining order? This is one of several questions we tackle in this edition of the Dale Biron On Poetry Podcast. We also want to know the relationship between probability and possibility? Hint, living in possibility is pretty important...
Once you've extracted as much learning as you can from your past mishaps, mistakes, and misfortunes, it’s best to simply let it all go…
Courage is to "know" our heart, and to "follow" it. In times of great turmoil and difficulty, it becomes even more important to do so. As in these times...
Once we are part of this mysterious, unfathomable, undefinable, condition we call life, we are in (and within) the universal club of kindness.
Can a poem explain the power of anger? Yes, the right poem, and the right kind of anger... Righteous anger.
There will be times when you can place your body into the natural world, to walk, see, feel, hear and touch. And there will be times when you can’t. But you can still seek healing solace.
Might there be a poem equal to a cat video? Can a critter help cure our sadness, even our subtle but irreversible sadness?
Here's how to read poems for optimum inspiration, joy, and impact. (Relax. Renew. Repeat...)
War is necessary, needed, and natural… Wait, is this actually so? Powerful poems can help us push up against our cultural beliefs and expectations, especially the ones that are no longer serving us. This is one of my favorites mind and heart decolonization tools. A poem by Pablo Neruda, that says let’s just be quiet for a time...
Our worst grudge is the one we hold, often unwittingly, against ourselves. It's the one that does the greatest damage. Time for forgiveness...
Sometimes increasing our peace of mind becomes our highest priority. This poem may help...
New stories, powerful metaphors, and compelling images, are arriving now daily. And not a moment too soon, because the old narratives have lost virtually all of their credibility, and certainly all of their magic. It's new cultural "pickle juice" we need, now more than ever...
We are social beings. We make, consume and live by the stories we share with others. Stories that help us see and feel, think and navigate the world and our place in it. Stories that eventually define what passes for what we call our common sense....
As the extraordinary teacher and public intellectual, Bayo Akomolafe once put it, “The times are urgent: Let’s slow down...” In this episode we contemplate what it would be like to start again, to start fresh, to start small and go slow...
If we really want to have greater "agency" in this world (and at the same time, joy) we're going to need our dear friends by our side. In this episode we'll look at poetry that celebrates those we call our friends.
Resistance, Resilience, Renewal: Poetry’s Power in Turbulent Times...
In this course, we’ll take a journey through the tumultuous landscapes of contemporary society, guided by the bright beacon of poetry. Through readings, discussions, and provocative inquiries, we will uncover the ways in which poetry serves as a practical and potent force for resistance, resilience, and renewal in the face of ecological, political, and societal upheaval. The course is tailored for those seeking to deepen their engagement with pressing issues and cultivate strategies for personal and collective empowerment through the transformative power of poetry. All levels of past poetry engagement are welcome and will feel at home.
(Final Dates and Times TBA. If you will be in the SF, CA Bay area this Fall, please join me...)
"Look. The poppies
they are at it again
exploding on the
hills with their deep
yellow flames and / supple hearts..."
Excerpt from "Sun Trail" by Dale Biron
If you actually love poetry, it’s not because you chose to do so in any traditional sense. We choose poetry because something mysterious and deep in our body chooses for us.
If you want to simultaneous enjoy your life, have better relationships, and get more things done, then you'll need to spend more time in your personal optimal zone. That includes having more fun. This week is all about that...
We all want to fulfill the "why" of our lives. Therefore, how we "pickle" ourselves matters. Or said another way, the "context" we create for ourselves and others will determine how successful we are at creating the vision and world that is most important to us.
The simple, basic, foundational fact we must understand to be successful in any creative (especially artistic) endeavor...
When we create stories about human nature, based upon observing traumatized humans, we get a picture that is both predictable and wrong. –Musings of a Poet
A Post-Humanist world would be one that fully embraced a "more than human world..." This week's episode continues to explore this theme, and features a powerful and poetic quote by David Abram, who coined the phrase used in the title. Plus one of the most famous poems written by the brilliant poet, Robinson Jeffers.
"...We must un-humanize our view of the world just a little,
make being of service, as needed and as sacred as sunlight.
Invite both head and heart, home, to a welcomed wholeness.
Declare joy and having "enough" the newest kind of envy..."
–Dale Biron
What if we are up to our collective axels in mud? What if our political and ecological ideas, beliefs, and actions are getting us nowhere? What if we've got to get lost (on purpose) to actually move forward. What if a condition for sane progress is to first arrange for our own disappearance?
What if philosopher-poet, Bayo Akomolafe is right when he says, "The way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis..."
In these times of political, social, and ecological challenge and disruption, to what should we pay attention? Well certainly the ability to come back to our "center" is critical. In other words, having the ability to make our personal "optimal zone" a place where we spend more and more of our time. Solving your 37th problem is at the core of it all...
PS: If you're interested in the work of the Context Institute, in particular their Bright Future Now Program, that I mentioned in this podcast, here is the link for the current cohort that is forming: context.org/bfnow/.
Let's reimagine both hope and despair. Truth is, hope and despair make uneasy friends. Our categorical, binary culture, insists on our choosing one or the other. But what if both despair and hope live deep in our hearts and minds at this time? What if to be skillful and resilient in our lives, we must acknowledge and embrace both?
Forgiveness? It can become your super power. Start with others. Slowly. Pace yourself. It’s no cakewalk, but forgiving others can often be a tad easier. A way to get started. Eventually, as your powers increase you can do the really heavy lifting of forgiving yourself.
Real hope, meaning decent odds for passing through the coming political, social, and ecological bottlenecks we face throughout the world, will require a deep partnership between our minds and hearts. That is to say, our many civilization-threatening meta-crisis predicaments are too big, too mature, too complex for anything short of "artful" responses. Here's how...
Of course, there's no algorithm or "set of rules" for writing (or for that matter, discovering) beautiful, stunning, memorable poems. But after working with thousands of people and the poems they fell in love with, I've discovered a simple set of characteristics that can help. Three essential qualities that can point us toward the poetry we are much more likely to appreciate and yes, love.
WANTED: HUMANS TO CREATE AND SPREAD NEW, HELPFUL STORIES... When it comes to the META-CRISIS we face, we not only have an old story, it's a bad story. The kind that's leading us off a very high cliff. Replacing our own story is the first step, and is more critical than ever.
"You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or you can have democracy. But you cannot have both." –U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (See what happens when artificial intelligence meets artful intelligence.)
Perhaps there's never been a time on this earth, when tiny moments of restful joy, and small islands of utter happiness were more needed. The recipe for moments of utter happiness is no mystery. It's one part Attention, one part Gratitude, mixed with a generous portion of "Let it Be-ism."
Listen, you can’t just read a poem. Not a good one. Not a poem that
moves you. Not one that stops you in your tracks, has you look closely,
walk inside it, have your own experience. Without you, the reader, the
listener, the poem is nothing...
What if a New Year could talk? What would it say? Maybe it feels like we lean on "it" a little too hard, for the things we want, but constantly choose not to do for ourselves...
"Because poetry, if it takes fire, cracks people’s masks, and assaults arrogance, and sucks you beneath the surface of words towards why we use them...." –Brian Doyle
Stay A Cheap Date… To up your gratefulness game, stay amazed by a cool glass of water, a summer tomato, a hug, a curious question asked by a loving friend, a simple walk in the forest, the sound of a guitar, a new poet you never heard before, (or many times before) that rocks your world.
Of course, social media includes a daily diet of vitriol and shrillness. And there are perverse structural algorithms that reinforce the fomenting of anger, division, and fear as a way to capture human attention and ultimately make money. And yes, I also know there are deep human intentions to help and serve, evident on every social media platform I've examined.
Who could blame us for wanting to place the tray table of our fears, concerns, and at times despair, in its full upright and locked position? That is to say, we need a break from having our hearts continually shocked, upended, and broken...
A cash crop poem is one that helps and inspires us in so many ways. We go back to them time and time again. But why and how do they work?
Your heart seeks its own reflected images. After reading and speaking at least a million lines of poetry, here are some of my favorite ones, and the poets who wrote them.
I think you'll discover that when your heart finds those just right few written lines that speak your feelings, better than you’ve been able to speak them, you'll be smitten. Of course, each one of us has a heart that seeks its own reflected images. Images of joy, grieving, wonder, and awe.
Could recognizing more fully our relationships and context change everything, particularly when it comes to our ecological meta-crisis? And might an absence of this awareness keep us stuck for a very long while? Stay tuned for the poem-story,
How deeply ironic that the perspectives, beliefs and stories we now most need to help us heal the earth and avert an even greater catastrophe, were once scorned as bad, primitive, naive and yes... pagan. I beg to differ!
Maybe a better strategic plan is not what we need right now. Maybe we need to get lost on purpose, to break away from the ironclad certainty of "doom" on one end and the "business as usual" denial on the other.
Einstein said we couldn't solve problems at the same level of thinking that created them. And because we know it's true but won't admit it, our modern political, social, and ecological predicaments are growing. They've skidded beyond our grasp and beyond our traditional corrective powers.
Perhaps it's time for a strange new and undefinable alliance between the head and the heart. Time to take on The Tricksters mannerisms and temperament. Time to embrace The Trickster's creatively non-strategic, disruptive tools and techniques. In this episode, we'll consider these ideas, looking at a special kind of trickster... The Trickster-Poet.
Our modern culture can no longer resolve the predicaments it's creating. The difficulties and tensions are playing out socially, economically, politically, and especially ecologically. And yet, there are sources of wisdom available to us.
One source is the poetic tradition, which implores us to slow down, honor our intellects, yes, but also honor and reclaim our hearts. Reclaim our ability to feel more fully, integrating both head and heart. And to imagine new ways of being in the world, discerning more clearly the signal above the noise.
There are many things we want to change, make different, make better. From personal changes, to massive political and ecological transformations. The first skillful and effective step is ending our battle with reality.
So here is the thing about being human. We are story-based animals. We become ourselves through stories. It’s the narrative pickle juice in which we marinate. We might not have direct effect on the juice of our big old social pickling project. But we can control our own little pickle jar. It’s juice. And if we practice, we can get a little more calm, when triggered. We can grow a little more quiet and wise within, with Others, and with the great Other. We can become more helpful and kind. Walk each other home. Pickle ourselves daily, anyway we want.
Let's talk about about a different kind of faith. The faith needed for the challenges and predicaments ahead, both personal and collective. A faith not requiring supernatural beliefs. Let's also talk about a kindred type of grounded hope as well.
An amazing poet, who through her art, provides a master class on the traits we need to skillfully face the predicaments and challenges of our wild and fierce modern lives. And one more trait I'll add to the list for Wislawa Szymborską... stunningly wise.
OK, just get comfortable wherever you’re seated. It will help if your back is straight. If you can and it’s comfortable, close your eyes and take a few deep, cleansing breaths to center yourself. Allow your body and mind to relax, releasing as best you can, any tension or stress. Let’s start by simply hearing this brief poem in full. Then we'll pass back through a few selected lines from the poem with some gentle instructions and invitations.
You will never be alone, you hear so deep / a sound when autumn comes... (One of the most uplifting poems ever.)
How can a poem be both simple and unfathomable at the same time? Truth is, really good poems lift off the page, taking us to those new frontier places in ourselves. Places where words and language perform a kind of magic.
Our current economy is at war with the earth. Here's a story and vision, disguised as a poem to help us stay real, centered, and effective in these opportunity-laden, tragic, and yes, beautiful times. An era when our human agency is deeply required. (This episode is dedicated to the work of Lisi Krall, Professor of Economics at SUNY Cortland.)
ENJOY THIS QUICK POETIC TAKE... Here's a poem describing the greatest challenge most of us will ever face in our closest relationships. Using simple images and delicious metaphors, this poem is hard to forget and cuts right to the heart of the matter.
If you have ever shared your home and life with a critter you loved, this episode is for you. What words might we choose to honor the animal beings that have given us so much happiness and joy? And, of course, grief at their passing. The cat, dog, horse, goat, cow, or creature of your choice that has become kindred spirits with those of us lucky enough to walk this path alongside them.
What if an established norm in society, a hidebound institution, a way of thinking, or a whole economic system is simply wrong? (For example, the vastly ineffective way we are dealing with our climate and earth overshoot predicament.) Can Art (and poetry in particular) help set it right? Even "nudge" it a little bit forward and toward wholeness.....
In a world where we are besieged by exaggeration, hype, and nearly nonstop puffery, might there be a legitimate, simple and realistic way to tap into greater skillfulness, satisfaction, and yes, happiness?
Forget the flashy courage of heroes. The poet calls courage an act of knowing, speaking, and following the deeper directions of the heart. It is the wisdom of enough. It is the wisdom of no separation. A simple and honest courage, that even we, the flawed, vulnerable, and ordinary ones, may actually be able to render, in this, our rocky, grieving, and beautiful world...
When does a poem become "your" perfect poem?
- Most importantly, the poem must be relatable.
- It must not be closed-off and insultingly clear.
- The poem can make points, but not tip over into propaganda.
- It must tell a meaningful story using images, metaphors, big language.
- Perfect poems help us integrate head and heart, re-center, re-member who we are when at our best.
Courage is needed to skillfully face our ecological meta-crisis. But the question is, what kind of courage? The wrong kind will not work, and may actually make things worse. In this episode we feature a poem that provides some wise counsel regarding this issue of courage...
We know what to do in traditional emergencies. But what of the confusion, fear, and often excruciating pain that defines the necessary emergence into a new ecological and planetary era?
What moves will you make and what stories will you tell to help yourself and others stay calm and centered? What relationship and facility will you have with despair? What kinds of truth and fire-tempered hope will even be possible? What will you load into your “emergent” fire extinguisher?
In this episode we consider a world where activism has ceased to work, or work in the ways we wish and imagine. So what then? Are we ready? Of course not. Strategic plans may be contraindicated...
Poet, Philosopher, Bayo Akomolafe (featured in this episode) describes Postactivism this way. "Postactivism, the concept that informs my notion of making sanctuary, is a matter of irruptions and eruptions, breakthroughs, cracks, flashes, fissures, fault lines, discontinuities, blasts, splits, rifts, ruptures, seismic shifts, world-ending openings, miracles, strange encounters, and the yawning maw of a monster. It is my way of describing the flows and possibilities that proceed from the moment when things no longer fit."
The words we use can be our best friend (or) worst enemy. What happens when the enemy in our language shows up, but we urgently need an ally and friend? Here's a way forward, a way to befriend our words again...
Could it be that doing and feeling better in the world, requires us to think smaller not bigger? Might this is the way forward, tip-toeing toward small but significant acts of redemption?
As a poet-story teller, I'm keenly interested in the role of each of us that hears and tells stories (and poems) in a time of ecological crisis? This, of course includes you and me and everyone living on this earth...
If we love the world fully, we can't help but do the right things. Conversely, without a deep love and reverence for the world, nothing we do will work. In this episode we will protest our current ecological predicaments and praise the world with equal fervor.
Can the same poem trade in both heartbreak and healing? Can the story of the poem help us witness a difficult and sometimes terrifying reality while also laying down footsteps, even faint ones to follow on a path toward healing?
How do you handle not knowing? Is it disorienting? Do you rush to a resolution? A rush to feel, anything other than uncertainty? What if we could allow a little more "not knowing" in our lives? So when we do get a glimpse of insight, it's even more impactful and yes, pleasurable?
Mostly, we don't even realize it. That we're perpetually waiting for some other "thing" to happen or "condition" to be true, before we allow ourselves to be happy. What do we want? A perfect world, that lines up with our desires. We want better thoughts and emotions. We want the goal to be accomplished, the dream achieved, and to have the just-right job or relationship.
Certain poems can help us make better friends with "reality," help us shift the whole way we think and feel about happiness. Yes, maybe even help us be more happy, more of the time...
Why do so many of us love the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke? It's simple. He helps us see, understand, and experience the world through fresh, creative, more imaginative eyes. Rilke's poetry is accessible, sensual, and rich with meaning. Enjoy...
Can a poem help us answer one of the greatest ecological questions of our time? If we can't own our love (and need) for fossil fuels, how are we ever going to wisely phase out their use? Poetic help and hope is on the way...
What if we need more than our mind to think more fully and skillfully? What if we need the whole world, especially the natural world to think more clearly, more creatively, and with less reaction and fear?
One of the most wrong-headed, destructive, and patentlyfalse ideas regarding our current state of economics, politics, and ecology is something called T.I.N.A. which is short for "There Is No Alternative." Let's let a poem help us see just how false this notion really is...
Are your words making a difference in the world? Are others listening? What would it take to be heard more fully? If what you're saying is not having the impact you would like, then this episode of Poetry, Gossip, and The Pursuit of Pleasure may be for you. This is the podcast dedicated to using the power of poetry in our everyday lives…
The hour is late, do you know where your spirit is tonight? These are spirit and soul-sapping times. Listen to this beautiful and practical narrative poem to help call your spirit back, to help you grow more centered, strong and balanced...
Each of us needs to feel an unwavering support in this world, especially as we approach the outer edges and frontiers of our lives. Helping us navigate these foreign lands, seeing our path more clearly, learning what we need to learn. We especially need help when lost and in trouble. The right poems give us this needed support. They are like bread in the pockets of the hungry, life vests thrown to the drowning...
What words do you need to say or hear when you are afraid?
Here's just a taste of some delicious, soothing words you just might need in your poetry first aid kit. You will hear these words by Poet William Stafford in his poem, "Assurance" and much more..."You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes."
Can we turn "not knowing" into a friend? When it comes to the great ecological and related political challenges we face, can we turn “not knowing” and even "bafflement" into our ally? Yes, however our actions must be taken with great skill, curiosity, and most important, humility.
"How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?" This fierce question by PoetStanley Kunitz is the genesis for this episode. Truth is we'll never be able to address the ecological and political predicaments we face, unless we get better at letting go without giving up. Not letting go in defeat or resignation, but rather in a firm desire to build new reservoirs of strength and resiliency. Characteristics that allow us to come back again and again to our most passionate causes and projects more centered, calm, and strong.
How can you "speak" a poem so the mind relaxes and the heart listens more deeply? Here are 6 simple "poem whisperer" principles you can put in to immediate use to inspire yourself and others with the poetry you most love.
Dale Biron's Poem Whispering Principles
- If you love a poem, own it for yourself and others.
- Always read poems with just a skosh of liveliness.
- Repeat a line if it demands to be spoken again.
- Go with the flow, not too fast and not too slow.
- Feature the poem's best punch line.
- Invite more silence into your poem speaking.
You may need "small islands of coherence" in your life, even more than you know. In this episode we will review an amazing poem by Pablo Neruda that might just be what you need... at least in one critical corner of your wonderful, unique, and precious life.
What is beautiful is not only exciting, engaging, and pleasurable... It is wildly practical, as well. It simply works better than anything else! Please don't try to accomplish what is most important to you, without it.
It's a serious question. Despite our intentions, we often sabotage our own best interests, including (and especially) doing things that conspire against our happiness. It doesn't have to be this way. Here are poems, stories, and quotes to deepen your ability to take your own side and yes, be more happy as well...
Of all the poets I’ve included in my talks, workshops, and in 1-1 coaching over the years, Mary Oliver has been the best known and most loved. I’ve recommended her poems so often, I’ve lost track of the number. By featuring some of her best work, I hope to show why she’s been so cherished, loved, and well received over the years.
3 Soul Talk Questions...
- What's the price of feeling disconnected from our soul?
- Has that price become too high to pay?
- What language is needed for our soul conversation?
I recently published an article with a online publication on the Medium platform called "Better Humans." It’s turning out to be one of the most popular things I’ve published. At the heart of the article is our question for this episode, Can poetry make us less crazy? The actual title went like this – How to Use Poetry to Live a Better, Saner, and Happier Life... What reading a million poems taught me about life! So for this week's episode, I would like to read the essay and make a few brief comments along the way.
What makes a good, or even great poem? How do you separate the wheat from the chaff, providing yourself with the language you actually love and need for your life? Here's a simple roadmap to get you started...
What happens when hope must float in a sea of uncertainty, conflict, and loss? Can we create a more durable and resilient hope? A new fire-tested hope tethered to everyday joys, delights, and even tragedies along the way, a new hope tied not to a specific outcome but hope for doing the next right thing each step of the journey.
What in your life would you work for, sacrifice for, serve and protect? The answer, of course is what you love and cherish. What if we were to widen our loving and cherishing boundaries? And beyond our closest loved humans and critters. In fact beyond humans to the wider community of sacred beings and the sacred elements that all living beings need to thrive.
How much can we safely ignore poetry? That’s a real question and we’re going to fearlessly try to answer it in this episode. What’s at stake? I would say many things are at stake. Join me now...
Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed and even besieged by the complexity of the world? Do you struggle to make sense and meaning out of our intense environmental, political, and cultural challenges? What if there were a tool that allowed us to develop our meaning-making muscles? What if we had a tool that helped us work more skillfully with paradox, complexity, and contradiction? That tool is poetry. And that's what we're going to explore in this episode.
On one level, the people, critters, and things we love are familiar to us. At another level, it's far too easy to stop "seeing" and appreciating what is most precious to us. Our loves and connections then become obscured, a kind of secret, even to ourselves. Poetry helps us unlock these secrets, allowing us to reconnect to the wonders, delights, joys, and complexities of what we love.
Be a tree. Listen to the magic of their beckoning poems and stories. Let them hear you out as they call out in you what is wise, rooted and clear.
We are all heartbroken, so ignoring or denying it will not make it go away. However, to embrace our sorrow, and to embrace and help others with their sorrow can open up amazing possibilities. This episode is dedicated to poet-writer, Ross Gay who speaks eloquently and practically about the paradoxical relationship of sorrow and joy in his book called, "Inciting Joy." He said this, “Joy is what emanates from us as we help each other carry our sorrows. Joy understands that no one is without sorrow. Period. Everyone’s heartbroken. Which is also to say that everyone has the capacity for joy." Now, let me say this. Poetry can help. I offer these poems to all our broken hearts...
When you read or hear a "just right" poem, you will know it. The poem will delight and stun you. It will do something vital for you. Strangely, the poem will feel as if it owns you. Then, in turn you’ll feel a second wave of owning the poem back. I call it a great and sacred “claiming.” In this week’s episode, I’ll share how the process works, while revealing some poems that own me, and that I (in turn) own back.
The meta-crisis is a multitude of overlapping, interconnected global crises of ecology, perception, culture, politics, education and spirituality.The "complexity trap" means we're trapped and ineffective. At one extreme, we are blind to (or deny) complexity, so we refuse to act. At the other extreme, we are buried in complexity such that the mind and heart shut down in overwhelm and despair, again preventing action. The right, well-chosen poem helps integrate the mind and heart allowing us to stay open and present to complexity, and hopefully wiser decisions and actions.
In this episode we take on a very human feeling. A feeling we all have at times, yet a feeling no one wants. When we are in the grip of "aloneness" we often feel trapped. When our sense of separation becomes intense we can feel depressed, alienated from others, from the natural world, and ultimately ourselves. As we’ll see in this episode and reflected in the featured poems, we are truly not alone. Others have felt the way we now feel, struggled as we have struggled, and felt shame at times just as we have...
Systems theory will never be the same after we hitch up some world-class William Stafford poetry to it. "Traveling Through The Dark" Stafford's most famous poem, provides a straightforward and powerful lesson in the perils of the "specious present" and in turn how to move beyond falling victim to either ecological doom or a reality-free unearned hope. In other words, a little systems theory without the boring parts...
Sometimes the most serious subjects require the lightest, most humorous touch. These featured poets are masters at using with and humor to help us along our path, troubles and all...
Silence is a powerful tool. It's essential for any meditation practice. Yet it can also be challenging, an acquired taste as they say. What would it mean to embrace silence more fully? To love it. Here is a featured poem, a number of quotes, and a discussion about silence that I hope you will find helpful.
Do you ever lament the fact that the half-life of your clarity and best insights are often quite short? Here is a featured poem that suggests that this is only human. This is a poem that delights in the delicious, awakening act of discovering the truth again and again. Rather than try to "fix" this challenge, why not "feature" it?
"Hello just right poem... I have found you." That's the new subtitle for this practical poetry podcast. I'm headed back to the future, as they say. For many years I've delighted in helping clients, students and workshop participants find just the right poem at just the right moment. I learned long ago through my own experience that finding the right poem can make the difference between taking steps toward clarity and healing versus staying mired in confusion and pain. This featured poem addresses a difficult and thorny question that many of us have asked while experiencing a deep and profound loss. I hope it helps... (PS: I love comments. I can be reached here: dale(at)dalebiron.com)
Love may be the only workable response to the ecological devastation we face. Even fierce resistance goes better with love. To confront the sheer magnitude of our ecological polly-crisis and predicament without art in general, and poetry in particular, is not only a recipe for despair, it also reduces the likelihood of success by some major and terrifying degree.
The great writer and earth lover, Wallace Stegner once said, Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed . . . One means of sanity is to retain a hold on the natural world. Be a good animal by listening to this episode to learn many more wise things said by Wallace Stegner, including how to be a good animal.
Eco-grief is real and growing. We ignore it at our peril, especially for those who wish to act in healing support of the natural world. Poetry is a potent tool for working with all kinds of grief. In this podcast, we'll explore how poetry can become one of our most practical means of working with eco-grief, with all its complexities and paradoxical qualities.
In this episode, featuring the amazing poet William Carlos Williams, we will explore how stories that seem so right can be so wrong and damaging. Specifically, we’ll take on an incredibly enduring cultural story referred to as “The Tragedy of The Commons” most recently presented in a 1968 essay in the journal Science. It would become one of the most unquestioned, accepted and cited scientific papers ever. But what if it's simply not true...
In this episode, featuring the amazing poet Rumi, we will explore the ecological predicament we're in and how poetry can play a vital helping role. It’s never been more critical to understand the history, facts, and context of our ecological crisis.
However, if we only dwell on the difficult and painful facts, we risk overwhelm and eventually despair. Good, well-chosen poetry flies under the radar screen of the logical, linear mind directly to the heart. It allows us to more easily rest in the truth that we are already living. We might say it this way...
To hear the earth's most difficult truths
requires a mind that's receptive and open.
And to bear the full weight of those truths,
takes the strongest heart, even as it is broken.
In this way, a broken heart is not a handicap. It is the heart grown numb, incapable of feeling that is our deeper challenge. In fact, a broken heart may be the only kind of heart that is capable of engaging with our current ecological predicament with the skill and equanimity required to participate in real and effective change.
Can we be smart but not wise? Our old wisdom is failing us in dramatic ways. We have ecological challenges everywhere we look, from climate, to soil erosion, to deforestation, to habitat destruction, to vast plastic and chemical pollution, to extinctions, to ocean acidification. What happens when we forget the new ecological stories we most need to survive? The new stories that tell us we cannot continue to grow infinitely on a finite planet. Poems can help us be wiser. Poems can be our memory hacks for "re-member-ing" ourselves in more skillful ways.
“Internalities”
Imagine all those things we might begin to count, if only
all the humans were counted. Internalizing the costs of
bellies unfed, mistakes unredeemed, minds unopened,
histories untaught, context revered and protected, just as
delicate roots beneath the brilliant and beautiful daffodils.
Yes, and how democracies have hobbled themselves,
where ecologies are divided by a toxic ignoring to infinity,
a systems blindness, externalized, grown as cancer grows.
And that strangest of all places we simply call “away”
which has always been the purest form of illusion,
for our uncountable, unwanted, and thrown things.
–Dale Biron
Our current ecological "wisdom" is failing us. It is linear, reductionist, and systems blind. In this episode, we will explore poetry's role in helping us upgrade our wisdom. Featuring poetry by Wendell Berry, we will see how Context, Humility, and Paradoxical Thinking are crucial for closing the wisdom gap, particularly when it comes to our ecological predicaments and catastrophes.
Today, like every other day, mother earth kept doing
her wondrous magical spinning thing. As the sun
thrummed a vibrational magic, the light and dark
doing its eternal dance. That's when that big old
mother earth smile happened, realizing this day
was named for her. She said to all,
please, take what you need.
So the remaining bears, the wolves, hawks, butterflies,
and whales, even the scattered buffalo of Yellowstone,
took what they needed, mostly food, sunlight, water,
a gentle breeze, and a glance toward far mountains.
You know it seems that most critters understand
the concept of "enough." Only we humans are
puzzled at the idea. And then only recently,
since we tied our ceaseless wants and misconceptions
to billions and billions of gallons of ancient sunlight.
Still, mother earth smiles and says take all
that you want. And of course, confused, we do.
At least until we and she are exhausted.
–Dale Biron
Poem Postscript: Mother earth may never say no, but we can't say the same for physics...
I should mention that of course, I'm talking about myself here. When we are afflicted by this malady, we are often the last to know. Just ask your friends, loved ones, significant other...
Many environmental activists I've spoken with agree on one thing. We won't make it through this narrow and ever more harrowing tight spot we're in without art. Since some have enjoyed my "Poetry Monday" posts, I've decided to begin "Saturday Songs." Here's a humble offer. A song I wrote called "Wolves In The Streets."
Robert Bly is the perfect poet for those interested in and working toward healing the planet. (Not to mention healing ourselves.) Bly brings just the right combination of inspiration, surprise, humor, and a much needed deep wisdom. Enjoy this first podcast episode of the new format and focus.
What if a kindness stalks you unmercifully? How about a thank-you note that comes at you so hard, then won't let you be? Then what if some special show of gratitude goes rogue and swallows your heart?
Here's a poem for those days and times when you're feeling so discouraged you need a reminder that these times will pass. Not to mention remembering how important our daily practices are for maintaining a little sanity and centeredness. The poem is called "Why We Do Our Daily Practices" and is included as the title poem in a collection I published in 2014.
Before we’re done with this episode, we’ll cover some amazing opportunities, even in the face of all our challenges. That’s the “light” part! (But first, some questions to nibble on.) How are you making sense of this war? What are you reading? Who are you talking with and to whom are you listening? What are you believing? Have you formed an opinion about what ought to be done to resolve the war? When you query your mind and heart, what response comes back?
After reading some memorial poetry and prose in honor of Barry Lopez, who passed in 2020 this poem came to me. His wife said he often made this statement: "I want to live a life that helped."
When it comes to the fate of human beings in the natural world, now is a time for a new kind of hope, not a trivial hope. Only hope burned clean in the hot fire of faith is workable now. The faith our moment-by-moment breathing proves real. The faith in redwood, hawk, river, soil, ocean, cloud. The faith our hands and feet provide, and those of our ancestors. Yes, this is what's needed.
Can a poem describe you better than you can? Yes, it's true, and maybe that's one of the reasons we love them so much. Let's explore this question further. My advice? Just let your poem-loving hedonism rule...
Use this poem when you're feeling the most alone. For times when few are paying attention. For the times when your work is misunderstood and seems least likely to make a difference. Be reminded, the whole world is ready and waiting for your next courageous move.
This is the first in a series of short poems offered up on Mondays for your listening pleasure. These will be in addition to the regular twice-monthly podcasts. Think of it as a kind of "micro-dosing" of poetry. Enjoy.
The earth is blaring an ear-piercing, mind-numbing, heart-breaking alarm telling us we’re in deep trouble. We're in trouble with unprecedented levels of species extinction, topsoil loss, habitat destruction, melting solar caps, chemical contamination, fishery collapse, climate-caused fires, droughts, and sea level rise plus, of course all the human challenges that are joined at the hip with these things. Let’s talk about the role of faith in all of this and how it may actually be more needed than hope. And how paradoxically it may return us to a greater, more genuine hope by creating a foundation of faith first. Oh, and there will be poems to help us...
Friends don't let friends read boring poetry. So how can you find your personalized collection of exciting, inspiring, life-changing poems? Here are my three simple, down-to-earth guidelines after helping thousands of people discover the poetry they loved and needed in their lives.
So many of the stories we grew up with and our culture keeps telling us no longer make sense. And in terms of their lived outcomes, they are increasingly turning out to be disastrous. Our minds and hearts reject these narratives, these patterns, these meanings. The very purpose of art (and especially poetry) is to create new stories, new patterns, new meanings that help make the world more regenerative, kind, and life-affirming. Let's dive into just such poems.
Wild women poets are courageous, connected, and creative, and they ask and receive much from their muses. You won't want to miss the final podcast episode in a trilogy honoring more amazing, powerful, and attitude-altering women poets.
Available now! A second full dose of wild women poets served up fresh, defiant, and highly captivating for both head and heart. Let me tease with some provocative words from this episode from wild women poet, Audre Lorde: “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”
Wild women poets are not afraid to delve into their inner complexities, vulnerabilities, and paradoxes. And by doing so, they help us with our vulnerabilities, insights, and ultimately internal forgiveness. They model self-compassion so that we might tip-toe into those often foreign lands ourselves. Wild women poets speak candidly about the world, its joys, and unfathomable mysteries, along with its crushing tragedies and terrors. And it’s this integration that releases so much energy within their lives (and ours).
Why did the great philosopher-poet Wendell Berry once exclaim, "The mind that is not baffled is not employed." Naturally, we avoid confusion. However, harnessed and used skillfully, it can help us resolve our epoch's most significant political, environmental, and climate challenges. Cue the podcast, fire up the hand-picked poems, prepare the ground for new thinking and feeling.
Toxic environmental doom? Toxic environmental hope? It's easy to get stuck in one of these places. Or to oscillate between them. Both are absolutes, and both are unhelpful traps. Both claim to know what's unknowable by declaring there is no way to win or, conversely, no way to lose. Poetry offers up surprising, practical, paradoxical help in these matters.
What if we had special, practical, beautiful hand-made tools made from language to help us be more courageous in our everyday lives? That is precisely what we’re going for in this new episode of Dale Biron's Poetry Podcast... A Fresh Glimpse of Knowing.
In this episode, we'll use poetry to help us unpack a very thorny issue and question. Will our democracy survive the political and social polarization we're living through and have lived through over the last years? That question at first blush seems beyond the pale, a total exaggeration. But is it hyperbole? The truth is, now does seem different. These times feel more dire and troubled. Can we locate just a small skosh of hope using poetry to help guide and sustain us through these times? Yes, indeed, that is our question.
In this episode, Dale focuses on poems to help those of us who are a little too hard on ourselves. So if you tend to not be on your own side in too many instances, you may want to pay particular attention to this episode. Self-compassion may not always be the norm, but with the right poetry, it can become much more prevalent and widespread…
In this episode, Dale uses poetry to sneak up on and provide fresh insight into the most significant challenge facing humankind. You'll hear some great poetry, timely aphorisms, commentary, and more...