Fireside Poems: Recent Episodes
Fireside Poems
Each week Dr. J shares a poem from one of the nineteenth-century American Fireside Poets, reading it aloud and commenting on it to enhance the listener’s enjoyment of the poem.
Priscilla Mullins and John Alden wed, symbolizing the continuity of life in a true pastoral image.
The poet recounts an apocryphal story of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and then asks "whose was theright and the wrong?"
The poet fancies himself related to a willow tree and laments the negative influence of Puritanism on New England and American culture
A "beatiful youth" is killled by a sharpshooter's bullet in the Civil War. The bullet continues on to his hometown, where it takes another life.
We shouldn't forget the modest flowers of April when the showier flowers of May come into bloom.
On the 19th of April, 1775, Pau Revere rides to alert his countrymen that British troops are moving from Boston to seize Patriot munitions at Concord, Massachussetts.
To have any hope of happiness with a man, a woman from when she is a child must develop both a strong sense of self-confidence and a strong sense of self-worth.
Two portraits: one of the poet's learning disabled uncle and one of a young schoolteacher such as would go to the South after the Civil War to teach the sons and the daughters of the Freedmen.
A schooner sinks in a storm with the daughter of its captain tied to the mast for her safety.
A poem challenges us to think both about poetry and about nature: is nature simpy a material fact that can be understood through scentific materialism, or are their apects of nature that are unknowable trhough the scientific world view?
The first winter snowfall brings both sadness and peace to a faher grieving the death of an infant daughter.
December represented in all its facets: natural, pagan, and Christian. Syncretism as a characteristic of Christianity.
The Norse god Balder, considered as a transition figure from Norse paganism to Christianity.
A healing ceremony of the Ojibwa nation, shown to be effective in the treatment of grief.
A slaughtered pig comes back from the dead to avenge himself on the butcher who slaughterered him. A scary poem for Halloween.
The first fatal encounter between the Massachusetts Pilgrims and the native Massachusetts people, a counterweight to the story of the first Thanksgiving
The beauty of red maples in autumn is used by the poet to convey the beauty--and loss--of his beloved.
Poetry as an alternative to Monday Night Football and he general hurly-burly of the world, with a shout-out to The Last Duel.
Wordsworth, Longfellow, and our modern estrangement from nature. The World Is Too Much With Us
A classic moment from American literature, when the Puritan maiden Priscilla says to John Alden "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" and thus seals forever America as a place of freedom for women, men, and love.
A mid-day reverie of all the human activities done with ropes, both happy and sad, good and bad.
The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow uses the spiritual teachings of the Catholic monk Miquel de Molinos to to celebrate the spiritual life of the American Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier.
An intersectional discussion of gender and culture as its vfound in Longfellow's "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie."
On the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, James Russell Lowell questions whether America as it is is the America we dream of in our youth.
A celebration of summer rain and of poets and seers who see deeply into the world's mystery.
A celebration of potters and pottery from around the world. An appreciation of artists and their craft.
A summer's day at Lake Como. A rejection of both Puritan America and Disneyland America in favor of the appreciation of beauty.
For Memorial Day, a poem by Longfellow honoring an unknown soldier who fell during the Peninsular Campaign of the Civil War.
Viola realizes that Olivia thinks she's a boy and loves her with an amorous love that can't be returned, just one third of a triangle of loves that can't be returned.
Longfellow retells the story of Pandora, making her a figure of sympathy and pathos while respecting the tragic vision of the Greeks.
A tribute by Longfellow to the English actress Fanny Kemble praising her performances of Shakespeare's plays, together with observations on Fanny Kemble's feminist and abolitionist activities and thus her importance not just in studies of literature and theater, but in race and gender studies as well.
A poem for Arbor Day by William Cullen Bryant, on the planting of a tree as a gift to the future. The spiritual benefit of trees.
For Earth Day, a poem that warns of the risk of environmental disaster brought on by the attempt to control nature. Longfellow anticipates Rachel Carson's Silent Spring 100 years before it was published.
For National Poetry Month, a poem about the power of poetry to gladden, to strengthen, and to sooth.
Longfellow compares an incident from medieval Spanish history with his feelings about the treason of the world's comfortable against the world's poor. He reminds his audience that Christ is the Lord of the poor, and that those who care not for the poor care not for Christ.
Longfellow celebrates the coming of spring and meditates on how it relates to the cycle of human life
A revery in Bruges, Belgium, in which the romance of Medieval Europe returns to the poet's imagination.
A poem on the archangel Sandalphon from the Jewish Talmud. At its conclusion, Longfellow presets his own surprising midrash on the story of Adam and Eve.
The strength of womanhood shown in the character of Evangeline in the poem "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
A poem asserting a true masculinity which stands up for the freedom of the powerless, rather than demanding its own selfish freedoms.
A poem by Longfellow on the horrors of the Middle Passage which carried Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to their lives of enslavement in America.
An account of the advent of agriculture among America's native people as the prophet Manabozo, or Hiawatha, as retold in "The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Longfellow transforms his grief for the death of his wife Fanny into a poem of great solace.
The poet Longfellow encourages us to "be up and doing"; to be here now and act in the present.
"The Oxen" by Thomas Hardy, a poem about faith in the modern world, centered on the folk tradition that on Christmas Eve oxen kneel in their pens.
A tribute to the medical profession--the nurses, doctors, attendants, and other caregivers who devote their lives, often heroically, to healing the sick.
A poem of night's romantic adventure by Edna St. Vincent Millay, written in 1919. The jazz-age life of post-war Greenwich village and Manhattan.
A sonnet in which Paolo, forever with Francesca in the second circle of Hell because of their innocent adultery, speaks to Francesca, telling her that he doesn't regret either their kiss or their murder and does not blame God for their punishment, as he has allowed them together for all eternity, even if they are in the infernal whirlwind of sinful passion.
The poet's celebration of pumpkins, pumpkin pie, and Thanksgiving, including his reminiscence of his rural childhood.
Stories of the Milky Way galaxy. Longfellow's mysticism. Cultural traditions. Poetry. Universals and cultures.
Covid pastimes. Evenings at home. The pleasure of friends and visitors. Sewing, knitting, quilting.
A poem for Halloween in which the Salem witches return to Boston to run the trolley cars.
A reading in honor of Indigenous People's Day. The construction of an Ojibwa birch-bark canoe, showing both the traditional materials and methods handed down through generations and the relationship of the craftsman and his culture to the natural world. The superb functionality and beauty of the canoe.
A poem melancholia, the mental illness we might call massive fourth-stage clinical depression. The love, pain, bewilderment, and frustration of the family and friends of afflicted person.
War and the natural world. 9/11 and the need for nature and poetry. Medieval and early modern European warfare
An excerpt from Evangeline, Longfellow's story of separated lovers. This passage is set in the Atchafalaya Basin, still the home of the Cajuns.
Childhood and fatherhood. The love between children and parents. The impermanence of life and the permanence of poetry.
The mystical nature of poetry. The mystical nature of the sea. The mystical nature of human lives and experience
A poem about why we read poems and why we enjoy poems read aloud. How poetry helps us deal with life. the thingy nature of poetry.