Close Talking is a podcast hosted by good friends Connor Stratton and Jack Rossiter-Munley. In each episode the two read a poem and discuss at length. The pop culture references fly as freely as the literary theories. Close Talking is a poetry podcast anyone can enjoy.
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Connor pops in to announce incredibly belatedly what has already been apparent for months: Close Talking is on a hiatus! We've had some big life and career changes that have unexpectedly cut into our capacity for the podcast, but it's not a permanent hiatus! Okay, a poem: Tune By: Kay Ryan Imagine a sea of ultramarine suspending a million jellyfish as soft as moons. Imagine the interlocking uninsistent tunes of drifting things. This is the deep machine that powers the lamps of dreams and accounts for their bluish tint. How can something so grand and serene vanish again and again without a hint?
A slight departure from our regular format. On today's show, Connor and Jack remember the recently departed poet Charles Simic. They read some of his poems, reflect on them, discuss his life and legacy, and even give a shoutout to the Oak Park Public Library. Poems Connor and Jack read in this episode include: "Summer Morning" "Hotel Insomnia" "Watermelons" and "Back at the Chicken Shack." At the end of the episode, hear Simic read his poem "December 21." Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cardboardboxproductionsinc Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@cardboardboxproductionsinc You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack bid farewell to the year they've taken to calling "Twenty Twenty Poo" and contemplate the complexities of language in a wide-ranging conversation about a spectacular untitled poem by Diné poet Sherwin Bitsui, from his 2009 collection Flood Song. They discuss movement, the natural world, an extremely informative dissertation and more. Learn more about Bitsui, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sherwin-bitsui [Flicking off the light switch.] By: Sherwin Bitsui Flicking off the light switch. Lichen buds the curved creases of a mind pondering the mesquite tree's dull ache as it gathers its leaves around clouds of spotted doves— calling them in rows of twelve back from their winter sleep. Doves' eyes black as nightfall shiver on the foam coast of an arctic dream where whale ribs clasp and fasten you to a language of shifting ice. Seeing into those eyes you uncoil their telephone wires, gather their inaudible lions with plastic forks, tongue their salty ribbons, and untie their weedy stems from your prickly fingers. You stop to wonder what like sounds like when held under glacier water, how Ná ho kos feels under the weight of all that loss. Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@cardboardboxproductionsinc You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss the sonically and thematically dense poem "Topsoil, in Repentance" by Sherry Shenoda. Shenoda's book MUMMY EATERS was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2022. The conversation moves from an exploration of internal rhymes and alliteration, to the climate crisis, to the religious implications of the word "repentance," to soil strata, and to the relative weight of humanity. You can find out more about Sherry Shenoda, here: https://www.sherryshenoda.com/ Read the poem, here: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2022/march/topsoil-repentance-sherry-shenoda Topsoil, in Repentance By: Sherry Shenoda On my mind daily with the insistence of a metronome is that thin granular layer, rich humus, spare humility, black earth daily lifted and blown into the Gulf of Mexico. Thinnest of salvations with a margin of error wide as the pink, gelatinous body of the earthworm Which my spade barely misses, and every time my tines enter the ground, my wrist twists the damp loam, I breathe easier to see them wriggling, unburied fleeing the light, burrowing back down, aerating this earth we have packed down with our culpability this immense density of earth, only the topmost of which can support the unimaginable numbers of us, our great warm swarm Squinting up in immense sunlight I hear the silent swish and tick the back-and-forth rhythm, the last few seconds before midnight the enormity of the loan, which has been called in full The hazy buzzing of the furry bees, busy in the branches above my exposed neck, on any given day a stay for a little while longer, of execution Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cardboardboxproductionsinc You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
After a busy couple weeks at Close Talking headquarters, a slightly different show. This episode is from our sister-podcast, Poetry Spoken Here. The episode first aired in the summer of 2020 and was simply called "Black Lives Matter." The poems and voices featured are all from the Poetry Spoken Here archives and address race, policing, and more. Readers include Pulitzer Prize-winner Jericho Brown, the youngest ever Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate, Maren (Lovey) Wright Kerr, Chicago-area slam legend Maria "Mama" McCray, Sillerman First Book Prize winner Ladan Osman, and SlamFind creator and Bowery Arts and Science Executive Director Mason Granger. You can listen to full readings, and interviews with the poets featured in this episode, here: Jericho Brown, Episode #100: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-100-jericho-brown-reading-at-the-unamuno-author-festival Maren (Lovey) Wright Kerr, Episode #085: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-085-maren-lovey-wright-kerr-and-lynne-sharon-schwartz-reviewed Maria "Mama" McCray, Episode #058: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-058-tribute-to-maria-mama-mccray Ladan Osman, Episode #023: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-023-ladan-osman-and-the-book-thing Mason Granger, Episode #034: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-034-mason-granger-and-billy-collins Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
In this special episode, Connor and Jack discuss the 2022 National Book Awards — the long list, the finalists, and the winner "Punks: New and Selected Poems" by John Keene. They read and explore a marvelous poem from the collection, "Folks Are Right, My Nose Was Wide Open," which also appeared in BOMB Magazine. Listen to the National Book Awards Award Ceremony, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hNtsKasx5U&ab_channel=NationalBookFoundation Get Punks here: https://the-song-cave.com/products/punks-by-john-keene Folks Are Right, My Nose Was Wide Open By: John Keene Folks are right: my nose is wide open. I left one man and fell for this one, he's not the one, so what am I to do? I don't. Instead, I stand in the doorway of the New Age café on Newbury Street waiting for Kevin, because we're going to talk about poems. All the poems I haven't written, because I spend my waking hours talking about them, reading the work of others, trying to remake myself as Essex Hemphill or Neruda or Celan. For example, I can't write poems about this crazy dude I'm seeing, how he writhes in bed like a loose hose when he comes, how he stands for hours in front of the mirror admiring and caressing his muscles, saying nothing but “Looking good,” the yelps he serves up when I enter him. I don't write poems about how he silences me with certain looks, his lies about being from “Black money,” how he laughs at the serious things I say. How often when I'm with him I feel more alone than the hardest years of high school. Rather, I write down lines towards poems, abstract pronouncements about unhappiness and being scared and unknown and misunderstood and death, which makes me think I'm addressing the problem. Love is a dream where both of us are trying, at the same speed, without quitting. Then Kevin shows up, and I'm not so sure, because before I can get a word in about my plight, before I can pass today's halfstarts and failures across the table, he starts telling me about last night's fight with his girlfriend. Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss a classic poem from a classic poet: The Dancing by the recently departed Gerald Stern. They marvel at how the poem is constructed, get deep into a discussion of encroaching fascism, and even have time to rage at the "evil Mellons," bring in Bruce Springsteen and Michael Bay, and pause to reflect on how lyric poetry can address structural inequalities. You can read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57177/the-dancing The Dancing By: Gerald Stern In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots I have never seen a postwar Philco with the automatic eye nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did in 1945 in that tiny living room on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming, my mother red with laughter, my father cupping his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum, half fart, the world at last a meadow, the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us screaming and falling, as if we were dying, as if we could never stop—in 1945 — in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away from the other dancing—in Poland and Germany— oh God of mercy, oh wild God. Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack have a time talking about the poem "A Time" by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. She is a multi-award winning poet whose latest book-length poem "Look at This Blue" is on the short list for the 2022 National Book Award. Come for the poetry analysis, stay for the discussion of red wolves, climate crisis, Tolkein, impermanence, and diectic words. You can read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89060/a-time-570d716c13a77 A Time By: Allison Adelle Hedge Coke The problem— it's not been written yet, the omens: the headless owl, the bobcat struck, the red wolf where she could not be. None of it done and yet it's over. Nothing yet of night when she called me closer asked me to bring her crow painting to stay straight across from her feet so she could waken into it, remember her friend. Of Old Chief alongside her shoulder still watching over her just as the mountain had done throughout her Alberta childhood. The Pendleton shroud bearing our braids, her figure in flaming pyre. The cards, the notes, the tasks the things undone, not done and she with us faraway as this has always been and ever will continue. We meet we leave we meld and vaporize from whatever it was that held us human in this life. And all the beautiful things that lead our thoughts and give us reason remain despite the leaving and all I know is what you know when it is over said and done it was a time and there was never enough of it. Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack dig into the list/poem/prose piece/literary mystery Not Writing by Anne Boyer. Along the way they discuss what they are and are not writing themselves, Jack asks about why the poem never becomes monotonous, and Connor offers his thoughts about how writing, time, and capitalism intersect both in the poem and in life. Read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58316/not-writing Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss Sasha Banks' poem, america MINE from her collection of the same name. They start by examining some of the poem's formal elements like its lack of traditional punctuation, and quickly jump to big themes like how the idea of vengeance is transformed in the poem and the contested symbol of the American flag is used. Read the full poem below, or here: http://thecollagist.com/the-collagist/2016/8/27/america-mine.html america MINE By: Sasha Banks the spit upon this/country's flag is mine and/I do/not weep at it/consider the twisted shape of grief about/the mouth upon learning the beast/under the bed has always been your country/careful, citizen/this nation will name you/daughter/while its tongue/sucks the muscle from every dark body/you have loved to the edge of this/vanished second/I let the rage be/like water/this time/drinking and drinking until/my darkness marries/my eyes to blindness/and I am/led by the ghosts still/awake/in the soil/still/thirsty from/below/the fear/is under my heal/now/there are multitudes/in my third rib and/we are not/asking anymore/do you see us now/this is the last kindness/we will have your sweat/and dress you in your own/curses/oh country/what I mean to say/is/all the living after/this/will be the vengeance. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Posted at long last after overcoming major technical difficulties!! Connor and Jack dive into the poem "I Hear a Dog Who is Always in My Death" by Samuel Ace. They discuss the poem's evocative imagery, ruminate on it's call to action against encroaching fascism, and find resonances with English and Egyptian mythology. They also make some time to dunk on transphobes. I Hear a Dog Who is Always in My Death By: Samuel Ace How is it you bring me back to the cliffs the bright heads of eagles the vessels of grief in the soil? I dig for you with a gentle bit of lighter fluid and three miniature rakes burning only a single speck of dirt to touch a twig as tiny as a neuron or even smaller one magic synapse inside the terminus limbs of your breath The fighter jets fly over the house every hour no sound but inside our hands I hear a far chime and I am cold a north wind and the grit of night first the murmur then the corpse first the paddling then the banquet first the muzzle then the hanging the plea first the break then the tap the tap I hear your skin the reach of your arms the slick along your thighs more floorboard than step first the flannel then the gag first the bells then the exhale I hear a dog who is always in my death the breath of a mother who holds a gun a pillow in the shape of a heart first the planes then the criminal ponds first the ghost boats then the trains first the gates then the bargain a child formed from my fingertip and the eye of my grandmother's mother a child born at 90 the rise and rush of air a child who walks from the gas Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss the poem "First Snow" by Arthur Sze. They discuss life, death, being, nothingness, and all the hidden meaning waiting to leap out of the every day. They also talk about how some poems can urge us towards presence and mindfulness and the necessity of taking the occasional pause in life. First Snow By: Arthur Sze A rabbit has stopped on the gravel driveway: imbibing the silence, you stare at spruce needles: there's no sound of a leaf blower, no sign of a black bear; a few weeks ago, a buck scraped his rack against an aspen trunk; a carpenter scribed a plank along a curved stone wall. You only spot the rabbit's ears and tail: when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel, but when it stops, it blends in again; the world of being is like this gravel: you think you own a car, a house, this blue-zigzagged shirt, but you just borrow these things. Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams and stood at Gibraltar, but you possess nothing. Snow melts into a pool of clear water; and, in this stillness, starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
A dive into the Close Talking archives - one of the first episodes we ever recorded in which we discuss the poem "The Lynching Postcard, Duluth, Minnesota" by Ray Gonzalez. Poetry can seem a little insignificant in the face of an onslaught of historically awful news, like the one we've all been experience the last few weeks. But poems like this one have a special kind of power - cutting to deep truths and insisting on action in the face of the horrors of history. And reminding us that history walks along side us every day. The Lynching Postcard, Duluth, Minnesota By: Ray Gonzalez There is a postcard in an antique shop in Duluth with a photograph of the infamous lynching of a black man carried out in the town in the 1930s. The owner was turned down by eBay when he wanted to sell it there. Tourists walk into his shop and stare at the lone card in the glass case. The owner says it is better to sell it than donate it to a museum where it would be locked away in a drawer. Some people want it removed. Others snicker and stare, shake their heads and accept the fact this is "only Minnesota." Each morning, the shop owner glances at the case to make sure the postcard is there. Thousands have bowed over the glass. At night, when the shop is closed, the postcard lies in the case, the body hanging in the cold moonlight from Lake Superior, the shadow from the swinging body forming a shape that rises through the glass to darken the shop. Over a dozen people have come across it. They don't know the act of bending over the glass to study the dead body on the pole is forming an invisible arc of light over time, a shadow where those who bow to look imitate the shape of a hanging tree. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Tara Betts to discuss the poem "Small Illuminations" from her forthcoming collection REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR. They discuss the legacy of Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, the realities of incarceration, and how the collection REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR grew over time. Get a copy of REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR, here: https://wordworksbooks.org/product/refuse-to-disappear/#:~:text=In%20Refuse%20to%20Disappear%20Tara,devoted%20attention%20to%20Black%20Life. Small Illuminations By: Tara Betts I. Albert is a gentle tower. His arms arched over tabletop like bridge beams or girders. Even if he does not understand everything he reads, he smiles like a good kid, like the kid he probably was 30-some-years ago when he was in the wrong car with the wrong people at the wrong time that he will never get back. II. The attention to detail borders on flawless. Unscuffed white sneakers, perfected lined fades tucked under precisely folded skullies immaculate with what you got as a clean, hard-fought pride. III. One week, I bring crisp folders, a bundle of sharpened pencils with full pink erasers, round and soft as a doll's blush. They rub away small errors, clearing smudges from a page like an actual correction. IV. I look for Albert's easy grin first when I walk into the concrete block classroom. Locked in the education building, relieved that the broken window denies the cold like a plea. One brother in blues with thermal sleeves peeking out of the dull faded ocean of cloth arching over his torso. A cellmate hands me the slightly worn, safeguarded, staple-bound book of poems— the signature resolute and matching letters of a poet's name who strolled into prison like a mother without fear of any child. Margaret Burroughs—more than a decade since she left the cell of her body. I clutch her poems knowing how they passed from her hands like a prayer. We both smile— small illuminations in a dark hell—when the cellmate says Albert wanted you to have this. He got transferred. He knew you'd keep it safe. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack are joined by poet, essayist, and journalist Noor Hindi. They dig into the poem "Self Interrogation" the first poem in Hindi's new collection DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW. coming out on 5/31 from Haymarket Books. She discusses the inspiration behind some of the poems in the book, the significance of the color yellow, and the importance of having a variety of experiences and perspectives in newsrooms. Learn more about Noor Hindi, here: https://noorhindi.com/ Get a copy of DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW., here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1871-dear-god-dear-bones-dear-yellow Self Interrogation By: Noor Hindi At the airport terminal, a woman is crying. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me, I -- Need to focus. On something besides. The ruse of migration. Lights so loud. The unending sound. Of a newscaster's voice. Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Mother. Please, forgive me. I want to call in dead. Last week, there was a child in a yellow dress reading a poem. For minutes on end, I could not be indifferent to anything. Not the grass, dying yellow. Not the bombs, twisting limbs. Not the gates. Not the--Yes. There is a woman crying at terminal six. Yes, I think of the child. The tiny silver heart she placed in my palm. How I threw it in the trash, seconds later. But I promise. I promise. I promise. I -- meant it as an act of survival. Maybe love. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack explore Aracelis Girmay's poem "Elegy" from her 2011 collection Kingdom Animalia. They talk through the opening line's call to community and the ways it resonates with Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese," they get scientific while discussing the nature imagery in the poem, and they delve into the poem's pandemic-era relevance. Elegy By: Aracelis Girmay What to do with this knowledge that our living is not guaranteed? Perhaps one day you touch the young branch of something beautiful. & it grows & grows despite your birthdays & the death certificate, & it one day shades the heads of something beautiful or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out of your house, then, believing in this. Nothing else matters. All above us is the touching of strangers & parrots, some of them human, some of them not human. Listen to me. I am telling you a true thing. This is the only kingdom. The kingdom of touching; the touches of the disappearing, things. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack conclude their exploration of poetic line breaks with a bit of a catch all episode looking at how line breaks can reveal information, play with time, and enhance surprise. They pull examples from Audre Lorde, Chris Tse, Rae Armantrout, and Emily Dickinson. There's even time for mentions of laminated dough and Indiana Jones. Episode 1 of Line Break Week - Why break lines?: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week - Drama: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Episode 3 of Line Break Week - Miming: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-159-dramas-silent-cousin-miming-with-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-3 Episode 4 of Line Break Week - Emphasis: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-160-using-poetic-line-breaks-for-emphasis-line-break-week-ep-4 Episode 5 of Line Break Week - Rhythm: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-161-from-meters-to-measures-rhythm-in-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-5 Episode 6 of Line Break Week - Ambiguity: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-162-ambiguity-in-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-6 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
As line break week hurdles towards its conclusion, Connor and Jack pause to consider ambiguity in line breaks. When the meaning of a word or phrase is altered by the positioning of a line break. They discuss the classic WB Yeats poem "Leda and the Swan" and Franz Wright's "Empty Cathedral." Along the way they talk about twists and turns in other literary work like Spiderman: Homecoming, Midnight Mass, and The Birds. Episode 1 of Line Break Week - Why break lines?: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week - Drama: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Episode 3 of Line Break Week - Miming: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-159-dramas-silent-cousin-miming-with-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-3 Episode 4 of Line Break Week - Emphasis: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-160-using-poetic-line-breaks-for-emphasis-line-break-week-ep-4 Episode 5 of Line Break Week - Rhythm: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-161-from-meters-to-measures-rhythm-in-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-5 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack delve ever deeper into the world of poetic line breaks. This time they're looking at how line breaks build rhythm in poems. They discuss rhythm within lines running through various literary terms and talking through some of the most popular meters. Then they move on to how line breaks facilitate rhythm through rhyme and anaphora. using examples from Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Forrest Gander. Stay tuned for the galactic premier of a new, impromptu song all about line breaks. Episode 1 of Line Break Week - Why break lines?: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week - Drama: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Episode 3 of Line Break Week - Miming: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-159-dramas-silent-cousin-miming-with-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-3 Episode 4 of Line Break Week - Emphasis: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-160-using-poetic-line-breaks-for-emphasis-line-break-week-ep-4 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack continue their exploration of all the ways lines can be broken and all the reasons a poet might have for breaking a line. Today they discuss using line breaks for emphasis focusing on the poem "The Pope's Penis" by Sharon Olds. They also discuss the sacred and profane resonances the poem has with Bob Dylan's masterpiece, "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." Episode 1 of Line Break Week - Why break lines?: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week - Drama: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Episode 3 of Line Break Week - Miming: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-159-dramas-silent-cousin-miming-with-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-3 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack continue their dive into the intricacies of the poetic line break this time discussing miming in line breaks. They draw examples from Pierre Joris, James Wright, and Frank O'Hara to close out National Poetry Month 2022 in style! Episode 1 of Line Break Week: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack continue their week-long exploration of line breaks in poetry closing out National Poetry Month 2022. Today they focus on how line breaks can build drama in a poem. Do they take a detour into discussing Entourage along the way? Maybe. But that's all part of the drama. The focus on a poem by Tacey M. Atsitty that uses line breaks to create drama throughout. Check out Episode 1 of Line Break Week, here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Starting a little later than planned, but it's time for the fourth annual last-week-of-poetry-month Close Talking extravaganza! In past years Connor and Jack have talked about haiku, shared comforting poems, and investigated the sonnet. Now, they take on their grandest subject yet - the line break. They dig into why poets break lines, what makes line breaks so special, and even give examples ranging from Cynthia Cruz and Patrick Cotter to Gwendolyn Brooks. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss "Beckoned" by living legend Forrest Gander. The poem, from Gander's Pulitzer Prize winning collection "Be With" grapples with grief and loss. In the discussion, Connor and Jack touch on the poem's use of anaphora and use of sound, investigate the ways nature imagery shows up throughout, and even find some stylistic connections between the poem and the current Marvel Disney+ series, Moonknight. Beckoned By: Forrest Gander At which point my grief-sounds ricocheted outside of language. Something like a drifting swarm of bees. At which point in the tetric silence that followed I was swarmed by those bees and lost consciousness. At which point there was no way out for me either. At which point I carried on in a semi-coma, dreaming I was awake, avoiding friends and puking, plucking stingers from my face and arms. At which point her voice was pinned to a backdrop of vaporous color. At which point the crane's bustles flared. At which point, coming to, I knew I'd pay the whole flag-pull fare. At which point the driver turned and said it doesn't need to be your fault for it to break you. At which point without any lurching commencement, he began to play a vulture-bone flute. At which point I grew old and it was like ripping open the beehive with my hands again. At which point I conceived a realm more real than life. At which point there was at least some possibility. Some possibility, in which I didn't believe, of being with her once more. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Caitlin Scarano to discuss the poem "Buttercream" from her new collection THE NECESSITY OF WILDFIRE. The collection won the Wren Poetry Prize, selected by final judge Ada Limón. Scarano discusses the poem, the collection, and the ways her work has taken what she describes as an "environmental turn" since completing THE NECESSITY OF WILDFIRE. She also talks about some of her upcoming projects that blend art with environmental action. Order a copy of the book, here: https://www.blairpub.com/shop/necessity-of-wildfire Learn more about Caitlin Scarano, here:https://www.caitlinscarano.com/ Buttercream By: Caitlin Scarano I cut open an avocado only to find it dappled with rot. I eat it anyway. Because my blood burns, I decide not to have children. My father's father was full of copper. His son, a liver textured with scarring. I ate it anyway. I asked for guidance, not a leash and a collar. I turn my belly inside out - it's dappled with eggs the color of buttercream. My hens don't know which are fertilized and which aren't. My mother lost her wedding ring in vegetable garden dirt. I dig out the rot. I say I decided not to have children but no man ever asked me and meant it. If each parent gives you a defective gene, you can bake a cake or crawl across the floor between buckets of your own blood. I dig but never find the ring. Some hens sit on eggs until they rot. Some men take hammers to their wives. My lover yawns. Of all the stories I could tell, I've learned of all the stories you could tell. Her blood burned. My mother made a red velvet cake with buttercream frosting. She ate the whole thing. She never told anyone who believed her. He might have been sick his whole broken bowl of a life. I might find a golden ring around my iris. I might not be a creature versed in dirt. Anger, like a memory, takes away as much as it provides. Some hens leave their eggs where they land. Either way, we follow. We gather. We eat them. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Michael Kleber-Diggs for a conversation about the Gwendolyn Brooks poem "A Sunset of the City." Michael Kleber-Diggs won the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, has been widely published, and teaches poetry through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop. In addition to digging into Gwendolyn Brooks' captivating poem, the trio also discuss Kleber-Diggs' new collection "Worldly Things" from Milkweed Editions. Get a copy of "Worldly Things" here: https://milkweed.org/book/worldly-things A Sunset of the City By: Gwendolyn Brooks Kathleen Eileen Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love. My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls, Are gone from the house. My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite And night is night. It is a real chill out, The genuine thing. I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer Because sun stays and birds continue to sing. It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone. The sweet flowers indrying and dying down, The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown. It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes. I am aware there is winter to heed. There is no warm house That is fitted with my need. I am cold in this cold house this house Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls. I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs. I am a woman who hurries through her prayers. Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my Desert and my dear relief Come: there shall be such islanding from grief, And small communion with the master shore. Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin, Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry In humming pallor or to leap and die. Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss a classic poem by a classic poet - The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens. They talk about something. They talk about nothing. They talk about how the something of the poem perhaps resides in the nothing. Along the way they reference Taskmaster, King Lear, and much more. The Snow Man By: Wallace Stevens 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. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss the poem I.R.L. by New Zealand poet Chris Tse. They talk about how media representations and creations can cross into reality, the meaning of "gritty," and why S.O.S is so evocative. In the second part of the show they answer a listener question about how to know where to submit poetry. Connor recommends a study with new information about why certain areas are experience more suffering because of the pandemic, and Jack recommends "Reacher" on Amazon Prime, and "Man Like Mobeen" on Netflix. I.R.L. By: Chris Tse In real life you are aging at the rate of a short-lived sitcom and the only kind of loneliness worth laughing about is throwing out half a frozen meal for two because leftovers are never funnier the next day. In real life there is no such thing as a gritty reboot — it's just fucking gritty all the time, mate, because your best-laid plans are always someone else's chance to crash a car into the crowd at a men's rights charity concert. In real life the nice guys pull out of the race when their tires are slashed or they turn back because they think they left the iron on and no one adheres to sports film clichés anyway — we're all selfish and we want that trophy. In real life you'll never make it out of your homophobic small town alive, so your left hand begs for water while your right hand swings an ax your left foot drags a church bell while your right foot taps — S.O.S., S.O.S., S.O.S. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss the generation melding poem "Hear the Dogs Crying" by Christy Passion. They discuss the power of car radios, the way the language of the poem leaps along with its subject matter, and even arrive at new readings of the last stanza in real time. In the second part of the show, Connor recommends the recent adaptation of "Station 11" and Jack recommends the music of Amyl and the Sniffers and the web series "Sweet Home Ketteringa" hosted by British comedian, James Acaster. Read the full poem below, or, here: https://www.bambooridge.org/renshi/no-choice-but-to-follow/poem/490/ Hear the Dogs Crying By: Christy Passion A recording of her voice, an old woman's voice full of gravel and lead steeped through the car radio. She spoke of gathering limu visitors on ships, and dusty roads in Waianae. In the distance you could almost hear the dogs crying, the mullet wriggling in the fish bag Nostalgic for a tutu I never knew, I feel the ocean pulse inside me waves rolling over, pushing me till I leap from this car through the congested H-1 across the noise and ashen sky emerge beneath the rains in Nu'uanu. I move past the fresh water ponds past the guava trees towards homes with flimsy tin roofs where my father, already late for school, races up Papakolea with a kite made of fishing twine. Framed in a small kitchen window, tutu scrapes the meat from awa skin for dinner tonight, wipes her hands on old flour bags for dish cloths. She is already small and wants to forget I may be too late- I have tomatoes and onion from the market tutu my hand is out, my plate is empty and some bones for the dogs to stop their crying do you know my name? I am listening for your stories to call me in my hand is out, my plate is empty for your stories to show me the way tutu, do you know my name? Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack celebrate the 150th episode of Close Talking with a classic poem from a living legend - "Dreams" by Nikki Giovanni. They dig into poem's coming-of-age narrative discussing and along the way make musical references galore. Ray Charles and Marjorie Hendrix are just the tip of a harmonious iceberg in this wide-ranging conversation. Learn more about Giovanni, here: https://nikki-giovanni.com/ Read the poem, here (or below): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48224/dreams-56d229494e255 Dreams By: Nikki Giovanni in my younger years before i learned black people aren't suppose to dream i wanted to be a raelet and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears” or “tal kin bout tal kin bout” or marjorie hendricks and grind all up against the mic and scream “baaaaaby nightandday baaaaaby nightandday” then as i grew and matured i became more sensible and decided i would settle down and just become a sweet inspiration Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss Catherine Barnett's beautiful poem "Epistemology." Fittingly for the season of solstice logs, Hannukah bushes, and Christmas trees, this poem - which contemplates the nature of knowing - name checks "The Secret Life of Trees" and considers the aliveness of our arboreal friends. Learn more about Catherine Barnett, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/catherine-barnett Read the poem, here (or below): https://poets.org/poem/epistemology Epistemology By: Catherine Barnett Mostly I'd like to feel a little less, know a little more. Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know. Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord to keep it from fraying? Not the man who called my life a debacle, a word whose sound I love. In a debacle things are unleashed. Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary. I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate, the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing. They don't use words, but they can be said to love. They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another tree. And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing stops them, it's called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare, to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth. Sometimes when I'm alone I go outside with my big little mouth and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss a poem from Seema Yasmin's book "If God Is A Virus." They discuss Yasmin's status as a journalist, poet, and medical doctor; the way she weaves her many areas of expertise together in the poem; and what kind of art might one day represent this period of time. Read more about Yasmin, here: https://pulitzercenter.org/people/seema-yasmin Get a copy of "If God Is A Virus" here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1636-if-god-is-a-virus Read more poems from the book, here: https://pulitzercenter.org/IfGodIsaVirus If God Is a Virus By: Seema Yasmin She is vexed. Absolutely done with your shit. God wants to know why you didn't get a flu shot; why her minions made your left lung collapse white out on the X-ray, rack up a six-figure ICU bill when all they wanted was a warm vacation tropical waters, champagne plasma to sip - not to bring about death - not to turn prunes in pleural fluid. No body wants that. God thinks anti-vaxxers have a death wish. Wonders how they eat organic, snort coke and laundry detergent on weekends. Don't they know yogi detox tea is hepatotoxic? God knew Charles Darwin. Clever woman, she said. Who would want your lot extinct? Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
In a slight departure from our regular format, Jack offers a brief remembrance of three recently departed poets - Kamilah Aisha Moon, Etel Adnan, and Robert Bly. Links to more information about the poets and to the poems read in the episode are below. Learn more about Kamilah Aisha Moon, here: http://www.kamilahaishamoon.org/ Read Disbelief here: https://poets.org/poem/disbelief Learn more about Etel Adnan, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/etel-adnan Read an excerpt from The Arab Apocalypse, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53855/xliv-from-the-arab-apocalypse Read an excerpt from The Spring Flowers Own here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53851/from-the-spring-flowers-own-the-morning-after-my-death Learn more about Robert Bly, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-bly Read "Why We Don't Die" here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/152560/why-we-dont-die Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
In this special episode, Connor and Jack discuss the 2021 National Book Awards - the long list, the finalists, and the winner "Floaters: Poems" by Martín Espada. They dig into an excerpt from the title poem "Floaters" and discuss how it brings urgent attention to issues of immigration and uses narrative to fight against the dehumanizing language often used to describe those seeking a better life in the United States. Listen to the National Book Awards Finalist Reading, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts4YxshQK10 Learn more about Espada, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/martin-espada Get a copy of "Floaters: Poems" here: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393541038 Read all of "Floaters" here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151158/floaters-5d8d0d07466b9 Excerpt from Floaters By: Martín Espada "Ok, I'm gonna go ahead and ask ... have ya'll ever seen floaters this clean. I'm not trying to be an a$$ but I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS, could this be another edited photo. We've all seen the dems and liberal parties do some pretty sick things." —Anonymous post, “I'm 10-15” Border Patrol Facebook group Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry, like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river, like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float. And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol, keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body, to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks. And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles, names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints: Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos. See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves. Say what we know of them now they are dead: Óscar slapped dough for pizza with oven-blistered fingers. Daughter Valeria sang, banging a toy guitar. He slipped free of the apron he wore in the blast of the oven, sold the motorcycle he would kick till it sputtered to life, counted off pesos for the journey across the river, and the last of his twenty-five years, and the last of her twenty-three months. There is another name that beats its wings in the heart of the trees: Say Tania Vanessa Ávalos, Óscar's wife and Valeria's mother, the witness stumbling along the river.
Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Dr. Len Lawson, co-editor of the new collection "The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry." just released from Blair Publishing. Together they discuss Lawson's poem "Amanda Waller Suite Episode 3: Amanda Waller Has a Woman-to-Woman with Harley Quinn." They discuss finding the complex human side of characters like Waller, the poem's resonance with Nikky Finney's Condoleezza suite, and how the collection "The Future of Black" came together. Get a copy of "The Future of Black" here: https://www.blairpub.com/shop/the-future-of-black Connor and Jack discuss a poem from Finney's Condoleezza Suite on Episode 73 of Close Talking: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-073-concerto-no-7-condoleezza-working-out-at-the-watergate-nikky-finney Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack dive into an iconic poem by an iconic poet - Oodgeroo Noonuccal, also known as Kath Walker, a trailblazing indigenous Australian writer and activist. They discuss the history of racism towards indigenous Australian people, explore the ways the poem plays with perspective, and get a little lost on an environmental tangent about invasive species. Lear more about Oodgeroo Noonuccal, here: https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/noonuccal-oodgeroo Read more of her poems, here: https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/noonuccal-oodgeroo/poems Learn more about the indigenous peoples of Australia, here: https://aiatsis.gov.au/ We Are Going By: Oodgeroo Noonuccal They came in to the little town A semi-naked band subdued and silent All that remained of their tribe. They came here to the place of their old bora ground Where now the many white men hurry about like ants. Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'. Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring. 'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers. We belong here, we are of the old ways. We are the corroboree and the bora ground, We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders. We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told. We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires. We are the lightening bolt over Gaphembah Hill Quick and terrible, And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow. We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon. We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low. We are nature and the past, all the old ways Gone now and scattered. The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter. The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place. The bora ring is gone. The corroboree is gone. And we are going.' Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
A return to when Connor and Jack explored Fady Joudah's poem "Additional Notes on Tea." They discuss how the poem moves around the globe, how it interrogates history, and engages with the concept of God. Close Talking Ep. 132: Poetry and Palestine - https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-132-poetry-and-palestine UNBOXED Vol 15: Poetry and Palestine - https://us2.campaign-archive.com/?u=fd945ee0dcd8acdc0e3aa0f22&id=1551facf0f Additional Notes On Tea By: Fady Joudah In Cairo a boy's balcony higher than a man's deathbed. The boy is sipping tea, The view is angular like a fracture. Surrounding the bed, women in wooden chairs. They signal mourning with a scream. Family men on the street run up the stairs and drink raven tea. On the operating table in Solwezi a doctor watches a woman die. Tea while the anesthetic wears off, While the blade is waiting, tea. The doctor says the woman knows god is sleeping Outside heaven in a tent. God is a refugee dreaming of tea. Once upon a time an ocean married a sea to carry tea around. Land was jealous. So it turned into desert and gave no one wood for ships. And when ships became steel, Land turned into ice. And when everything melted, everything tasted like tea. Once upon a time there was a tea party in Boston. Tea, like history, is a non sequitur. I prefer it black. The Chinese drink it green. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss a poem by Andrés Cerpa whose book "The Vault" was recently long-listed for the 2021 National Book Award in Poetry. They dive into the short poem "The Nightmare Touched Its Forehead to My Lips" unpacking the ways it describes grief and loss, the meaning of vaults, and spend time on the title, which is also the title of a whole section of "The Vault." Read the poem here (or below): https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-nightmare-touched-its-forehead-to-my-lips/ Learn more about Andrés Cerpa, here: https://www.andrescerpa.com/ The Nightmare Touched Its Forehead to My Lips By: Andrés Cerpa For the living, water. And now, you're all the wells mined for their depth. All of the silence & all of the alls I can conjure. You are not in the living room. You are not in your chair. I drove to the end of the world today. Snow in the forecast, so I left my bicycle & the other half of your ashes at home. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
In this bonus episode Connor and Jack continue their discussion of Don Mee Choi's poem, Shitty KItty. This time they focus on (rant about?) the history of US foreign policy failures, the lack of consequences for the architects of those disasters, and connect the histories that Shitty Kitty surfaces to contemporary struggles. They also share a some from the "Report by the Special Subcommittee on Disciplinary Problems in the US Navy." Listen to the full episode on "Shitty Kitty" here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-141-shitty-kitty-don-mee-choi Read the poem, here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90212/shitty-kitty Get a copy of Hardly War, here: www.wavepoetry.com/products/hardly-war Learn more about Don Mee Choi, here: www.donmeechoi.com/ Shitty Kitty By: Don Mee Choi Here comes Shitty Kitty en route to the Gulf of Tonkin or en route to a race riot? That is the question and meanwhile discipline is the keystone and meanwhile did you see on TV helicopters being ditched into the sea? That is also my film and meanwhile all refugees must be treated as suspects. Looking for your husband? Looking for your son? That is the question and meanwhile she was the mother of the boy or that is what the translator said or Shitty Kitty or shall we adhere to traditional concepts of military discipline tempered with humanitarianism? That is the question and meanwhile South Korea exports military labor left over from the war. That is also my history or is that your history? That is the question and meanwhile (CHORUS: Dictator Park Chung Hee and his soldiers in Ray-Bans) How much? $7.5 million=per division or Binh Tai massacre=$7.5 million or Binh Hoa massacre=$7.5 million or Dien Nien—Phuoc Binh massacre=$7.5 million or Go Dai massacre=$7.5 milion or Ha My massacre=$7.5 million or Phong Nhi & Phong Nhat massacre=$15 million or Tay Vinh massacre=$7.5 million or Vinh Xuan massacre=$7.5 million or Mighty History? That is the question and meanwhile a riot began over a grilled cheese sandwich at Subic Bay. Discrimination or perception? That is the question and meanwhile the sailor refused to make a statement or translate? That is the question and meanwhile twenty-six men all black were charged with assault and rioting and meanwhile did you translate? That is my question and meanwhile lard or Crisco? Aye, aye, sir! (Anti-CHORUS: kittens in frilly white bonnets, bibs, and mittens) K I T T Y S O N G I, aye-aye-sir! I, crazy-daisy-sir! I, export-quality-sir! I, grill-grill-sir! I, meow-meow-sir! I, kitty-litter-sir! Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss Don Mee Choi's "Shitty Kitty" from her 2016 book "Hardly War." They enmesh themselves in the tangled histories the poem explores - racial violence on US Navy ships in the 1970s, massacres committed by South Korean troops in Vietnam - talk about how the poem fits into the wider project of the book, and explore how the poem engages with the theories of Roland Barthes. Read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90212/shitty-kitty Get a copy of Hardly War, here: https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/hardly-war Learn more about Don Mee Choi, here: http://www.donmeechoi.com/ Shitty Kitty By: Don Mee Choi Here comes Shitty Kitty en route to the Gulf of Tonkin or en route to a race riot? That is the question and meanwhile discipline is the keystone and meanwhile did you see on TV helicopters being ditched into the sea? That is also my film and meanwhile all refugees must be treated as suspects. Looking for your husband? Looking for your son? That is the question and meanwhile she was the mother of the boy or that is what the translator said or Shitty Kitty or shall we adhere to traditional concepts of military discipline tempered with humanitarianism? That is the question and meanwhile South Korea exports military labor left over from the war. That is also my history or is that your history? That is the question and meanwhile (CHORUS: Dictator Park Chung Hee and his soldiers in Ray-Bans) How much? $7.5 million=per division or Binh Tai massacre=$7.5 million or Binh Hoa massacre=$7.5 million or Dien Nien—Phuoc Binh massacre=$7.5 million or Go Dai massacre=$7.5 milion or Ha My massacre=$7.5 million or Phong Nhi & Phong Nhat massacre=$15 million or Tay Vinh massacre=$7.5 million or Vinh Xuan massacre=$7.5 million or Mighty History? That is the question and meanwhile a riot began over a grilled cheese sandwich at Subic Bay. Discrimination or perception? That is the question and meanwhile the sailor refused to make a statement or translate? That is the question and meanwhile twenty-six men all black were charged with assault and rioting and meanwhile did you translate? That is my question and meanwhile lard or Crisco? Aye, aye, sir! (Anti-CHORUS: kittens in frilly white bonnets, bibs, and mittens) K I T T Y S O N G I, aye-aye-sir! I, crazy-daisy-sir! I, export-quality-sir! I, grill-grill-sir! I, meow-meow-sir! I, kitty-litter-sir! Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss the poem "First Snow" by Aria Aber. They explore the poem's subtle and marvelous use of perspective, the representation of snow and frost, and the poem's resonances with the devastating impact US war and intervention has had on Afghanistan. Learn more about Aria Aber here: https://www.ariaaber.com/ Get a copy of her debut collection Hard Damage here: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496215703/ Find Aber's resources to support Afghans here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10-SLGJEb39jpN_vEw8ruvba3iS1BmeU5QoW1AdGEL7M/edit First Snow By: Aria Aber How easy for snow to turn to ice, for snow to disappear the light from the ragged frame of chestnut trees around the warehouse by what's left of wild chicory, scraped sculptures, weeping dogbane. Hunger borders this land, while snow turns all to immigrants, snow salts the embankment, where turtles wash ashore, literally hundreds of them, frozen hard like grenades of tear gas thrown across a barbwire fence. But who of their free will would ever want to climb that fence to live here, who would pray each night for grace, hoping to pass through the darkened veil of shit, to bear witness to smokestacks, wild champion, knapweed? Who'd loiter around cricks glistening with oil, which, once gone, will, like death, at last, democratize us all? On potato sacks in the snowcapped, abandoned warehouse, there huddle and sit the soiled refugees, bereft, cow-eyed, picking dirt off their scalps, their shelled soles. Among them, wordless, is my mother, and nestled on her lap is I, in love with the light of the first snow of my life, so awed and doubtful still of what lengths the frost wills to go, and what shape it will then take— Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack dig into an excerpt from the epic, book-length poem "John Brown's Body" by Stephen Vincent Benet. In the late 1920s the book was a mega-best seller and won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. They discuss the implications of the poem's popularity, other literary and artistic works that re-tell history, and the durable cultural myths John Brown's story exemplifies. Learn more a out Benét, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stephen-vincent-benet Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss the poem "Why I Am Silent About The Lament" by Abdullah Al-Baradouni, translated by Threa Almontaser. Despite being one of the most prominent and influential poets in the Arab world, until recently only one of Baradouni's poems had been translated into English. Connor and Jack discuss Baradouni's legacy, the ways this poem - written decades ago - speaks to the contemporary human rights crisis in Yemen, and Yemen's deep history of art, culture, and music. Learn more about Abdullah Al-Baradouni, here: https://yemenusedtobe.org/abdullah-al-baradouni/ Learn more about Threa Almontaser, here: https://www.threawrites.com/ Get a copy of her new book The Wild Fox of Yemen, here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/wild-fox-yemen Why I Am Silent About The Lament By: Abdullah Al-Baradouni (trans. Threa Almontaser) They tell me my silence is about lamentation. I tell them the howling is ugly. يقولون لي مالي صمتّ عن الرّثاء فقلت لهم ان العويل قبي Poetry is only for life and I felt like singing, not howling. وما الشعر الاّ للحياة وانّي شعرتُ اغنّي ما شعرت انوح How do I call the dead now that between us are hushed dirt and grave? I am surrounded by mute soil and a mausoleum. وكيف انادي ميّتاً حال بينه وبيني ترابٌ صامت وضريح Howling is only for widows and I am not like a widow who wails on the silent casket. وما النّواحُ الاٍ للثٍكالى ولم أكن كثكلى على صمت النعوش تصيح Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Time travel stories are everywhere - Avengers: Endgame, Loki, Back to the Future, Outlander, the list is endless - but what happens when a poem takes on the question of time travel? Connor and Jack dive into Irish poet, Patrick Cotter's "Time Traveler." They discuss the challenges of thinking about the practicalities of time travel, the poem's use of sound, and the time-warping events of the last year and a half. You can read the whole poem, here (or below): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90658/time-traveler Get a copy of Sonic White Poise, here: https://www.dedaluspress.com/product/sonic-white-poise/ Time Traveler By: Patrick Cotter Now is before he was born. Days of air shaken by bees, crow song probing eaves and quays. Maker of the future a perfect terra-cotta tense, a tense which sings. The absence of push in his education was unpresaged by the door's lack of wired Sesame. He waits and waits for egress. The door needs only his touch. Its only desire is to swing. He waits for it to open itself, as the cloud opens for the melting press of the sun. He is ready to rot where he leans, leaving a breeze-blown blemish long after he has arrived. Long before he has come into being. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack discuss the Audre Lorde poem "Coping." They discuss Lorde's legacy as a writer and theorist, how poems and other pieces of culture can be palatable containers for unruly emotions, and the nature imagery the poem uses. They also take time to reflect on the ways the poem gets them thinking about climate change. More about Audre Lorde, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/audre-lorde Coping By: Audre Lorde It has rained for five days running the world is a round puddle of sunless water where small islands are only beginning to cope a young boy in my garden is bailing out water from his flower patch when I ask him why he tells me young seeds that have not seen sun forget and drown easily Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
The Pulitzer Prizes just announced the 2021 winners and in poetry, Natalie Diaz won for her collection "Postcolonial Love Poem." In this special episode, Connor and Jack discuss the title poem, the histories at play in the collection, Diaz's well-deserved Pulitzer win, and more! Find "Postcolonial Love Poem" here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/postcolonial-love-poem Hear Diaz read the title poem, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm6poGV9H_Q Hear Connor and Jack discuss Diaz's poem "My Brother at 3A.M." here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-040-my-brother-at-3-am-natalie-diaz Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack explore the poem "Into the Racism Workshop" by award-winning, Menominee, two-spirit poet, Chrystos. Along the way they discuss the long, complex histories held in the term two-spirit, the wry humor in Chrystos' poem, and the note of tempered hope on which it ends. Into the Racism Workshop By: Chrystos For Alma Banda Goddard my cynical feet ambled prepared for indigestion & blank faces of outrageous innocence knowing I'd have to walk over years of media declaring we're vanished or savage or pitiful or noble My toes twitched when I saw so few brown faces but really when one eats racism every time one goes out one's door the appeal of talking about it is minuscule I sat with my back to the wall facing the door after I changed the chairs to a circle This doesn't really protect me but I con myself into believing it does One of the first speakers piped up I'm only here because my friend is Black & wanted me to do this with her I've already done 300 too many racism workshops Let it be entered into the Book of Stars that I did not kill her or shoot a scathing reply from the hip I let it pass because I could tell she was very interested in taking up all the space with herself & would do it if I said a word They all said something that I could turn into a poem but I got tired & went to sleep behind my interested eyes I've learned that the most important part of these tortures is for them to speak about racism at all Even showing up is heresy because as we all know racism is some vague thing that really doesn't exist or is only the skinheads on a bad day or isn't really a crucial problem not as important certainly as queers being able to marry or get insurance for each other When they turned to me as resident expert on the subject which quite honestly I can't for the life of me understand or make any sense out of I spoke from my feet things I didn't know I knew of our connections of the deadly poison that racism is for all of us Maybe some of them were touched but my bitch voice jumps in to say NOT MUCH! I heard back that someone thought I was brilliant Does that mean that I speak well Or that she was changed It's only her change I need Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
This episode revisits Connor and Jack's discussion of Emily Jungmin Yoon's poem "Say Grace." They explore how gender and religion intertwine in the poem, talk about the difficulties immigrant populations face in new oppressive states, and reflect on Emily Jungmin Yoon's particular kind of reclaiming. Check out the poem below or at this link: www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi…25/say-grace Read more about Yoon here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-jungmin-yoon Read more about Kelly Oliver's Witnessing here: www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/witnessing [italics from the original poem do not display below] Say Grace By: Emily Jungmin Yoon In my country our shamans were women and our gods multiple until white people brought an ecstasy of rosaries and our cities today glow with crosses like graveyards. As a child in Sunday school I was told I’d go to hell if I didn’t believe in God. Our teacher was a woman whose daughters wanted to be nuns and I asked What about babies and what about Buddha, and she said They’re in hell too and so I memorized prayers and recited them in front of women I did not believe in. Deliver us from evil. O sweet Virgin Mary, amen. O sweet. O sweet. In this country, which calls itself Christian, what is sweeter than hearing Have mercy on us. From those who serve different gods. O clement, O loving, O God, O God, amidst ruins, amidst waters, fleeing, fleeing. Deliver us from evil. O sweet, O sweet. In this country, point at the moon, at the stars, point at the way the lake lies, with a hand full of feathers, and they will look at the feathers. And kill you for it. If a word for religion they don’t believe in is magic so be it, let us have magic. Let us have our own mothers and scarves, our spirits, our shamans and our sacred books. Let us keep our stars to ourselves and we shall pray to no one. Let us eat what makes us holy. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack share poetry from Palestinian poets and reflect on the power of poetry as a form of resistance. Poems shared: "Resist, My People, Resist Them" by Dareen Tatour: https://arablit.org/2016/04/27/the-poem-for-which-dareen-tatours-under-house-arrest-resist-my-people-resist-them/ "The House Murdered" by Mahmoud Darwish: https://progressive.org/dispatches/the-house-murdered/ "Israelis Let Bulldozers Grind to Halt —American newspaper headline dropped in our village” by Naomi Shihab Nye: https://losangelesreview.org/review-tiny-journalist-naomi-shihab-nye/ Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. To finish off a full week of episodes, a look at some contemporary sonnets and ways that poets have added to (and moved beyond)the basic fourteen line form. Nicole Sealey's 29 line "candelabra with heads" Paisley Rekdal's anagrammatical sonnets, Jericho Brown's creation of The Duplex and more are discussed. candelabra with heads by Nicole Sealey Had I not brought with me my mind as it has been made, this thing, this brood of mannequins, cocooned and mounted on a wooden scaffold, might be eight infants swaddled and sleeping. Might be eight fleshy fingers on one hand. Might be a family tree with eight pictured frames. Such treaties occur in the brain. Can you see them hanging? Their shadow is a crowd stripping the tree of souvenirs. Skin shrinks and splits. The bodies weep fat the color of yolk. Can you smell them burning? Their perfume climbing as wisteria would a trellis. as wisteria would a trellis. burning? Their perfume climbing fat the color of yolk. Can you smell them Skin shrinks and splits. The bodies weep is a crowd stripping the tree of souvenirs. Can you see them hanging? Their shadow frames. Such treaties occur in the brain. Might be a family tree with eight pictured Might be eight fleshy fingers on one hand. might be eight infants swaddled and sleeping. and mounted on a wooden scaffold, this brood of mannequins, cocooned as it has been made, this thing, Had I not brought with me my mind Who can see this and not see lynchings? Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. In this episode, they explore sonnets from the United States and discuss how the sonnet traveled around the world. They dig into Claude McKay's "America" and Gwendolyn Brooks' "the rites for Cousin Vit." America By: Claude McKay Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. the rites for Cousin Vit By: Gwendolyn Brooks Carried her unprotesting out the door. Kicked back the casket-stand. But it can't hold her, That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her, The lid's contrition nor the bolts before. Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even now, surmise, She rises in the sunshine. There she goes, Back to the bars she knew and the repose In love-rooms and the things in people's eyes. Too vital and too squeaking. Must emerge. Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss, Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.
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