Robin Becker Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robin-becker
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
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)
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.
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
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:
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….
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/
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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’s newest 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.
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.
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
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.
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.