go poet go: Recent Episodes
Eric Antonow
Two poets see life through its moments. How I Met Your Mother George Bilgere
Highlights and Interstices Jack Gilbert
Two poets tell us the truth about truth.
Tell all the truth but tell is slant Emily Dickinson
Truth Gwendolyn Brooks.
Two loaded guns from the poets Kabir and Emily Dickinson, and a kind of smirk from the poet Auden.
I don't know what sort of God we have been talking about Kabir translated by Robert Bly
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun Emily Dickinson
I have no gun W.H. Auden
Find the beginning. The poets Homer and Shakespeare. Both open an invitation to your imagination. Both ask you and the Muses to come create the story with them.
The Odyssey Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
Henry V William Shakespeare
Mary Oliver versus William Butler Yeats
The Summer Day Mary Oliver
Under Ben Bulben William Butler Yeats
The first poet is Cole Porter who asks which is the life to live. The poets Charles Dickens and Rainier Maria Rilke offer some answers.
Which Cole Porter
David Copperfield Charles Dickens
The Angel of History.
Two poets, Yeats and Laurie Anderson, sing about the arc of history.
The Second Coming William Butler Yeats
The Dream Before Laurie Anderson based on the writing of Walter Benjamin, The Angel of History
One fine day when Death comes.
Two poets, David Byrne with Brian Eno and Mary Oliver. They tell us about the door they look forward to stepping through.
One Fine Day David Byrne and Brian Eno
When Death Comes Mary Oliver
Tell me about a complicated man.
Two poets, Homer and Dante. Each open their stories to tell us about someone who is lost.
The Odyssey Homer. Translated by Emily Wilson.
The Inferno Dante Aligeri. Translated by Mark Musa.
Are you looking for me? I am not I
This first poet is Kabir, from India in the 1400s.
The second poet will be William Blake, 400 years later
The third is Juan Ramón Jiménez, the Spanish poet who won a Nobel prize in the 1950s.
Are you looking for me Kabir, translated by Robert Bly
To see the world from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence
I am not I or Yo No Soy Yo Juan Ramón Jiménez, also translated by Robert Bly
This world of dew. Is melted into air, into thin air. Everything will change, will pass.
The first poet is Issa, writing haiku poems in Japan. The second poet is Shakespeare, from a speech given towards the end of The Tempest.
This World of Dew Kobayashi Issa
The Tempest William Shakespeare, Act 4 Scene 1, Prospero speaking
This is how grief ends. How despair can unfold.
The first poet is also a Farmer in Kentucky, the other poet was a psychologist in Sweden.
The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry
The Half-Finished Heaven Tomas Tranströmer from New Collected Poems, translated by Robin Fulton
Three doors inside three poems
Night Bill Callahan
Love After Love Derek Walcott
The Guest House Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
Using food.
Small purple artichokes. Vinegar and Oil. Using food the poet tells us about life.
My Species Jane Hirshfield. From the book The Beauty.
Vinegar and Oil Jane Hirshfield. From the book Come, Thief.
Writing about your father.
Two different poets. One raised in Detroit, one raised in rural Ireland. Two very different places. Looking back at their father, here’s what the poet can see today.
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, 1962
Digging by Seamus Heaney, 1964