Each week Dr. J shares a poem from one of the nineteenth-century American Fireside Poets, reading it aloud and commenting on it to enhance the listener’s enjoyment of the poem.
Priscilla Mullins and John Alden wed, symbolizing the continuity of life in a true pastoral image.
The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep . . .
The essence of each poet: Chaucer and Shakespearre
A young man learns of the death of his beloved when he comes upon a strange ceremony.
The poet recounts an apocryphal story of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and then asks "whose was theright and the wrong?"
The poet asks our sympathy for a woman the world considers unworthy of sympathy.
The poet fancies himself related to a willow tree and laments the negative influence of Puritanism on New England and American culture
A "beatiful youth" is killled by a sharpshooter's bullet in the Civil War. The bullet continues on to his hometown, where it takes another life.
Longfellow remembers the burial of his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne
We shouldn't forget the modest flowers of April when the showier flowers of May come into bloom.
The poet meditates in the darkness upon time and eternity.
On the 19th of April, 1775, Pau Revere rides to alert his countrymen that British troops are moving from Boston to seize Patriot munitions at Concord, Massachussetts.
The poet is grateful that he s able to dwell in modes of being other than his own.
A poet contemplates the gulf between medieval Christianity and the modern world.
An old buccaneer dreams of going to sea again.
the poet anticipaes atime of world peace.
To have any hope of happiness with a man, a woman from when she is a child must develop both a strong sense of self-confidence and a strong sense of self-worth.
A medieval minnesinger provdes for the care of the birds who taught him
The importance and need of community seen in a snow-bound farm.
Two portraits: one of the poet's learning disabled uncle and one of a young schoolteacher such as would go to the South after the Civil War to teach the sons and the daughters of the Freedmen.
An early 19th-century New England family passes a snowbound evening telling stories.
The artist Michael Angelo reflects on the demands and importance of art.
A schooner sinks in a storm with the daughter of its captain tied to the mast for her safety.
A poem challenges us to think both about poetry and about nature: is nature simpy a material fact that can be understood through scentific materialism, or are their apects of nature that are unknowable trhough the scientific world view?
The first winter snowfall brings both sadness and peace to a faher grieving the death of an infant daughter.
The trials and tribulations of a child on Christmas morning.
A mother and daughter build a gingerbread house as Christmas approaches.
December represented in all its facets: natural, pagan, and Christian. Syncretism as a characteristic of Christianity.
The Norse god Balder, considered as a transition figure from Norse paganism to Christianity.
A healing ceremony of the Ojibwa nation, shown to be effective in the treatment of grief.
For Veteran's Day, the Band of Brother's speech from Henry V by William Shakespeare.
Aremembrnce of thoughts of despair and suicide by on of America's best-loved poets.
A slaughtered pig comes back from the dead to avenge himself on the butcher who slaughterered him. A scary poem for Halloween.
A poem in Hoosier dialect celebrating autumn in the rural Midwest
The first fatal encounter between the Massachusetts Pilgrims and the native Massachusetts people, a counterweight to the story of the first Thanksgiving
The beauty of red maples in autumn is used by the poet to convey the beauty--and loss--of his beloved.
Longfellow invents a legend of a Viking/Norse visit to North America before Coumbus.
Poetry as an alternative to Monday Night Football and he general hurly-burly of the world, with a shout-out to The Last Duel.
Wordsworth, Longfellow, and our modern estrangement from nature. The World Is Too Much With Us
A classic moment from American literature, when the Puritan maiden Priscilla says to John Alden "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" and thus seals forever America as a place of freedom for women, men, and love.
Still let it ever be thy pride/To linger by the laborer's side
A mid-day reverie of all the human activities done with ropes, both happy and sad, good and bad.
A woman on here bridal night raises her hand to stab her sleeping husband.
The poet finds strength gazing on the planet Mars in the night sky.
Walt Whitman recalls a childhood memory that speaks of his origins as a poet
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