Basement Poetry Podcast: Recent Episodes
Wayne Benson
Recorded in my basement, a podcast where we read and discuss poetry and try to uncover the roots of what makes a poem work. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bppod/support
Robin Becker Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robin-becker
This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
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To spice things up with the start of the 4th season of the Basement Poetry Podcast, we will look at John Kenney's poem, "Hold the Elevator?"
Link to John Kenney's website: Books — John Kenney (byjohnkenney.com)
Amazon.com: Love Poems for the Office: 9780593190708: Kenney, John: Books
If you would like a poem read on the podcast, send an email to basementpoetrypod@gmail.com
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Today we will take a look at the poem, "15" from The Feeling Sonnets published in Volume 51 of The American Poetry Review.
American Poetry Review – Home (aprweb.org) Eugene Ostashevsky Eugene Ostashevsky was born in Leningrad in 1968 and immigrated with his family to New York in 1979. He is the author of the poetry collections Iterature and The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, both of which are published by Ugly Duckling Presse, and a scholar and translator of Russian avant-garde and contemporary poetry, especially by the 1930s underground writers Alexander Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms. He currently lives in Berlin and New York and teaches literature in the Liberal Studies program at New York University. His contributions to New York Review Books include translating Vvedensky's An Invitation for Me to Think and The Fire Horse: Children's Poems by Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, and Kharms.
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Link to poem: American Poetry Review – Poems (aprweb.org)
If you stayed to listen to the end, or if you did not, please submit your work to American Writers Review (San Fedele Press Submission Manager (submittable.com)
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https://allpoetry.com/Tonight-I-Can-Write-(The-Saddest-Lines)
Happy Valentine's Day.
Today we talk about Pablo Neruda's poem, "Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines)
Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines) Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Translation by W. S. Merwin
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Today we will be looking at the poem "Words for Worry" by Li-Young Lee.
Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/li-young-lee
The Poem:
Words for Worry by Li-Young Lee
Another word for father is worry.
Worry boils the water
for tea in the middle of the night.
Worry trimmed the child’s nails before
singing him to sleep.
Another word for son is delight,
another word, hidden.
And another is One-Who-Goes-Away.
Yet another, One-Who-Returns.
So many words for son:
He-Dreams-for-All-Our-Sakes.
His-Play-Vouchsafes-Our-Winter-Share.
His-Dispersal-Wins-the-Birds.
But only one word for father.
And sometimes a man is both.
Which is to say sometimes a man
manifests mysteries beyond
his own understanding.
For instance, being the one and the many,
and the loneliness of either. Or
the living light we see by, we never see. Or
the sole word weighs
heavy as a various name.
And sleepless worry folds the laundry for tomorrow.
Tired worry wakes the child for school.
Orphan worry writes the note he hides
in the child’s lunch bag.
It begins, Dear Firefly….
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Today we will be looking at the poem "Mr. On Time" by Alan King
Link to Alan King's Website: https://alanwking.com/2018/06/02/mr-on-time-alan-kings-point-blank/
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https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/poet-billy-collins-reflects-on-9-11-victims-in-the-names
"The Names" - Billy Collins
Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name —
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner —
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening — weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds —
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.
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Today we will take a look at "The Rainstick" by Seamus Heaney.
Bio: Seamus Heaney is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. A native of Northern Ireland, Heaney was raised in County Derry, and later lived for many years in Dublin. He was the author of over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism, and edited several widely used anthologies. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." Heaney taught at Harvard University (1985-2006) and served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry (1989-1994). He died in 2013.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/seamus-heaney
"The Rainstick" by Seamus Heaney.
Upend the rainstick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk
Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly
And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,
Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Upend the stick again. What happens next
Is undiminished for having happened once.
Twice, ten, a thousand times before.
Who cares if the music that transpires
Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a shower. Listen now again.
https://newrepublic.com/article/114546/seamus-heaney-rainstick
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Today we will be taking a look at the great Nikki Giovanni's poem, "No Pancakes Please"
This poem direness from her 2020 collection of poetry and prose Make Me Rain
Bio: Nikki Giovanni is one of America’s foremost poets. Over the course of a long career, Giovanni has published numerous collections of poetry—from her first self-published volume Black Feeling Black Talk (1968) to New York Times best-seller Bicycles: Love Poems (2009)—several works of nonfiction and children’s literature, and multiple recordings, including the Emmy-award nominated The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004). Her most recent publications include Make Me Rain: Poems and Prose (2020), Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (2013) and, as editor, The 100 Best African American Poems (2010). A frequent lecturer and reader, Giovanni has taught at Rutgers University, Ohio State University, and Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/nikki-giovanni
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It's Wednesday, which means I'll be reading a poem I recently wrote called, "I Am A Black Poet"
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Jevon Jackson was awarded First Prize in Poetry in the PENamerica 2019 Prison Writing Contest.
Pen America interview with Jevon Jackson - https://pen.org/pen-ten-interview-jevon-jackson/
Poem:
All of Us, In Prison
Some prisons are pistol-thick,
core-earth dense
with a long electric fence that wraps
around,
and some prisons are softer
than the molecules in muslin,
as it drapes across the bundled bed,
clinging to your body;
Some prisons taste like
salt, copper, sludge
when you bite and crunch down
to the marrow,
and some prisons are
Gorgonzola
and challah bread,
enough to comfort you
from leaving;
Some prisons sit on ominous hills,
hundreds of miles from where
your mother, brother, daughter lives,
and some prisons are closer than
the whip speed of electrochemicals
that dodge collisions in the brain;
Some prisons have
unassuming names, like this:
Havenworth, Hiker’s Island, Eagle’s Bay,
The New Lisbon Correctional Institute,
and some prisons
are simply called by their
God-fearing names:
Heroin, Oxycontin, Vodka, Blackjack,
Molested For Years By Him;
some prisons, by the night,
will never let you go,
and some prisons, in the light,
will never let you go.
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Welcome Back!!!! Today we will take a look the poem, "The Snow man" by Wallace Stevens
I also forgot to mention in the episode that in most cases the word "Snowman" is one word, yet Wallace Stevens spells it "Snow Man" in the title. Take that for whatever you want it to be.
Bio - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wallace-stevens
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
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Today we will be taking a look at the poem “Kind” by James Owens
This poem originally appeared in the summer 2020 issue of Chestnut Review.
https://chestnutreview.com/wp-content/uploads/CR2-1.pdf
James Owens Bio:
James Owens’snewest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in liter- ary journals, including upcoming publications in Atlanta Review, The Shore, The Windhover, and Southword. He earned an MFA at the Uni- versity of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario.
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Today we will be taking a look at the poem "On, Lusty Gentlemen" by Dorothy Cantwell, published in the summer 2020 issue of River and South Review. https://riverandsouth.com Link to poem: https://riverandsouth.com/index.php/2020/06/12/on-lusty-gentlemendorothy-cantwell/ For Submissions/Guidelines: https://riverandsouth.com/index.php/submissions/
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Today we will be taking a look at the 3rd section of "East Coker" by T.S. Eliot.
Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/t-s-eliot
Link to Poem: http://www.davidgorman.com/4quartets/2-coker.htm
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
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Today we will take a look at "Out, Out—" by Robert Frost
Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-frost
Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53087/out-out
‘Out, Out—’ BY ROBERT FROST
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
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Today we will look at Pablo Neruda's poem "Tu Risa" or "Your Laughter" Link to both English and Spanish Version :https://msu.edu/~sullivan/NerudaPoemLaugh.html Tu risa (Spanish) Quítame el pan si quieres, quítame el aire, pero no me quites tu risa.
No me quites la rosa, la lanza que desgranas, el agua que de pronto estalla en tu alegría, la repentina ola de planta que te nace.
Mi lucha es dura y vuelvo con los ojos cansados a veces de haber visto la tierra que no cambia, pero al entrar tu risa sube al cielo buscándome y abre para mí todas las puertas de la vida.
Amor mío, en la hora más oscura desgrana tu risa, y si de pronto ves que mi sangre mancha las piedras de la calle, ríe, porque tu risa será para mis manos como una espada fresca.
Junto al mar en otoño, tu risa debe alzar su cascada de espuma, y en primavera, amor, quiero tu risa como la flor que yo esperaba, la flor azul, la rosa de mi patria sonora.
Ríete de la noche, del día, de la luna, ríete de las calles torcidas de la isla, ríete de este torpe muchacho que te quiere, pero cuando yo abro los ojos y los cierro, cuando mis pasos van, cuando vuelven mis pasos, niégame el pan, el aire, la luz, la primavera, pero tu risa nunca porque me moriría.
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Today we will be looking at the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas
Bio: https://poets.org/poet/dylan-thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Today we will talk about the poem "Hearsay" by Yusef Komunyakaa from his collection of poems, Talking Dirty to the Gods https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/yusef-komunyakaa
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Poem - "The Vulture & The Body" Link to Poem - https://www.vqronline.org/poetry/2017/10/vulture-body
Poem: On my way to the fertility clinic, I pass five dead animals. First a raccoon with all four paws to the sky like he’s going to catch whatever bullshit load falls on him next. Then, a grown coyote, his furred golden body soft against the white cement lip of the traffic barrier. Trickster no longer, an eye closed to what’s coming. Close to the water tower that says, “Florence, Y’all,” which means I’m near Cincinnati, but still in the bluegrass state, and close to my exit, I see three dead deer, all staggered but together, and I realize as I speed past in my death machine that they are a family. I say something to myself that’s in between a prayer and curse—how dare we live on this Earth. I want to tell my doctor about how we all hold a duality in our minds: futures entirely different. Footloose or forged. I want to tell him how lately, it’s enough to be reminded that my body is not just my body, but that I’m made of old stars and so’s he, and that last Tuesday, I sat alone in the car by the post office and just was for a whole hour, no one knowing how to find me, until I got out, the sound of the car door shutting like a gun, and mailed letters, all of them saying, Thank you. But in the clinic, the sonogram wand showing my follicles, he asks if I have any questions, and says, Things are getting exciting. I want to say, But what about all the dead animals? The Earth? Our trapped bodies? But he goes quicksilver, and I’m left to pull my panties up like a big girl. Somedays there is a violent sister inside of me, and a red ladder that wants to go elsewhere. I drive home on the other side of the road, going south now. The white coat has said I’m ready, and I watch as a vulture crosses over me, heading toward the carcasses I haven’t properly mourned or even forgiven. What if, instead of carrying a child, I am supposed to carry grief? The great black scavenger flies parallel now, each of us speeding, intently and driven, toward what we’ve been taught to do with death.
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Today we will be looking at the poem "The Flock Of The Ewe" by Wanda Coleman Wanda Coleman Bio/other poems: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wanda-coleman Send poetry suggestions and all other inquiries to BasementPoetryPod@gmail.com
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Today we will listen to Lucile Clifton read her poem “Homage To My Hips”
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I just have a few questions for you, yes YOU.
You can send answers at Basementpoetrypod@gmail.com
-
What are your thoughts on poetry?
-
Do you have a favorite poem?
-
Do you write poetry/What is your favorite type of poetry?
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Today we will take a look at the poem "This Is Just To Say" by William Carlos Williams.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56159/this-is-just-to-say
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
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Link to Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148564/i-being-born-a-woman-and-distressed
"I, being born a woman and distressed"
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
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Today we will discussing the poem Dinner Guest: Me by Langston Hughes
Link to reading by Langston Hughes: https://open.spotify.com/track/7Ji7oKNUCM3WasFMjS7eD1?si=Fts84dpLSyWJ0m6C2rTeTQ
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This may be the exact poem you need to get you through the Apocolypse Today we will be talking about a poem titled "Zombie" by Daniel McGinn from an anthology of zombie poetry titled "Aim For The Head" edited by Rob Sturma Link to Anthology: https://www.amazon.com/Aim-Head-Rob-Sturma-ebook/dp/B0071NV5JY Link to Poem: https://books.google.com/books?id=04dXDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT43&lpg=PT43&dq=zombie+Daniel+Mcginn&source=bl&ots=NGorwDVAqv&sig=ACfU3U2DS9rPdZ7UUy4yqcBkMY15jq7u0w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjaubq9psXqAhWvmuAKHWPzD5cQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Today I will be reading a poem of mine that was just published today titled "Love" Link to Poem: https://www.perhappened.com/lovewaynebenson.html For Inquiries: Basementpoetrypod@gmail.com
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We will be taking a look at Emily Dickinson's poem "After great pain, a formal feeling comes "
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-dickinson
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
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Today, I will be reading one of my own poems titled "biking across town at 15"
All Inquiries: BasementPoetryPod@gmail.com
biking across town at 15
boy riding free—
don’t you dare hide your heat
from this world
let them smell the rubber
burning at your feet
watch their faces turn
and sink
when they see you
speeding downhill
shirt snatched back
by the wind
boy follow those yellow lines
and freeze time
between them—
only then can you observe
how they all pause
and swerve making sure
you know fear
is rising behind their minds
like smoke
you won’t know
if they are scared
for your life
or because of it—
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Today we will take a look at "Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt" by Ross Gay and talk about Imagery in Poetry Email all inquiries to BasementPoetryPod@gmail.com Link to Poem: https://onbeing.org/poetry/ode-to-buttoning-and-unbuttoning-my-shirt/ Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt by Ross Gay Listen No one knew or at least I didn’t know they knew what the thin disks threaded here on my shirt might give me in terms of joy this is not something to be taken lightly the gift of buttoning one’s shirt slowly top to bottom or bottom to top or sometimes the buttons will be on the other side and I am a woman that morning slipping the glass through its slot I tread differently that day or some of it anyway my conversations are different and the car bomb slicing the air and the people in it for a quarter mile and the honeybee’s legs furred with pollen mean another thing to me than on the other days which too have been drizzled in this simplest of joys in this world of spaceships and subatomic this and that two maybe three times a day some days I have the distinct pleasure of slowly untethering the one side from the other which is like unbuckling a stack of vertebrae with delicacy for I must only use the tips of my fingers with which I will one day close my mother’s eyes this is as delicate as we can be in this life practicing like this giving the raft of our hands to the clumsy spider and blowing soft until she lifts her damp heft and crawls off we practice like this pushing the seed into the earth like this first in the morning then at night we practice sliding the bones home.
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Today We will look at "The Double Image" by Anne Sexton
All questions or poetry suggestion, send toBasementPoetryPod@gmail.com
Anne Sexton Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-sexton
Poem Link/Transcription: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53110/the-double-image
6.
In north light, my smile is held in place,
the shadow marks my bone.
What could I have been dreaming as I sat there,
all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone
of the smile, the young face,
the foxes’ snare.
In south light, her smile is held in place,
her cheeks wilting like a dry
orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown
love, my first image. She eyes me from that face,
that stony head of death
I had outgrown.
The artist caught us at the turning;
we smiled in our canvas home
before we chose our foreknown separate ways.
The dry red fur fox coat was made for burning.
I rot on the wall, my own
Dorian Gray.
And this was the cave of the mirror,
that double woman who stares
at herself, as if she were petrified
in time — two ladies sitting in umber chairs.
You kissed your grandmother
and she cried.
7.
I could not get you back
except for weekends. You came
each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit
that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack
your things. We touch from habit.
The first visit you asked my name.
Now you stay for good. I will forget
how we bumped away from each other like marionettes
on strings. It wasn’t the same
as love, letting weekends contain
us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name,
wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.
You call me mother and I remember my mother again,
somewhere in greater Boston, dying.
I remember we named you Joyce
so we could call you Joy.
You came like an awkward guest
that first time, all wrapped and moist
and strange at my heavy breast.
I needed you. I didn’t want a boy,
only a girl, a small milky mouse
of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house
of herself. We named you Joy.
I, who was never quite sure
about being a girl, needed another
life, another image to remind me.
And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure
nor soothe it. I made you to find me.
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Today we have a poem that really speaks to what our nation is going through, and what black people have to go through on a regular basis. We will take a look at Terrance Hayes's poem "Talk"
Link to his Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/terrance-hayes BPP Email: BasementPoetryPod@gmail.com Transcription of the Poem: Talk like a nigger now, my white friend, M, said after my M.L.K. and Ronald Reagan impersonations, the two of us alone and shirtless in the locker room, and if you're thinking my knuckles knocked a few times against his jaw or my fingers knotted at his throat, you're wrong because I pretended I didn't hear him, and when he didn't ask it again, we slipped into our middle school uniforms since it was November, the beginning of basketball season, and jogged out onto the court to play together in that vision Americans wish for their children, and the point is we slipped into our uniform harmony, and spit out GO TEAM! our hands stacked on and beneath the hands of our teammates and that was as close as I may have come to passing for one of the members of The Dream, my white friend thinking I was so far from that word that he could say it to me, which I guess he could since I didn't let him taste the salt and iron in the blood, I didn't teach him what it's like to squint through a black eye, and if I had to wonder if he would have grown up to be the kind of white man who believes all blacks are thugs or if he would have learned to bite his tongue or let his belly be filled by shame, but more importantly, would I be the kind of black man who believes silence is worth more than talk or that it can be a kind of grace, though I'm not sure that's the kind of black man I've become, and in any case, M, wherever you are, I'd just like to say I heard it, but let it go, because I was afraid to lose our friendship or afraid we'd lose the game -- which we did anyway.
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Today I bring you very special news, as well as "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" by William Carlos William. Basement Poetry Podcast email: basementpoetrypod@gmail.com
I am welcome to all inquiries and comments (be nice though)
Link to Poem: https://poets.org/poem/widows-lament-springtime William Carlos Williams Bio: https://poets.org/poet/william-carlos-williams
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Today I will give you a gift; it’s a poem called “The Gift” by poet Li-Young Lee.
Link to the poem:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43010/the-gift-56d221adc12b8
Link to Li-Young Lee Bio
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/li-young-lee
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Today we will be looking at the poem "Allowables" by Nikki Giovanni. For more info on Nikki Giovanni: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/nikki-giovanni Poem Transcription: I killed a spider Not a murderous brown recluse Nor even a black widow And if the truth were told this Was only a small Sort of papery spider Who should have run When I picked up the book But she didn’t And she scared me And I smashed her I don’t think I’m allowed To kill something Because I am Frightened
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Welcome to the inaugural episode of Basement Poetry Podcast. I hope you enjoy your stay. Today I will introduce myself, and read the poem, Love Is Not All" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Link to Poem: https://poets.org/poem/love-not-all-sonnet-xxx
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