Podcasts about love poems

Read by Terry Casburn Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Welcome back to the Dirt Diaries! Since February is the month of love with Valentine, I thought it would be fun to go over some ancient love poems and songs and then... rank them. I go over everything from the world's oldest love songs to those written by Sappho and Plato and everything in between. People may say ILY today, but someone in the ancient world said, " I wish I were Heaven, with a billion eyes to look at you." -Stay curious Want more Dirt Diaries? Join patreon with all your history-loving friends! patreon.com/TheDirtDiaries Travel with me, my socials, and more! https://beacons.ai/dirtdiaries.tenn

Pre Order All the Things I Say to GodAmazon:⁠⁠https://amzn.to/4ecAJfr⁠⁠ ⁠Substack

We let ChatGPT write love poems for one another... and the results were as awkward as you'd expect!!

Roses are Red Violets are Blue Jan Brierton's here with some love poems for you!

A thank you to my listeners, all over the world, on our 200th episode. The thematic spectrum of Donne's love poetry, continued. Moods of skepticism (“Go and catch a falling star”), hatred (“The Apparition”) and requited sexual and romantic love (“The Good Morrow,” “The Sun Rising,” “The Canonization”).

Donne's are arguably the greatest love poems in English after Shakespeare's sonnets. Donne as a Metaphysical poet. Donne's fascinating and troubled life. A spectrum of types of love, beginning with the satiric and overtly erotic: “Elegy 19” and “The Flea.”

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press) and Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications). A former Steinbeck Fellow and Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, she's received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Yefe Nof, Jentel, and National Parks Arts Foundation in partnership with Gettysburg National Military Park and Poetry Foundation. Her poem “Battlegrounds” was featured at Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, On Being's Poetry Unbound, and the anthology, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (W.W. Norton). Her poetry and essays can be found at Acentos Review, Huizache, LA Review of Books, The Offing, [Pank], Santa Fe Writers Project, and other journals. She is the director of Women Who Submit. Inspired by her Chicana identity, she works to cultivate love and comfort in chaotic times. At the heart of Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press 2023) lies an exploration of love in its many forms. Bermejo crafts poems that celebrate the enduring bonds of family, the unwavering strength of compassion, and the necessity for defiance. "Bermejo's Incantation do more than conjure hope for a vague future; they demand accountability and enact the healing we need now," writes award-winning author Carribean Fragoza. These poems dance like flames in rituals of resistance and resilience, casting light on paths that lead to a future unburdened by the chains of misogyny, white supremacy, and state-sanction violence.

A love poem written by St. Joseph to our Lord Jesus Christ. One can quickly feel the deep love he has for Christ. Reading from _Letters & Poems by Saint Joseph the Hesychast_ , p. 529-531

Manahil Bandukwala pops into the Zoom studio to talk about her second poetry collection, Heliotropia. Andrew admits to never seeing Star Trek and plans to jump in midway through, just to understand a poem. It's an episode blooming with great poems! -- Manahil Bandukwala is a writer and visual artist based in Ottawa and Mississauga, Ontario. She is the author of Heliotropia (Brick Books, 2024) and MONUMENT (Brick Books, 2022), which was shortlisted for the 2023 Gerald Lampert Award, and was selected as a Writer's Trust of Canada Rising Star in 2023. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com. -- Andrew French is a poet from North Vancouver, British Columbia. They have published three chapbooks, most recently Buoyhood (forthcoming with Alfred Gustav Press, 2025). Andrew holds a BA in English from Huron University College at Western University and an MA in English from UBC. They write poems, book reviews, and have hosted this very podcast since 2019.

We're excited to share with you this conversation with Adrie Rose, a poet and trained folk herbalist who lives beside an orchard in Western Massachusetts. Adrie is the editor of Nine Syllables Press at Smith College. Her chapbook Rupture came out in January of 2024, and her micro chapbook I Will Write a Love Poem came out in 2023.In today's conversation, Kaitlin and Adrie discuss Adrie's writing and the connections between her personal experiences and her work on the page. Specifically, the way in which her wider personal history- one that has included everything from the creation of a bakery to investigations of folk herbalism- as well as a life threatening ectopic pregnancy, that all came together to inform her writing in unexpected and evocative ways.We know you'll enjoy this conversation with Adrie. We personally learned a lot about what it means to live in the world, and also to bring those lived experiences to the page in the form of some really, really meaningful and personal poetry.Find more of Adrie's work here: Website: https://www.adrierose.com/Instagram: @adrierose_Substack: https://adrie.substack.com/ Also mentioned in the podcast:Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARiM): https://www.artistresidencyinmotherhood.com/ Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and give us a rating. This will help us reach more listeners like you who are navigating the joys and pitfalls of artistic and parenting identities.For regular updates:Visit our website: postpartumproduction.com Follow us on Instagram: @postpartumproductionpodcastSubscribe to our podcast newsletter on Substack: https://postpartumproduction.substack.com

Today's poem is Love Poem by Sophie Cabot Black.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We're taking a break this week, so we're sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on February 28, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “Today's poem reminds me of the daunting and ongoing and heartrending work of preparing ourselves to love and to dare to receive it, if we can.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Our heroes will be sailing the sleepy seas of stationery after a visit to a bookstore.Start a 7 day FREE trial of Sleep With Me Plus- The ultimate way to listen to show, based on how YOU listen! Get your Sleep With Me SleepPhones. Use "sleepwithme" for $5 off!!Learn more about producer Russell aka Rusty Biscuit at russellsperberg.com and @BabyTeethLA on IG.Show Artwork by Emily TatSupport our AAPI communityBlack Lives Matter. Here is a list of anti-racism resources.Support the people in Ukraine.Going through a hard time? You can find support at the Crisis Textline and see more global helplines here.CLARITIN - Nip your allergy symptoms in the bud this spring with Claritin D. Head to claritin.com to learn more and Live Claritin Clear.HELIX SLEEP - Take the 2-minute sleep quiz and they'll match you to a customized mattress that'll give you the best sleep of your life. Visit helixsleep.com/sleep for up to $200 off and 2 free pillows! ODOO - Simplify and connect every aspect of your company with this easy-to-use, all-in-one management platform software. Learn more at www.odoo.com/withme AIR DOCTOR PRO - Get a professional air purifier with a medical-grade UltraHEPA filter that's 100x more effective than ordinary HEPA filters. Visit airdoctorpro.com and use code SLEEP for up to $300 off!ZOCDOC - With Zocdoc, you can search for local doctors who take your insurance, read verified patient reviews and book an appointment, in-person or video chat. Download the Zocdoc app to sign-up for FREE at zocdoc.com/sleep PROGRESSIVE - With the Name Your Price tool, you tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Get your quote today at progressive.com

Recorded by Nen G. Ramirez for Poem-a-Day, a series produced by the Academy of American Poets. Published on July 11, 2024. www.poets.org

Thom Francis welcomes poets Ed Rinaldi, Karen Peters, & Samuel Maurice who shared their work at the 2024 Word Fest Open Mic at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts on April 27, 2024. Poet, Peace Activist, and Photographer Dan Wilcox recently wrote on his blog: "The very 1st Albany Word Fest was held on September 8, 2001, at the Greenhouse Shelter in Thatcher Park, in the mountains outside of Albany. It was the brain-child of [Albany-area poet and host] R.M. Engelhardt. That day featured readings by 31 poets, divided into five groups. There was even an open mic, where six poets shared their work. "Over the years there were various iterations of Word Fest, including strings of multi-day events, even folding in the Third Thursday Open Mic as well as other regularly-scheduled events into a grand Word Fest week, all held in Albany, many at the UAG Gallery on Lark St., eventually in 2005 switching from the Fall to April (to coincide with National Poetry Month). Then the pandemic." In April of this year, the Word Fest and the Open Mic made it's return, this time in Troy and West Sand Lake. The two-day event was filled with books, writers, featured spoken word artists, and an amazing lineup of open mic poets. Today, we are going to hear from three poets who took the stage at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts. Ed Rinaldi, who has started to come back out to literary events, read an untitled philosophical meditation. Karen Peters, who was a new voice for many in the room, read poems with rain and snow and a paper bag. The final reader was Samuel Maurice, who as an intern for the Hudson Valley Writers Guild was around all day setting up the venue. Samuel, who co-hosts the Invocation open mic series at The Eleven on Lark St. in Albany, read one poem, “Love Poem to My Hangnail.” You can find more information, photos, and videos on all of the Word Fest events on the Hudson Valley Writers Guild website, hvwg.org

Today's poem is Love Poem by the Light of the Refrigerator by Alisha Dietzman. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today's poem, with its phantom-like repetition and delicate renderings of stereotypically gendered décor, demands our aesthetic attention. It is at once domestic and elemental, modest and suggestive, buoyant and exacting.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

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On this week's episode, we discuss Aaron's calf injury, Megan almost passing out, Trump being a felon, and much, much more! Follow us on all of our social medias to keep up to date! Instagram: ⁠@thefairlyoddasians⁠ Tik Tok: ⁠@thefairlyoddasians⁠ Twitter: ⁠@fairlyoddasians⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thefairlyoddasians/message

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here!For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat!Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:– 32 Poems– The Oracles by A. E. Housman– On the Rocks by Christopher Childers– The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House by Audre Lorde– Eratosphere– All Up in Your Ears (Jonathan's old podcast)– Sappho / Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments, trans. Aaron Poochigian– Ethan McGuire– Zara Raab– Matt Wall– The Newburyport Literary Festival– The Great Outdoor Fight– The West Chester Poetry Conference– Poetry by the Sea– Able Muse– Alex Pepple– Shane McCrae– Jeff Colosino– The Banshees of Inisherin– Michael Collins– The Wind that Shakes the BarleyFrequently mentioned names:– Joshua Mehigan– Shane McCrae– A. E. Stallings– Ryan Wilson– Morri Creech– Austin Allen– Jonathan Farmer– Zara Raab– Amit Majmudar– Ethan McGuire– Coleman Glenn– Alexis Sears– JP Gritton– Alex Pepple– Ernie Hilbert– Joanna PearsonOther Ratbag Poetry Pods:Poetry Says by Alice AllanI Hate Matt Wall by Matt WallVersecraft by Elijah BlumovRatbag Poetics By David Jalal MotamedAlice: Poetry SaysBrian: @BPlatzerCameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] comMatthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] comMusic by ETRNLArt by Daniel Alexander Smith

“My invitation is just to let ourselves feel the pain. That we don't have to have the shame on top of it. It's painful to know that I have contributed to the harm of another person and that I had no idea. I don't have to hold shame about it. I can grieve that.”Check out the episode page for the transcript and the full list of the resources mentioned in this episode: https://widerroots.com/9 In this conversation, Andréa Ranae and I explore some juicy questions: How has the coaching industry's engagement with social justice evolved over the past 8 years? What does it look like for coaches to recognize our collective power to shape the industry?Andréa shares stories of the breakthroughs and challenges she's witnessed as her students become politicized. We discuss the importance of taking collective responsibility as coaches and healers. We also dig into the role of shame, and how it can serve as a wake-up call but shouldn't keep us stuck.Andréa Ranae is a coach, facilitator, and singer-songwriter who has dedicated her life to exploring how we can live, work, and relate in ways that contribute to impactful social change.⭐ In this episodeHow has the coaching industry evolved in its engagement with social justice over the last eight years?What were some of the key concepts and frameworks Andréa needed to introduce to coaches who were new to social justice?What breakthroughs have coaches experienced as they became more politicized through her teachings?How can coaches use their collective power to shape the industry and create systemic change?What questions can politicized coaches ask themselves to work toward collective liberation?How can shame serve as an indicator of change, and what role does it play in keeping systems of domination in place?

In this concluding episode of "Poems as Teachers," our special miniseries on conflict and the human condition, host Pádraig Ó Tuama says the poems discussed in this offering are a different kind of teacher: “not as teachers that give us rules to follow — more so teachers that share something of their own intuition.” And for a final reflection, he offers Kai Cheng Thom's “trauma is not sacred,” which speaks directly, fiercely, and lovingly to the pain, scars, and violence that we humans carry and inflict upon one another.Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performance artist, and community healer. Kai Cheng is the author of the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir; the essay collection I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes at the End of the World (an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book); the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book); and the children's books From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (illustrated by Kai Yun Ching and Wai-Yant Li) and For Laika, the Dog Who Learned the Names of the Stars (illustrated by Kai Yun Ching). She won the Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers in 2017.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This is the final episode of "Poems as Teachers," a special seven-part miniseries on conflict and the human condition.We're pleased to offer Kai's poem, and invite you to read Pádraig's weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

Innovation in beer has been accelerating for the past decade as breweries—excited by new styles and techniques, and feeding a culture of newness incentivized by social apps—churn out a relentless quantity of new beers in new formats with new labels. However, to hear Bill Cherry tell it, the choices he's made at Switchback (https://www.switchbackvt.com) over the past two decades have been driven more by slowness than speed. Packaging in 22-ounce bombers so they could dial in packaging before moving to more popular formats, or pursuing innovation in smoked beer because demand (and competition) in that niche are small, have afforded the brewery time and space to figure it out and build demand organically, always focusing first on the beer and its quality. The results have paid off over recent years, with 2022 gold and 2023 bronze medals at the World Beer Cup for Katie's Love Poem, their grodziskie. But that's just the kindling, as their broader Flynn on Fire series has seen them tackle and learn from a vast array of different smoked beers. Cherry loves smoked beer because they're harder to sell to consumers—there isn't a built-in market for them, so they have to create one, and he loves that challenge as well as the runway for lower-stakes experimentation. In this episode, he talks through that counterintuitive strategy and how it relates to their approach to innovation, including: designing Switchback Ale based on pieces of other inspirational beers growing slowly to make sure beer quality is always top priority packaging draft only for the first 10 years of the brewery until they could afford a quality bottling line homing in on smoked because because “nobody likes smoked beers, but they should” creating the smoke-o-meter scale for conveying smokiness to consumers step-mashing for flavor, not just attenuation maintaining a living yeast pitch that's going on 2,000-plus generations balancing hop flavor and smoke aroma in smoked IPA And more. “if you can get people to drink something that they don't know they want, that's true craft,” says Cherry. This episode is brought to you by: G&D Chillers (https://gdchillers.com): At G&D Chillers they always strive to Build Great Chillers. Partner with them as you Build Great Beer. Choose G&D Chillers on your next Expansion or Brewery start up and receive 1 free year of Remote control and Monitoring of your new G&D Chiller! ProBrew (https://www.probrew.com) By partnering with ProBrew, brewers can fill and seam their canned product at ranges from 100-600 cans per minute. Our unique filling process also ensures low dissolved oxygen pickup and focuses on product quality during the entire process. Visit probrew.com or email us at contactus@probrew.com. Old Orchard (https://www.oldorchard.com/brewer): Berry Blend, Blood Orange, Lemonade, and Tart Cherry are the latest additions to our lineup of flavored craft juice concentrate blends. To learn more and request your free samples, head over to oldorchard.com/brewer (https://www.oldorchard.com/brewer) Omega Yeast (https://omegayeast.com): Streamline efficiency with Omega Yeast's Diacetyl Knock Out series. The DKO series is comprised of 8 familiar yeast strains engineered to knock out the formation of diacetyl before it starts. The strains you know, now better. Contact Omega Yeast today at omegayeast.com. ABS Commercial (https://abs-commercial.com). ABS Commercial are proud to offer brewhouses, tanks, keg washers, and preventative maintenance parts to brewers across the country as well as equipment for distilling, cider-making, wine-making, and more! Contact them today at sales@abs-commercial.com to discuss your customized brewery needs. Yakima Chief Hops Varietees (https://varietees.com). VarieTees Supply Co. offers hop apparel inspired by hop varieties, art, and community. Shop designs from various artists inspired by your favorite varieties including Citra, Simcoe, Sabro, and Mosaic! Shop VarieTees and use promo code CBB20 for 20% off at varietees.com. OPA Design Studio (https://designopa.com): The architects at OPA Design Studio are your partners in developing the unique design you need. With over a decade of experience designing breweries, the folks at OPA are here to serve as your trusted experts from start to finish. Visit designopa.com to set up your no obligation introductory consultation today. Craft Spirits & Distilling Podcast (https://spiritsanddistilling.com/podcasts/): If you're a distiller or curious about it, check out the Craft Spirits & Distilling podcast. Click on the link and subscribe from your favorite podcast platform.

Hi Smooches! On this episode, we recap a gorgeous YA sapphic romance told partially through poetry, Just Another Epic Love Poem by Parisa Akhbari. It's about two friends who have passed notebooks back and forth for their entire friendship, writing poems to each other, and how everything changes when they acknowledge their deeper feelings. Spoilers ahead. Find us on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/makeoutalreadypod/?hl=en Preorder Liz's next book, IN ON THE ACTION: https://a.co/d/87RjuZC MMF short story coming in May: https://a.co/d/aUHQx3C Copy editing and tarot brainstorming services: Editorial Services – Elle Diaz Romance Stuff we mentioned The audiobook for Just Another Epic Love Poem does have two narrators. Don't Want You Like a Best Friend by Emma R. Alban The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer Hold Still by Nina Lacour I Was a Teenage Exocolonist video game Rooney Phantom Planet The Idea of You movie A very funny video about Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion https://youtu.be/M3HSoQ8TYt0?si=fFq-pWXsssRws_jx

Can you write love poems during a time of war? What about sex poems or erotic poems about your current “situationship?” In this interview, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo discusses her latest book, Incantation, Love Poems for Battle Sites. She tells us that the book started with an artists grant which allowed her to visit Gettysburg to write about national monuments during a time when many were fighting over the meaning of those monuments and whether or not they should be kept or torn down. These poems became a centerpiece for the book, but around those central poems she also wrote poems about children growing up during this time, about her own love life, about daily life with its anxiety, hope and especially its acts of love. As she points out, the French Revolution kicked off because parents couldn't get enough bread to feed their children. They fought not because of ideals, but because they wanted to protect those they loved. She continues this tradition in her work by providing not only poems of witness, but also poems of pleasure and comfort for all those who read her work. References Audre Lorde Pleasure Activism adrienne maree brown Octavia Butler Chen Chen, “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” Khadija Queen's “I'm so Fine”  Take-Away Quotes “I thought about (the book) like a jewel setting. The Gettysburg poems were the center ring. The first and last sections would be the side settings. There are memoriam poems, and then there are love poems and happier poems about children. “You don't have to try so hard to just be yourself. . . There's plenty to write about each day. Just look at the news.” “We're all being trained to be fierce in our writing, but are we doing it safely? Are we taking care of ourselves as we write?”  “As much as I want to be a witness to the difficulty of the world, I also want to be a place of comfort. I think about that when (organizing a book or doing a reading).” “It's about the battles, but it's also about the love. We can't keep going without the love. . . From what I remember about learning of the French Revolution, it started with mothers who couldn't get bread for their children. I realized that revolutions are fought for love, not for ideals, but for love.” 

Becky, Austin, and Jennifer discuss various poets and their own personal experiences with poetry. Discussed topics and poets include: E.E. Cummings Shel Silverstein Chen Chen Kwame Alexander William Stafford Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Foundation Mary Oliver and more! Introductory reading "Some Things I Like" by Lemn Sissay Other readings: "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein "Ask Me" by William Stafford "Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem" by Matthew Olzmann "Fire" by Matthew Dickman "In the Desert" by Stephen Crane  

We think we know the Vikings, but how well do we really know them?From the insignia we think they wear, to the names they call themselves and the way they spoke to each other, there's a lot to uncover.Joining Kate today is Dr. Caitlin Ellis, historian and Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, to take us back to this world and find out more.This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here.

Sarah Rose Etter is a writer based in Los Angeles, CA. In Sarah's latest novel, Ripe, a young woman is trapped in a dream-job-turned-corporate-nightmare at a cutthroat Silicon Valley tech startup. Her bosses are capricious and cruel, the city she lives in is crumbling under late capitalism, and everywhere she goes she is followed by her own personal black hole. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about the relationship between her surrealist fiction and poetry, why visual art is important to her, and what it means for a character to have agency. Then for the second segment we discussed dead authors, reading in translation, and creative insecurity. (Recorded March 2, 2024.) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Sarah Rose Etter Purchase Ripe: Skylight Books (Los Angeles, CA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Sarah Rose Etter - The Book of X Keep the Channel Open - Episode 89: Julia Dixon Evans Tommy Pico Lilliam Rivera Kristen Arnett Sarah Rose Etter - “Unpublishable: Censored Emails from Noam Chomsky” Alina Szapocznikow Vija Celmins Nylon - “Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe and the Rotted Underbelly of Capitalism” Sarah Rose Etter - “Inside the Cardboard Box of My Heart” Mark Rothko Louise Bourgeois Donald Judd Sarah Rose Etter - “Girl, What Is Wrong With You?” Parasite Uncut Gems Sarah Rose Etter - “Subglacial Rivers, A Love Poem, Because… & Either/Or” Crane Brinton - The Anatomy of Revolution Brandon Taylor - “living shadows: aesthetics of moral worldbuilding” Tove Ditlevsen - The Copenhagen Trilogy Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine Transcript Episode Credits: Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa Music: Podington Bear Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Parisa Akhbari (@authorparisa) is a mental health therapist and writer from Seattle, Washington. Her debut YA novel, Just Another Epic Love Poem, follows two queer best friends in Catholic school as they fall in love through the pages of a never-ending poem they've been writing back and forth for five years. When not writing or therapizing, Parisa can be found trying to replicate her grandmother's drool-worthy Persian recipes, riding ferries around the Puget Sound, and dancing around the kitchen with her wife and dogs. Learn more at parisawrites.com.Intro reel, Writing Table Podcast 2024 Outro Recording

[REBROADCAST FROM May 23, 2023] Newbery-winning author and poet Kwame Alexander is a beloved children's book author, but now he is sharing more of his life and story with adult readers. Alexander joins us to discuss his new memoir, Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances, which tells the story of his parents, and his own journey as a father.

Today's poem is Love Poem by Sophie Cabot Black. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today's poem reminds me of the daunting and ongoing and heartrending work of preparing ourselves to love and to dare to receive it, if we can.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

hi sick freaksss!! in the spirit of February we asked y'all to send in stories about embarrassing things you did for crushes and.....it was A LOT... in this episode we talked about falling off your crush's loft bed & having to buy him dinner, new tv shows Drew is currently consuming, and Deison's new crushes !! (spoiler alert: they're men!) For extra fun silly zoomie-filled content, JOIN OUR MEMBERSHIP!!! Visit patreon.com/twoidiotgirls for more info!!! Our Sponsors for this week are: - Earth Breeze: Visit earthbreeze.com/twoidiotgirls for 40% off to get started! - Rocket Money: Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/twoidiotgirls - MeUndies: Get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping, at MeUndies.com/twoidiotgirls FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM & TIKTOK :P @_twoidiotgirls | @deisonafualo | @drewafualo

Today's poem is Love Poem, with Birds by Barbara Kingsolver. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. This week, in honor of Valentine's Day, we're revisiting some of our favorite episodes on love. This episode was originally released on September 15, 2023.In this episode, Major writes… “Today's poem gives voice to the intimidating feeling of competing with a partner's personal passion. However begrudgingly we come around to their idiosyncratic awarenesses, such an intense engagement is exactly what attracts us in the end.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

LaUra Schmidt visits Crazy Town to discuss her work with the Good Grief Network and her book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet. Along the way, she shares wisdom and insights on courage, taking meaningful action, terror management theory, and practices for processing the strong emotions that accompany facing climate change and other aspects of the polycrisis.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.Sources/Links/Notes:LaUra's book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our PlanetThe Good Grief Network's 10 Step ProgramLaUra mentioned Bayo Akomolafe and his work on "questioning our questions."Joanna Macy and The Work That ReconnectsVideo of Dr. Andrew Weil's 4-7-8 breathing techniqueDavid Graeber's book Bullshit JobsCrazy Town episode 34, "Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or... the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom"Fiftieth anniversary book review in the New York Times: Ernest Becker's The Denial of DeathAyisha Siddiqa's poem "On Another Panel about Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I've Got Is a Love Poem"Support the show

If you're not the poetic kind, no fear let Chat GPT do it for you! So we thought it would be fun to see what AI could create when it came to Valentine's Day. So we had it write 2 different poems, one humorous and one romantic. Video: https://youtu.be/SZPyi2-pD0I

The Valentime's (thank you Missed Connections) Day edition of the show is packed with love! Ben had Chat GPT write love poems for each of us to send the awkward factor through the ROOF. And a little crazy crept in with Group Therapy and our listener who needed advice on how to breakup with her (fake) boyfriend so she could shoot her shot with a hot new coworker. Plus Little Kid or Drunk Adult!!

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Katie, Tim, and crew talk about love poems! What's the heart of a love poem and what makes it tick? The Poetry Space_ discussed this topic a year ago, but this time we dig a little deeper.

Dave and Aaron welcome back the Gorgan writer herself, Raegen Pietrucha. Raegen has done her due diligence and dug up two old poems from her own high school journal (covered with suns and moons no less). Along with one hold over poem from her last appearance, the the co-hosts work through the emo angst, rhymes, and stream of consciousness to conclude... high school is a weird time. My Bad Poetry Episode 5.8: "Untitled & Desperation (w/ Raegen Pietrucha) End Poem from a Real Poet: "This is Not a Love Poem" by Raegen Pietrucha Raegen Pietrucha is a editor, poet, writer, and consultant currently working on her memoir. She has two previous poetry books Head of a Gorgan and An Animal I Can't Name . Podcast Email: mybadpoetry.thepodcast@gmail.com Bluesky: @mybadpoetrythepod.bsky.social Instagram & Threads: @MyBadPoetry_ThePod Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.podpage.com/my-bad-poetry/⁠⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mybadpoetry-thepodcast/message

It is an intimate thing, to watch a lover while they sleep. In Francisco Aragón's translation of Francisco X. Alarcón's homoerotic poem, “Asleep You Become a Continent,” a man views his sleeping lover's body like it's a landscape: legs underneath sheets become mountains and valleys. The waking lover describes this view like an explorer might an unknown country; wondering what he will find.Francisco X. Alarcón was an award-winning Chicano poet and educator. He authored fourteen volumes of poetry, published seven books for children, and taught at the University of California, Davis, where he directed the Spanish for Native Speakers Program.Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. His books include After Rubén (Red Hen Press, 2020), Glow of Our Sweat (Scapegoat Press, 2010), and Puerta de Sol (Bilingual Review Press, 2005).  He's also the editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007). A native of San Francisco, CA, he is on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, where he directs their literary initiative, Letras Latinas. His work has appeared in over twenty anthologies and various literary journals. He has read his work widely, including at universities, bookstores, art galleries, the Dodge Poetry Festival, and the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. He divides his time between South Bend, IN, and Mililani, HI.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.We're pleased to offer Francisco Aragón's translation, and invite you to read Pádraig's weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

If you enjoyed this encore episode, leave a review and make sure you subscribe! If you want to connect with Stephanie and Trey directly, message them at: www.instagram.com/stephhollmanwww.instagram.com/trey_stewartwww.instagram.com/bsthepodcastwww.youtube.com/@weeklydoseofbsIf you are interested in advertising on this podcast or having Stephanie & Trey as guests on your Podcast, Radio Show, or TV Show, reach out to podcast@yeanetworks.comProducers: Mike Morse / Madelyn Grimes / Joshua Burns For YEA Networks

Join co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez in conversation with LitFriends Melissa Febos & Donika Kelly about their grand statements, big revelations, sentential seduction, queering forms, the power of vulnerability, and love poems. We're taking a break and will be back for our next episode with guests Yiyun Li & Edmund White on January 16,  2024. Happy Holidays, LitFam!   LINKS Libsyn Blog www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com www.melissafebos.com www.donikakelly.com LitFriends LinkTree LitFriends Insta LitFriends Facebook TRANSCRIPT Annie: (00:00) This episode is dedicated to Chuck, a dog we have loved, and Donika and Melissa's sweet pup.   Annie & Lito: Welcome to LitFriends! Hey Lit Friends!   Annie: Welcome to the show.    Lito: Today, we're speaking with memoirist Melissa Febos and poet Donika Kelly, lit friends in marriage,   Annie: About seduction, big boss feelings, and sliding into DMs.   Lito: So grab your bestie,   Annie & Lito: And get ready to fall in love!   Annie: What I love about Melissa Febos, and you can feel this across all four of her books, is how she declares herself free. There's no ambiguity to this. This is her story, not your telling of it, not your telling of her. I meet her on the page as someone who's in an act of rebellion or an act of defiance. And I was not really surprised but delighted to find that, when I read Donika Kelly, I had sort of the same reaction, same impression. And I'm wondering if that's true for you, and, Lito, what your understanding of vulnerability and its relationship to power is.   Lito: The power for me in these conversations, and the power that the authors that we speak with possess, seems to me, in the ways that they have found how they are completely unique from each other. And more so than in our other conversations, Donika and Melissa, their work is so different. And yet, as you've pointed out, the overlap, and the fire, the energy, the defiance, the fierceness is so present. And it was present in our conversation. And so inspiring.   Annie: Yeah. I'm thinking even about Melissa Febos has this Ted Talk. (01:54) Where she says "telling your secrets will set you free." And it feels that not only is that true, but it's also very much an act of self reclamation and strength, right? Where we might read it as an act of weakness. It's actually in fact, a harnessing of the self.   Lito: Right, it's not that Melissa has a need to confess. It's that she really uses writing to find the truth about herself and how she feels about something, which that could not differ more from my writing practice.   Annie: How so?   Lito: I find that I sort of, I write out of an emotion or a need to discover something, but I already sort of am aware of where I am and who I am before I start. I find the plot and the characters as I go, but I know sort of how I feel.   Annie: Yeah, I think for me, I do feel like writing is an act of discovery where maybe I put something on the page, it's the initial conception, or yeah, like you coming out of a feeling. But as I start to ask questions, right, for me, it's this process of inquiry. I excavate to something maybe a little more surprising or partially hidden or unknown to myself.   Lito: That's true. There is a discovery of, and I think you're, I think you've pointed to exactly what it is. It's the process of inquiry, and I think both of them, and obviously us, we're doing that similar thing. This is about writing, about this, this is about asking questions and writing through them.   Annie: Yeah, and Donika Kelly, we feel that in her work, her poetry over and over, even when they have the same recurring, I would say haunting images or artifacts. Each time she's turning it over and asking almost unbearable questions.   Lito: Right.   Annie: And we're joining her on the page because she is brave enough and has an iron will and says, no, I will not not look this in the eye.    Lito: That's the feeling exactly that I get from both of them is the courage, the bravura of the unflinching.   Annie: I think something that seemed to resonate with you was (03:58) how they talk about writing outside of publishing right? Yeah.   Lito: Yeah, I love I love that they talk about writing as a practice regardless, they're separated from The need to produce a work that's gonna sell in a commercial world in a capitalist society. It's more about the daily practice, and how that is a lifestyle and even what you said about the TED talk, that's just her. She's just talking about herself. Like that she's just telling an absolute truth that people don't typically talk about.   Annie: Right. And it's a conscious, active way to live inside one's life. It's a form of reflection, meditation, and rather than just moving through life, a way to make meaning of the experience.   Lito: I love that you use the word meditation because when you talk about meditation, you think of someone in a lotus position quietly being, but the meditations that both of them do, these are not quiet.   Annie: No. And of course we have to talk about how cute they are as married literary besties.   Lito: Oh my god, cute and like, they're hot for each other.   Annie: Oh my god.   Lito: It's palpable.   Annie: So palpable, sliding into DMs, chatting each other up over email.   Lito: They romanced each other, and I hope—no—I know they're gonna romance you, listener.   Annie: We'll be right back.   Lito: (05:40) Back to the show.   Annie: Melissa Febos is the author of four books, including the best-selling essay collection Girlhood, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a Lambda finalist, and was named a notable book by NPR, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, and others. Her craft book Body Work is a national bestseller and an Indie's Next Pick. Her forthcoming novel The Dry Season is a work of mixed form nonfiction that explores celibacy as liberatory practice. Melissa lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly, and is a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.   Lito: Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in poetry and Bestiary, the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston Wright Legacy Award for poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Donika has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and was long listed for the National Book Award. (06:00) Donika lives in Iowa City with her wife, the writer Melissa Febos, and is an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.   Annie: Well, thank you for joining us for LitFriends to talk about the ultimate lit friendship. It does seem like you've won at the game of lit friends a little bit, having married your lit friend. I think of you both as writers who are in the constant act of subversion and resisting erasure. And that's the kind of work that Lito and I are drawn to, and that we're trying to do ourselves. And your work really shows us how to inhabit our bravest and most complex selves on the page. So we're really grateful for that.   Melissa: Thanks.   Annie: Yeah, of course. I mean, Donika, I think about poems of yours that my friends and I revisit constantly because we're haunted by them in the best way. They've taken residence inside of us. And you talk about what it means to have to do that work. And you've said, "to admit need and pain, desire and trauma and claim my humanity was often daunting. But the book demanded I claim my personhood."   And Melissa, I think you know how much your work means to me. I mean, as someone who is raised as a girl in this country and writing creative nonfiction, Body Work should not be as revelatory as it is. Yet what I see is that you're shaping an entire generation of nonfiction writers, many of them women. So, you know, also very grateful for that. And you've talked about that in Body Work. You've said "the risk of honest self-appraisal requires bravery to place our flawed selves in the context of this magnificent broken world is the opposite of narcissism, which is building a self-image that pleases you." So we'll talk more in a bit about courage and vulnerability and how you all do the impossible things you do, but let's dive into your lit friendship.   Melissa: Thank you, Annie, for that beautiful introduction.   Donika: Yeah, thank you so much. I'm excited to talk about our friendship.   Lito: We're so excited to have you here.   Melissa: Talk about our special friendship.   Annie: Very special friendship. Friendship with benefits.   Lito: So tell us about your lit friend, Melissa, tell us about Donika.   Melissa: (09:07) Tell us about her. Okay, she's fucking hilarious, like very, very funny and covers a broad spectrum of humor from like, there's a lot of like punning that goes on in our house, a lot of like silly wordplay, bathroom humor, and then like high level, like, literary academic sort of witticism that's also making fun of itself a lot. And we've sort of operated in all of those registers since like the day we met.   She is my favorite poet. There's like those artists that whose work you really appreciate, right? Sometimes because it's so different from your own. And then there are those artists whose work registers in like a very deep sort of recognition where they feel like creative kin, right? And that has always been my experience of Donika's work. That there is a kind of creative intelligence and emotionality that just feels like so profoundly familiar to me and was before I knew anything about her as a human being.   Okay, we also like almost all the same candy and have extremely opposite work habits. She's very hot. She only likes to watch like TVs and movies that she's seen many times before, which is both like very comforting and very annoying.   Lito: Well, I'm gonna have to follow that up now. What are some of the top hits?   Melissa: Oh, for sure, Golden Girls is at the very top. I mean…   Annie: No one's mad at that.   Lito: We can do the interview right now. Perfect. All we need to know. A++!   Melissa: She's probably like 50% of the time that she's sleeping, she falls asleep to the soundtrack of the Golden Girls or Xena, maybe. But we've also watched the more recent James Bond franchise, The Matrices, (11:00) and Mission Impossible, never franchises I ever thought I would watch once, let alone multiple times at some point.   Annie: I mean, Donika, your queerness is showing with that list.   Lito: Yeah.   Donika: I feel seen. I feel represented accurately by that list. She's not wrong. She's not wrong at all. But I've also introduced to her the pleasure of revisiting work.   Melissa: That's right.   Donika: And that was not a thing that Melissa was doing before we met, which feels confusing to me. Because I am a person who really likes to revisit. She was buying more books when we met, and now she uses the library more, and that feels like really exciting. That feels like a triumph on my part. I'm like…   Annie: That is a victory. Yeah.   Donika: …with the public services.   Melissa; Both of these examples really allude to like this deep, fundamental sort of capitalistic set of habits that I have, where I… like there's like this weird implicit desire to try to read as many books as possible before I perish, and also to hoard them, I guess. And I'm very happy to have been influenced out of that.   Annie: Well it's hard not to think—I think about that tweet like once a week that's like you have an imaginary bookshelf, and there are a limited amount of books on that you can read before you die, and that like troubles me every day.   Melissa: Yeah it's so fucked up. (12:22) I don't want that. It's already in my head. I feel like I was born with that in my head, and I'm trying to get free.   Lito: Same. Serious book FOMO, like…   Donika: There are so many books y'all.   Lito: I know. It's not possible.   Donika: And, it's like, there are more and more every year.   Annie: Well, uh Donika tell us about Melissa.   Donika: Oh Melissa As she has already explained we have a lot of fun It's a funny household. She's hilarious. Um, and also she's a writer of great integrity, which you know I'm sitting on the couch reading Nora Roberts, and she's like in her office hammering away at essays, and I don't know what's going on in there. I'm very nosy. I'm a deeply nosy person. Like, I just I want to know like what's going on. I want to know the whole history, and it's really amazing to be with someone who is like here it is.   Annie: How did you all meet?   Donika: (13:20) mere moments after Trump was elected in 2016. I was in great despair. I was living in Western New York. I was teaching at a small Catholic university. Western New York is very conservative. It's very red. And I was in this place and I was like, this place is not my place. This place is not for me. And I was feeling very alone. And Melissa had written an essay that came out shortly after about teaching creative writing at a private institution in a red county. And I was like, oh, she gets it, she understands.   I started, I just like looked for everything. I looked for like everything that she had written. I read it, I watched the TED talk. I don't know if y'all know about the TED talk. There was a TED talk. I watched the TED talk. I was like, she's cute. I read Whip Smart. I followed her on Twitter. I developed a crush, and I did nothing else. So this is where I pass the baton. So I did all of that.   Melissa: I loved Bestiaries, and I love the cover. The cover of her book is from this medieval bestiary. And so I just bought it, and I read it. And I just had that experience that I described before where I was just like, "Oh, fuck. Like this writer and I have something very deep in common." And I wrote her. I DMed her on Twitter.   Sometimes I obscure this part of the story because I want it to appear like I sent her a letter by raven or something. But actually, I slid into her DMs, and I just was like, "hey, I loved your book. If you ever come to New York and want help setting up a reading, like I curate lots of events, da da da." And I put my email in. And not five minutes later, refreshed my Gmail inbox, and there was an email from Donika, and…   Donika: I was like, "Hi. Hello. It's me."   Annie: So you agree with this timeline, Donika, right? Like, it was within five minutes.   Donika: Yeah, it was very fast. And I think if I hadn't read everything that I could get my hands on that Melissa had written, I may have been a little bit slower off the mark. It wasn't romantic. Like the connection, I wasn't like, oh, this is someone who like I want to (15:41) strike up a romantic relationship with, it really was the work. Like I just respected the work so much.   I mean, I did have a crush, like that was real, but I have crushes on lots of people, like that sort of flows in and out, but that often is a signifier of like, oh, this person will be my friend. And I was still married at the time and trying to figure out, like that relationship was ending. It was coming to a quick close that felt slow. Like it was dragging a little bit for lots of reasons.   But then once it was clear to me that I was getting divorced, Melissa and I continued writing to each other like for the next few months. Yeah. And then I was like, oh, I'm getting divorced. I was like, I'm getting divorced. And then suddenly the emails were very different. From both of us. It wasn't different.   Melissa: There had been no romantic strategy or intent, you know, and I think which, which was a really great way to, we really started from a friendship.   Annie: And sounds like a courtship really. I mean, it kind of is an old fashion.   Melissa: Yeah, in some way, it became that. I think it became that. But I think it was, I mean, the best kind of courtship begins as a, as a friendly courtship, you know what I mean? Where it was about sort of mutual artistic respect and curiosity and just interest. And it wasn't defined yet, like, what sort of mood that interest would take for a while, you know?   Lito: So how do you seduce each other on and off the page?   Donika: That's a great question.   Melissa: That is a great question.   Donika: I am not good at seduction. So that is not a skill set that is available to me. It has never been available.   Lito: I do not believe that.   Annie: I know. I'm also in disbelief out here, really.   Melissa: No one believes it, but she insists.   Annie: I feel like that's part of the game, is my feeling, but it is not.   Melissa: It's not. Here's the thing I will say is that like Donika, I've thought a lot about this and we've talked a lot about this because I balked at that statement as well. It's like Donika is seductive. Like there are qualities about her that are very seductive, but she does not seduce people. You know what I mean? Like she doesn't like turn on the charisma and shine it at you like a hypnotist. Like that's not… (18:08) that's not her form of seduction, but I will say…   I can answer that question in terms of like, I think in terms of the work, since we've been talking about that, like in a literary way, both in her own work, like the quality, like just someone who's really good at what they do is fucking sexy, you know? Like when I was looking for like a little passage before this interview, I was just like, "ah, this is so good." Like it's so attractive when someone is really, really good at their craft. right? Especially when it's a crop that you share.   Donika: So Melissa does have the ability to turn on what she has written about, which I think is really funny. Like she like she has like, she has a very strong gaze. It's very potent. And one of my gifts is to disrupt that and be like, what are you doing with your eyes? And so like, when I think about that in the work, when I'm reading her work, and I'm in like its deepest thrall, it is that intensity of focus that really like pulls me in and keeps me in. She's so good at making a grand statement.   Melissa: I was just gonna bring that up.   Donika: Oh, I think she and I like often get to, we arrive at sort of similar places, but she gets there from the grand statement, and I get there from the granular statement, like it's a very narrow sort of path. And then Melissa's like, "every love is a destroyer." I was like, whoa, every one? And there's something really compelling about that mode of— because it's earnest, and it's backed up by the work that she's written. I would never think to say that.   Melissa: I have a question for you, lit friend. Do you think you would be less into me if I weren't? Because I think for a nonfiction writer, I'm pretty obsessed with sentences. It's writing sentences that makes, that's the thing I love most about writing. It's like where the pleasure is for me. So I'm a pretty poetically inclined nonfiction writer. If I were less so, do you think that would be less seductive to you as a reader or a lit friend?   Donika: I mean, that's like asking me to imagine like, "so, what if… (20:30) water wasn't wet?" I just like, I can't like, I can't imagine. I do think the pleasure of the sentence is so intrinsic to like, I think there's something in the, in your impulse at the sentence level. That means that you're just careful. You're not rushing. You're not rushing us through an experience or keeping us in there and focused. And it's just it's tricky to imagine, or almost impossible to imagine what your work would look like if that weren't the impulse.   Lito: Yeah, I think that's an essential part of your style in some ways, that you're taking that time.   Melissa: Mm-hmm.    Annie: And how you see the world. Like I don't even think you would get to those big revelations Donika's talking about without it.   Melissa: Yeah. Right. I don't, yeah, I don't think I would either. We'll be right back.   Lito (21:19) Hey Lit Fam, Lit Friends is taking a break for the holiday. We hope you'll join us for our next episode with our guests, Ian Lee and Edmund White on January 16th. Till then, may your holiday be lit, your presents be numerous, and your 2024 be filled with joy and peace. If you'd like to show us some love, please take a moment now to follow, subscribe, rate, and review the LitFriends Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a few moments of your time will help us so much. Big hugs to you and yours. Thank you for listening. And thank you for making season one a big success!   Annie: (22:05) Welcome back.   Lito: I've noticed that both of you, you know, you have your genres that you work in, but within that you're experimenting a lot with form and structure. Does anything of that come from being queer? I guess it's a question about queering forms of literature, and what that has to do also with the kinds of friendships that queer people have, and if that's different, maybe. So I guess I'm asking to connect form with queerness and friendship.   Melissa: That's a beautiful question. I think, and I'm starting with thinking about my relationship to form, which has been one of inheriting some scripts for forms. This is what an essay should look like. This is what plot structure looks like. This is how you construct a narrative. And sort of taking those for granted a little bit, and then pretty early on, understanding the limitations of those structures and the ways that they require that I contort myself and my content such that it feels like a perversion or betrayal of sort of what I'm dealing with, right? And so the way I characterize my trajectory, the trajectory of my relationship to form has been sort of becoming conscious of those inherited forms, and then pushing the boundaries of them and modifying them and distorting them and adding things to them and figuring out, letting my work sort of teach me what form it rests most easily in and is most transparent in. And I suspect that my relationship to friendship and particularly queer friendship mimics that.   Donika: Yeah, that sounds right to me. And I'm reminded of Denise Levertov has this essay titled "On the Function of the Line." And in it, she presents an argument that closed forms, received forms, are based on a kind of assumption of resolution, and that free verse or open design, like in a poem, it shows evidence of the speaker's thinking.   (24:24) Right? So that where the line breaks, the speaker is pausing, right? To gather their thoughts or like a turn might happen that's unexpected that mimics the turns in thinking. And I really love that essay. Like that essay is one of my favorites. So when I think about my approach to form, I'm like, what is the shape that this poem is asking for? What is the shape that will do, that will help the poem do its best work? And not even like to be good, but just like to be true.   I really love the sonnet shape. Like it's one of my favorite shapes. And it's so interesting and exciting to use a shape that is based on like argumentative structure or a sense of resolution, to explore. Like to use that as an exploratory space, it feels like queering our, like my expectations of what the sonnet does. Like there's something about the box. If I bounce around inside that box, there's gonna be something that comes out of that, that I wouldn't necessarily have gotten otherwise, but it's not resolution. Like the point is not resolution.   And when I think about my relationships and my chosen family, in particular, and to some degree actually my given family, part of what I'm thinking about is how can I show up and care and what does care look like in this relationship and how can I make room to be cared for? And that's so hard, like being cared for is so much more alien to me than, like, as a concept, like I feel like very anxious about it. I'm like, "am I asking for too much?" And like over and over again, my chosen family is like, "no, it's not too much. Like we, we got each other."   Melissa: I think particularly for queer people, we understand that it doesn't preclude romance or healthy kinds of dependency or unhealthy kinds of dependency, you know, that all of the things that happen in a very deep love relationship happen inside of friendship, where I think sort of like straight people and dominant culture have been like, "oh, no, like friendship isn't the site of like great romance or painful divorce or abuse." And queer people understand that all of those things happen within relationships that we call friendships.   Annie: (26:46) Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing you both talk about kind of queer survival and joy and even, Donika, what you were saying about having to adjust to being cared for as a kind of, you know, that's a sort of, to me, it's a sort of like a survivor's stance in the world. One of the things that I love about my kinship with Lito as, you know, my queer lit friend and, you know, brother from another mother is that he holds that space for me and I, you know, vice versa.   Even thinking about vulnerability, I think you both wield vulnerability as a tool of subversion too, right? And again, Lito and I are both creating projects right now that require a kind of rawness on the page. I'm about to publish a memoir called Sex with a Brain Injury, so I'm very consciously thinking about how we define vulnerability, what kind of work it does to reshape consciousness in the collective. And the ways that you each write about trauma helps us understand it as an act of reclamation, you know, power rather than powerlessness. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what is or what can be transformative about the confessional and maybe even more to the point, what does your lit friend teach you about vulnerability?   Melissa: (28:06) Oh, God, what doesn't she teach me about vulnerability? It's interesting because like you're correct that vulnerability is like very central to my work and to the like lifelong project of my work, and also like there's literally nothing on earth I would like to avoid more. And I don't think that is visible in my work, right? Because my work is the product of counteracting that set of instincts, which I must do to survive because the part of me that wants to avoid vulnerability, its end point is like literally death for me.   It is writing for me often starts from like kind of a pragmatic practice. I don't start like feeling my feelings. I write to get to my feelings and sometimes that doesn't happen until like after a book is published sometimes. You know like it's really interesting lately I've been confronting some feelings in like a really deep way that I think I have gotten access to from writing Girlhood, which came out in 2021. And it's like I had to sort of lay it all out, understand what happened, redefine my role in it and everyone else's. And I definitely had feelings while I was writing it. But like the feelings that Donika refers to as the big boss, like the deepest feelings about it. Like I, I feel like I'm only really getting. to it now.   My relationship to vulnerability, it's just like, it's a longitudinal process, you know? And there's no one who's taught me about that and how to be sort of like gentle and patient within that and to show up for it than Donika.   And I'm just thinking of like, you know, starting from pretty early in our relationship, she was working on the poems in The Renunciations, and over the years of our early, the early years of our relationship, she was confronting some childhood, some really profound childhood trauma. And she was doing that in therapy. And then there were like pieces of that work that she had to do in the poems. And I just watched her not force it. And when it was time, she like created the space to do the work. And like, I wasn't (30:35) there for that. I don't think anyone else really could have been there for that. And just like showing up for that work.   And then like the long tail of like publishing a book and having conversations with people and the way that it changes one's relationship and like the act of the vulnerability—achieved feels like the wrong word—but the vulnerability like expressed or found in the writing process, how that is just like a series of doorways and a hallway that maybe it never terminates. Maybe it doesn't even turn into death. I don't know. You know, but I've just seen her show up for that process with like a patience and a tenderness for herself at every age that I find incredibly challenging. And it's been super instructive for me.   Donika: Ooh. I, I'm, it makes me really happy to know that's your experience of like being like in like shared artistic space together. I think I go to poetry to understand, to help myself understand what it is that I'm holding and what it is that I wanna put down. Like that's what the poems are for. You know, like the act of writing helps me sort out what I need and what I wanna put down because narrative is so powerful. It feels like the one place where I can say things that are really hard, often because I've already said them in therapy.   Right? So then it's like, I can then explore what having said those hard things means in my life or how it sits in my life. And what Melissa shows me is that one can revise. I know I've said this like a few times, but that one can have a narrative. Like I think about reading Whipsmart and the story that she has about herself as a child in Whipsmart, and then how that begins to change a bit in Abandon Me. And then in Girlhood, it's really disrupted. And there is so much more tenderness there, I think. It looks really hard. Like, honestly, that joint looks hard because I might be in a poem, but I'm in it for like, like we're in it, like if I were to read it out loud for like a minute and a half.   Melissa: (33:50) It's interesting hearing you talk. I wonder if this is true. I think I'm hearing that it is true. And I think that's where it's with my experience that you often get to the feelings like in therapy or wherever, and then write the poems as more of a sort of emotional, but like also cognitive and kind of systemic and like a way of like making sense of it or putting it in context. And I think very much I, there'll be like deeply submerged feelings that emerge only as like impulses or something, you know, but I experience writing— I don't that often feel intense emotion while I'm writing. I think it's why that is writing is almost always the first place that I encounter my own vulnerability or that I say the like unspeakable thing or the thing that I have been unable to say. I often write it and then I can talk to my therapist about it or then I can talk to Donika about it.   And I think I can't. I'm too afraid or it feels like too much to feel the feelings while I'm writing. So I sort of experience it as a cognitive or like intellectual and creative exercise. And then once I understand it, sometime in the next five years, I feel the feelings.   Annie: Do you feel like it's a kind of talking to yourself or like talking outside of the world? Like what is it in that space that does that for you?   Melissa: Yeah, I do. I mean, it's like. Talking outside the world makes more sense to me than talking to myself. I mean, it is talking to myself, right? It's a conversation with myself, but it's removed from the context of me in my daily life. That's why it's possible. Within my daily life, I'm too connected to other people and my own internal pressures and just like the busy, superficial part of me that's like driving a lot of my days. I have to get away from her in order to do that work.   And so the writing really happens in a kind of separate space and feels like it is not, it has a kind of privacy that I don't experience in any other way in my life, where I really have built or found a space where I am never thinking about what other people think of me, and I'm not imagining a skeptical reader. (35:18) It is really like this weird spiritual, emotional, creative, intellectual space that is just separate from all of that, where I can sort of think and be curious freely.   And I think I created that space or found it really early on because I was, even as a kid, I was a person who was like so concerned with the people around me, with the adults around me, with what performances were expected of me. And being a person who was like very deeply thinking and feeling, I was like, well, there's no room for that here. So I need to like find somewhere else to do it. And so I think writing became that for me way before I thought about being a writer.   Lito: That's so fascinating to me. I think that's so different than how I work or Donika works or a lot of people I know. We'll be right back.   Lito: (36:26) Back to the show.   So this question is for both of you really, but it just makes me wonder then like, what is the role for emotion, but in particular anger? How does that like, when things get us angry, sometimes that motivates us to do something, right? So if you're not being inspired by an emotion to write, you're writing and then finding it, how does anger work as not only a tool for survival, but maybe a path towards personhood and freedom?   Donika: Oh, I was just thinking, I can't write out of that space, the space of anger. It took me a long time to get in touch with anger as a feeling. That took a really long time because in my family, in my given family, the way that people expressed anger was so dangerous that I felt that I didn't want to occupy those spaces. I didn't want to move emotionally into that, into that space if that was what it looked like. And it took me a long time to figure out how to be angry. And I'm still not sure that I'm great at it. Because I think often I'm moving quickly to like what's under that feeling. And often what's under my feelings of being angry, often, not always, is being hurt, feeling hurt. And I can… write into exploring what that hurt is, because I know how to do that with some tenderness and some care.   Melissa: I feel similarly, which is interesting, because we've never talked about this, I don't think. But anger is also a feeling that I think, for very different reasons, when I was growing up… I mean, I think just like baseline being socialized as a girl dissuaded me from expressing anger or even from feeling it, because where would that go?   But I also think in the particular environment that I was in, I understood pretty early that my expressions of anger would be like highly injurious to the people around me and that it would be better if I found another way to express those things. I think my compulsive inclinations have been really useful in that way. And it's taken me a lot of my adult life to sort of… (38:44) take my anger or as Donika said, you know, like anger for me almost always factors down to something that is largely powerlessness, you know, to sort of not take the terror and fury of powerlessness and express it through like ultimately self harming means.   Writing can be a way for me to arrive at like justifiable anger and to sort of feel that and let that move through me or to be like, oh, that was unjust. I was powerless in that situation. You know? Yeah, it has helped me in that way. But like, if I'm really being honest, I think I exhaust myself with exercise. And that's how I mostly deal with my feelings of anger.   Annie: Girl.   Melissa: Yeah, there's also a way I will say that like, I do think it actually comes out in my work in some ways. Like there is like a very direct, not people-pleasing vibe and tone in my work that is genuine, but that I almost never have in my life. Like maybe a little bit as a professor, but like    When Donika met me, she was like, "Oh… like you're just like this little gremlin puppy person. You're not like this intense convicted former dominatrix." You know, which is, I express it in my writing because it is a space where I'm not worried about placating or pleasing really. It's a space where I'm, I am almost solely interested in what I actually think.   Donika: I was just thinking about like the beginning of, I think it's "Wild America," when you talk about like not cleaning your room, Melissa. Because you didn't, like when you were a kid, right? It was like you cleaned your room when you wanted to appear good, but that didn't matter to you when you were alone in your room. Like you could get lost in a book or you could, you know, like just be inside yourself alone when you were alone in your room. And that's one of my favorite passages that you read. Like I'm always sort of like mouthing along, like it's a song.   Melissa: (40:57) I'm just interested and I really love the sort of conception of like a girl's room as a potential space that sort of maps on to the way I described the writing space where it's just like a space where other, where the gaze of others, or the gaze that we're taught to please like can be kept out to some extent. And just like, you know, that isn't true, obviously for like lots and lots and lots of girls, but just that there is an impetus for us to create or invent or designate a space where that is true.   Lito: Yeah, I think that's what she's up to in "A Room of One's Own."   Annie: It makes me think of like girls' rooms as like kind of also these reductive spaces, like they all have to have pink or whatever, but then you like carve out a secret space for yourself in that room, which I think is what you're talking about with your writing.   Donika: Oh, I was just thinking about what happens when you don't have a room like that, cause I didn't, like I absolutely did not have a room that was… inviolable in some way or that like really felt like I could close the door. But writing became a place where that work could happen and where those explorations could happen and where I could do whatever I want and I had control over so many aspects of the work. And I hesitated because I was saying I didn't have that much control over the content.   Like I might think, oh, I'm gonna write a poem about this or a poem about that. And as is true with most writing, the poems are so much smarter and reveal so much more than I might have intended, but I could like shape the box. There are just like so many places to have control in a poem, like there's so many mechanisms to consider where like when Melissa was first sharing like early work with me, I would get so nervous because I would wanna move a comma.   Because in a poem, like that's a big deal, moving somebody's commas around, changing the punctuation. And she was like, "it doesn't matter."   Melissa: I would get nervous because she would be like, "well, I just have one note, but it's like, kind of big." And I would be like, "oh, fuck, I failed." And she would be like,    Donika: "What's going on with these semicolons?"   Melissa: She'd be like, "I just, these semicolons."   Annie: You know, hearing you both talk about (43:20) how you show up for one another as readers, right? In addition to like romantic partners. I mean, we do have the sense, and this can be true of all marriages, queer or otherwise, where like we as readers have a pretty superficial understanding of what you kind of each bring to the table or how you create this protective space or really see one another. I imagine that you've saved yourselves, but I'm curious about to what extent this relationship may have also been a way to save you or subvert relationships that have come before. And yet at the same time, we've asked this question of other lit friends too, which is, you know, what about competition between lit friends? And what does that look like in a marriage? What is a good day versus a bad day?   Donika: I mean, we could be here for years talking about that first question. And so I'm gonna turn to the second part to talk about competition, which is much easier to handle.   I feel genuinely and earnestly so excited at the recognition that Melissa has received. Part of what was really exciting for me about the beginning of our relationship that continues to be exciting is that, is getting to watch someone be truly mid-career and navigate that with integrity. It feels like such a good model, for how to be a writer.   I mean, she's much more forward-facing than I would ever want to be. But I think in terms of just thinking about like, what is the work? How, like, where is the integrity? Like, it's just, it's always so, so forward and it feels really grounding for me and us in the house, so it's always big cheers in here. It helps that we write in different genres. I think that's super helpful.   Melissa: I think it's absolutely key. Yeah.   Donika: It's not, I mean, I think, and that we have very different measures of ambition. I think those two things together are really, really helpful.   But I've read everything that Melissa has written, I think. (45:38) There might be like a few little, I mean, I've read short story, like that short, there was like a short story from like shortly, I think after you, like before you were in your MFA program, maybe.   Melissa: Oh my God. What short story?   Donika: I can't, I'll find it. And show it to you later.   Melissa: Is it about that little plant?   Donika: No, no, it might've been an essay. I'm not sure.   Annie: I love this. This is sort of hot breaking news on LitFriends.   Donika: It's like, I've just like, I did a deep Google dive. I was like, I want to read everything and it's, it feels really exciting.   Melissa: You know, I've dated writers before, and it was a different situation. And I think even if I hadn't, even before I ever did, I thought, that seems unlikely to work. Because even though there are lots of like obvious ways that it could be great, the competition just seemed like such a poison dart that it would be really hard to avoid because writers are competitive, and I'm competitive. And maybe it would have been harder if we were younger or something.   And certainly if we were in the same genre, I think actually, who knows? Maybe it would be possible if we were in the same genre, but it would require a little more care. Even if for some reason we would never publish again, we would keep writing. It just like it functions in our lives in similar ways. And it's like a practice that we came to, you know, I have a more hungry ambition or have historically. And I think our relationship is something that helps me keep the practice at the center because we're constantly talking about it. And I'm constantly observing Donika's relationship to her work. So it really hasn't felt very relevant. Like it's kind of shocking to me how, how little impact competition or comparing has in our relationship. It's really like not even close to one of the top notes of things that might create conflict for us, you know, and I'm so grateful for that. And so happy to have like underestimated what's possible when you have a certain level of intimacy and respect and sort of compatibility with someone.   Lito: We'll be right back.   Annie: (47:57) Welcome back. Well, then I'm wondering, you know, you both have had some like incredible successes in the last few years. And I'm wondering if conversely, you've been able to show up for one another in moments of high pressure or exposure, or, you know, having to confront the world, having been vulnerable on the page in the ways you have been.   Melissa: Donika was not planning on having a book launch for The Renunciations.   Donika: What's a book launch? Like, why do people do that?   Annie: Listen, mine's going to be a dance party, Donika. So…   Melissa: And I made, meanwhile, like when I published Abandon Me, I had a giant dance party that I had like several costume changes for during. But I remember feeling pretty confident about making a strong case multiple times for her to have a book launch for The Renunciations. And also like having a lot of respect and like tenderness watching her navigate what it meant to take work that vulnerable and figure out how to like speak for it and talk about it and like present it to the world. Parts of her would have preferred to just let the book completely speak for itself out there.    Donika: But you were right it was a good time.   Melissa: I was right.   Donika: Because like when Melissa's so when Girlhood came out it was like, that was still the time of like so many virtual events. And it was just like, I think that first week there was like something every day that week, like there was an event every day that week. And now, now like, again, I had to be talked into having a book launch. So I own this. Um, but I was like, Ooh, why, why would you do that? Oh, yeah. Four?   Melissa: This is definitely one of the ways that she and I are like diametrically opposed, and therefore I think, helpful to each other in sort of like creating a kind of tension that can be uncomfortable but is mostly good for both of us to be sort of pulled closer to the middle.   Donika: But my favorite part of that is then hearing you give advice to your friends who are very similar and be like, "whoa, you did too much. You put too many things on the calendar."     Melissa: (50:15) You know, some people would say that that's hypocrisy, but I actually think, I have a real dubious like position and thinking about hypocrisy because I am an expert in overdoing things. And so I think I speak from, I am like the voice of Christmas future. You know what I mean? I'm like, let me speak to you from the potential future that you are currently planning with your publicist. And like, it's not pretty and it doesn't feel good. And it's not, it has not delivered the feeling that you're imagining when you're scheduling all those events.   Annie: I can appreciate this. And I appreciate Donika's kind of role, this particular role in a relationship, because sometimes I just have to go see Leto and literally just lay on Lito and be like, stop me from doing anymore.   Melissa: I know, I know.   Lito: You and Sara are like super overachievers. I have to be like, "can you calm down?"   Annie: We do too much.   Lito: Way too much. What would you like to see your lit friend make or create next?   Donika: I got two answers to this. The first one is the Cape Cod lesbian mystery. I'm ready. You know, we got, I've offered so much assistance as a person who will never write prose. Um, but I got notes and ideas. The second one is, uh, a micro essay collection titled Dogs I Have Loved. Cause I think it would be a New York Times bestseller.   Lito: Oh, I love that.   Donika: I know.   Lito: Speaking of, who's the little gremlin puppy there?   Donika: Oh, yeah, that's Chuck. Chuck is a 15-year-old chihuahua. I've had him since he was a puppy.   Annie: Is Chuck like a nickname, or is that just, it's just Chuck?   Donika: It's just Chuck.   Lito: I love that.   Melissa: His nickname is Charles sometimes. One of his nicknames is Charles, but his full name is Chuck.   Melissa: OK, so I would say, I mean, my first thought at this question was like, I want Donika to keep doing exactly what she's been doing? As far as I can tell, she doesn't have a lot of other voices getting in the way of that process. My second thought is that I'm really interested. I've never heard her talk. She has no interest in writing prose of any kind. She is like deeply wedded to poetry. But I have heard her talk more recently about potential collaborations with (52:40) other artists, visual artists and other writers. And I would, I'm really excited to see what comes out of that space.   Lito: Would you all ever collaborate beyond your marriage?   Annie: I could see you all doing a craft book together.   Melissa: I feel like we could make like a chapbook that had prose and poems in it that were responding to a shared theme. I could definitely see that.   Donika: I really thought you were gonna say Love Poems for Melissa Febos, that's what you wanted to see next.   Melissa: I mean, I already know that that's on deck, so I don't... I mean, it's in, it's on the docket. It's on deck. Yeah. So…   Lito: Those sonnets, get to work on the sonnets.   Donika: Such a mess.   Melissa: This is real, you think, this is not, like, a conversation of the moment. This is…   Annie: Oh no, we can, this is history.   Donika: "Where's my century of sonnets?" she says.   Lito (53:33) What is your first memory?   Donika: Dancing?   Melissa: Donika telling me I'm pretty.   Annie (54:15.594) Who or what broke your heart first?   Melissa: Maddie, our dog.   Donika: Kerri Strug, 1996 Olympics. Vault.   Lito: Atlanta.   Donika: The Vault final. Yeah. Heartbreaking.   Lito: Who would you want to be lit friends with from any time in history, living or dead?   Donika: I just thought Gwendolyn Brooks. I'm gonna go with that.   Lito: I love Gwendolyn Brooks.   Donika: Oh yeah.   Melissa: My first thought is Baldwin.   Donika: It's a great party. We're at a great party.   Melissa: I just feel like I would be like, "No, James!" all the time.   Melissa: (54:30) Or like Truman Capote.   Lito: It'd be wild.   Donika: Messy. So messy.   Annie: What's your favorite piece of music?   Melissa: Oh my god, these questions are crazy! "Hallelujah"?   Donika: Oh god, there's an aria from Diana Damraus' first CD. She's a Soprano. And it's a Mozart aria, and I don't know where it's from, and I can't tell you the name because it's in Italian and I don't speak Italian, but that joint is exceptional. So that's what I'm gonna go with. Oh God, just crying in the car.   Lito: If you could give any gift to your lit friend without limitations, what would you give them?   Donika: Just like gold chains. So many gold chains. Yeah! If I could have a gold chain budget, it'd be a lot.   Annie: (55:23) Donika, we can do this.   Lito: Achievable.   Donika: I mean, yeah. Yeah.   Lito: Bling budget.   Donika: That's the first thing I thought.   Annie: Love it.   Donika: Just like gold, just thin gold chains, thick gold chains.   Melissa: I'm going to go with that, then, and say an infinite sneaker budget.   Lito: Yes. Oh, I want a shoe room. (55:50) That'd be awesome.   Melissa: We need two shoe rooms in this house, or like one. Or we just need to have a whole living room that's just for shoes.   Donika: I just like there's just like one closet that's just like for shoes. Like that's what we need.   Lito: That's great.   Donika: Yeah, but it's actually a room. Yes. With like a sorting system, it's like computer coded.   Annie: Soft lighting. That's our show.   Annie & Lito: Thanks for listening.   Lito: We'll be back next week with our guests Yiyun Li and Edmund White.   Annie: Find us on all your socials @LitFriendsPodcast.   Lito: Don't forget to reach out and tell us about the love affair of you and your LitFriend.   Annie: I'm Annie Liontas.   Lito: And I'm Lito Velázquez. Thank you to our production squad. Our show is edited by Justin Hamilton.   Annie: Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker.   Lito: Lizette Saldana is our marketing director.   Annie: Our theme song was written and produced by Robert Maresca.   Lito: And special thanks to our show producer, Toula Nuñez.   Annie: This was LitFriends, Episode Three.    

Members of MPR and supporters of The Slowdown came together in mid-October to celebrate poetry with Major Jackson. The poet was in the Twin Cities to speak at the Twin Cities Book Festival, which is where he also learned that The Slowdown — a daily poetry podcast that he hosts — had won the prestigious Signal Award for Best Daily Podcast of 2023. MPR News' Kerri Miller in Conversation with The Slowdown's Major Jackson It was on that jubilant note that he spoke with host Kerri Miller about his love for the art form of words. In the past, he has said that he finds “the writing of a poem a kind of plunging, a willful dive below the surface of who I am.” The Slowdown with Major Jackson Episode 966 Love Poem, with Birds Episode 952 Failed Essay on Privilege Episode 920 Invented Landscape Episode 852 Forestbathing (or Trees) Episode 821 I Have No Idea What's Going to Happen During their conversation, Jackson explored those ideas with Miller. He spoke about how to avoid solipsism when writing poetry, how his childhood faith taught him the musicality of words and why it's crucial that poetry be a mode of inquiry, not a collection of answers. Guest: Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, most recently “Razzle Dazzle.” He teaches writing at Vanderbilt University and is host of APM's daily poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

Doug Pagitt talks with Genesis Be. Genesis Be is not only an author, poet, and painter, but is also the "poet laureate" of Vote Common Good.  The new book People Not Things Genesis Be offers a strikingly honest yet hopeful snapshot of her journey as a queer Black woman in America fighting for the humanity of her community. Poignant and moving, this debut collection of poetry and paintings from Genesis Be bravely examines what it means to stay hopeful on the arduous journey to freedom. Drawing on her activism and antiracist work as covered by the New York Times and VICE, Be examines tools of division and challenges our notion of freedom in an effort to combat racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Equal parts delicate and unapologetic, People Not Things is a powerful debut that will speak to the hearts of readers from all walks of life.   www.VoteCommonGood.com

By Timothy Liu

Ephesians 5:28Strong marriages don't just happen. They require nurturing. Doing something as simple as writing a poem or even a note expressing your love can be the first step in rekindling that romantic spark.

welcome to ACT 2 of our convo on longing for a romantic relationship and what wisdom we can learn from this longing. In this episode, I read you a love poems, invite you to define romance for yourself, and share my pov on what romance means to me, and how it can be accessed through friendship. I am sending you love, today and always.

Love Poem, with Birds by Barbara Kingsolver. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today's poem gives voice to the intimidating feeling of competing with a partner's personal passion. However begrudgingly we come around to their idiosyncratic awarenesses, such an intense engagement is exactly what attracts us in the end.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Dr. Dan interviews Kwame Alexander poet, educator, speaker, publisher, and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 38 books including the powerful memoir Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances.Dr. Dan and Kwame discuss his father, family, parenting, writing, his mom, and much more during this intimate, lyrical, poetic interview. Dr. Dan and Kwame's conversation is inspiring and unforgettable. A regular contributor to NPR's Morning Edition, Kwame is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, The Coretta Scott King Author Honor, Three NAACP Image Award Nominations, and the 2017 Inaugural Pat Conroy Legacy Award. He is the Executive Producer, Showrunner, and Writer of The Crossover TV series, based on his Newbery-Medal winning novel of the same name, which premiered on Disney+ in April 2023.For more information please visit www.KwameAlexander.com.Email your parenting questions to Dr. Dan podcast@drdanpeters.com (we might answer on a future episode).Follow us @parentfootprintpodcast (Instagram, Facebook) and @drdanpeters (Twitter).Listen, follow, and leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Wondery, or wherever you like to listen!Don't forget, you can hear every episode one week early and ad-free by subscribing to Wondery+ in the @WonderyMedia App.For more information:www.exactlyrightmedia.com www.drdanpeters.comFor podcast merch:www.exactlyrightmedia.com/parent-footprint-shopSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You have to trust the process.You have to trust your Self.You have to accept your Holiness.You have to accept that every morning you wake up is the first day of your life.Today is the first day of your life!And you are here fully,silently,swaying,rocking gently, like those video game characters that are waiting to be chosen,waiting to be selected,ready to be used.Ready for Grace.Stay ready.Feel ready, without the word, 'ready',and expect miracles.I Love you,Niknikki@curlynikki.com Please support the show!:▶▶https://www.patreon.com/goodmornings_________________________________Today's Quotes:"Before you move onto the next things,pause. Sit with what is. Just for a moment. Open your hands and let goof what you're holding tight. Breathe deepand exhale the heavinessthat's been trapped inside. Before you move on, find yourself in these words:Life is not a raceand you are not behind. -@writtentospeak via IG"Some seeds beneath the earthare dormant. They fell the last time the cool airturned the leavesgold. Those seeds have different needs than we do;let them go about their lifecompletely unharmedby your views. We have cracked open, we sensedeven beneath the earth—the holy was near, and are reaching up to knowand claimlight as our Self."- St. John of Cross via Love Poems from God, Daniel Ladinsky *"I accept my holiness."-A Course in Miracles  Support the show

Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts.Watch your mantra, and watch yourself watching the mantra.Your mantra cleans up the inside,and because in the Kingdom there is no inside or outside,it cleans up what appears to be the outside for you, too.It cleans up your relationships,it cleans up your career,it cleans up how you relate to your children,it cleans up how you relate to your Self.But it all begins with how you relate to your thoughts in this moment.Assume responsibility for your practice, for your life,until you realize that the responsibility is God's.And that you do what you can, until Grace kicks in.Until the Holy Spirit flows in,and the blocks are cleared,and the path is open,and your success is established.I Love you,Nikp.s. Listen to 'Give Me a Clean Heart' by Fred Hammond.Please help me keep the show ad free + Get Merch!▶▶https://www.patreon.com/goodmornings_______________________Today's Quotes:   “Christ may make His home in your hearts”-Ephesians 3:17"If you clear the cobwebs of material sense from the darkest corners of your mind, you will be preparing a place for the inflow of the Holy Spirit. As that Divine Presence then establishes Itself as the Primal Force in your soul and consciousness, It will go before you to lighten all burdens of the human condition that have been restricting your progress on the path to mystical illumination. So, take every opportunity to retire often to the inner sanctum of your being, where this cleansing process can occur and then, allow this hallowed Presence to work Its magic in your ongoing life unfoldment."-Don Mardak"Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the Bliss of It, you shall recognize It."-Nisargadatta Maharaj "Stuck with another day, how should we pass it?If anything worked for you before--I'd give thatpreference."-Mira via Daniel Ladinsky's, 'Love Poems from God'"A house is made of brick and stone, but a Home is made of Love alone."-Rumi Support the show

Everything, the good and the bad brought you to this moment,to this level of growth where the Love is now growing new experiences,new opportunities to bring you closer to God,new opportunities to help you exercise trust,the way you trust that mustard seed you plant will grow into a plant?You have to trust that you're growing into all that you're destined to be.I Love you,Niknikki@curlynikki.comPlease help me keep the show ad free + Get Merch!▶▶https://www.patreon.com/goodmornings_______________________Today's Quotes:   “And He said to them…. “for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you."-Matthew 17:20“When you recognize her beauty, the eye applauds, the heart stands in an ovation, and the tongue when she is near is on its best behavior, it speaks more like light. What does light talk about? I asked a plant that once, It said, “I am not sure, but it makes me grow.” –Thomas Aquinas, “Love Poems from God”, translated by Daniel Ladinsky"Ask yourself, "during this silent time in the Presence, did I fear anything or anyone?" Your answer will certainly be, 'No'. This is your true state of Being. Accept no other."-Allen White 'The Inner Light is beyond praise and blame; like space it knows no boundaries, yet it is even here, within us, ever retaining its serentiy and fullness.  It is only when you hunt for it that you lose it; you cannot take hold of it, but equally you cannot get rid of it, and while you can do neither, it goes on its own way."-Yung- Chia Ta-Shih Support the show