Podcast appearances and mentions of Robert Frost

Poetry, butterflies, and original music oh my! With some help from poets Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Wordsworth, and John Keats, along with original music by composer Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal, Jacke tackles the topic of butterflies. Yes, yes, we all know that butterflies are symbols of beauty and transformation - but can great poets get beyond the clichés? Why did Keats imagine himself as a butterfly in his love letters? Did Robert Frost mansplain poetry to Emily Dickinson (and do we agree)? In this episode, we flit and float and fleetly flee and fly through literature, life, music, and poetry - like a butterfly, maybe? (Maybe so!) Additional listening: John Keats  More John Keats 700 Butterflies at Rest The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com . "Two Butterflies" performed by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal and Allison Hughes. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost's Poetry is literary critic Adam Plunkett's first biography. His exploration of the life and creativity of one of America's favorite 20th-century poets was published […]

Hello fellow humans! Thank you for your patience this last week as I finished up my work with the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, but guess what? I now have oodles of time to create beauty! (and podcasts). *You lucky ducks!* This time I get to introduce you to Ash Perrow, who has quite a story to tell! After suffering an NDE, Ash tells of what happened after, and the promise that he made in that diffuse and dark place, one which earned him the right to return to the land of the living! And as Robert Frost said, in his poem "The Road Not Taken," Ash's choice has made all the difference. It has meant that he is able to show up for those who need help, show up for all of us when he models what a true life looks like, and show up for my show, to inspire all of us who listen! To read a bit more about Ash and his work, click here! Your bit of beauty is this poem, by Robert Frost, one that urges all of us to live a life full of our uniqueness, and our unique choices...choices that will make all the difference. The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Love you babes...have a beautiful week! xo

Hello fellow humans! Thank you for your patience this last week as I finished up my work with the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, but guess what? I now have oodles of time to create beauty! (and podcasts). *You lucky ducks!* This time I get to introduce you to Ash Perrow, who has quite a story to tell! After suffering an NDE, Ash tells of what happened after, and the promise that he made in that diffuse and dark place, one which earned him the right to return to the land of the living! And as Robert Frost said, in his poem "The Road Not Taken," Ash's choice has made all the difference. It has meant that he is able to show up for those who need help, show up for all of us when he models what a true life looks like, and show up for my show, to inspire all of us who listen! To read a bit more about Ash and his work, click here! Your bit of beauty is this poem, by Robert Frost, one that urges all of us to live a life full of our uniqueness, and our unique choices...choices that will make all the difference. The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Love you babes...have a beautiful week! xo

Feeling stuck on the same road you've always walked? In this episode of the One Second of Strength Podcast, Tanner explores how habits shape our choices and how to break free from the familiar path to create real change. Inspired by Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, this is your invitation to choose a new path—one that leads to growth, courage, and transformation.________SHARE – this episode with one other person who is on your mindSUBSCRIBE – Never miss another episodeFOLLOW – Follow Tanner on Instagram and share this episode to your stories and TAG @realtannercarkDo you have kids with social media? My digital course can help with that. Check out 4MParenting.com and use code PODCAST to save 25%.

In this episode, I sit down with João Esteves, founder of DiVERGE Sneakers, a brand that's rewriting the rules of footwear from the ground up.   We discuss why customization matters, how DiVERGE puts the customer's individuality front and center, and what it truly takes to build a business rooted in purpose, not just profit.   João opens up about his entrepreneurial journey, including the emotional resilience required to stay the course and the people who believed in him when the business needed it most. From launching a brand inspired by a Robert Frost poem to becoming a B Corp committed to people and the planet, João shares how DiVERGE is challenging mass production and the wasteful norms of the fashion industry. We also dive into the brand's incredible social impact program that helps underprivileged youth design their own shoes and share their stories with the world.

April 17, 2025 - "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost, read by Richard Cogliandro by The Desmond-Fish Public Library & The Highlands Current, hosted by Ryan Biracree

Guest Bio:  Dave Snowden divides his time between two roles: founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge and the founder and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at the University of Wales.  Known for creating the sense-making framework, Cynefin, Dave's work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy, organisational decision making and decision making.  He has pioneered a science-based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory.  He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style. He holds positions as extra-ordinary Professor at the Universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch and visiting Professor at Bangor University in Wales respectively.  He has held similar positions at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Canberra University, the University of Warwick and The University of Surrey.  He held the position of senior fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang University and the Civil Service College in Singapore during a sabbatical period in Nanyang. His paper with Boone on Leadership was the cover article for the Harvard Business Review in November 2007 and also won the Academy of Management aware for the best practitioner paper in the same year.  He has previously won a special award from the Academy for originality in his work on knowledge management. He is a editorial board member of several academic and practitioner journals in the field of knowledge management and is an Editor in Chief of E:CO.  In 2006 he was Director of the EPSRC (UK) research programme on emergence and in 2007 was appointed to an NSF (US) review panel on complexity science research. He previously worked for IBM where he was a Director of the Institution for Knowledge Management and founded the Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity; during that period he was selected by IBM as one of six on-demand thinkers for a world-wide advertising campaign. Prior to that he worked in a range of strategic and management roles in the service sector. His company Cognitive Edge exists to integrate academic thinking with practice in organisations throughout the world and operates on a network model working with Academics, Government, Commercial Organisations, NGOs and Independent Consultants.  He is also the main designer of the SenseMaker® software suite, originally developed in the field of counter terrorism and now being actively deployed in both Government and Industry to handle issues of impact measurement, customer/employee insight, narrative based knowledge management, strategic foresight and risk management. The Centre for Applied Complexity was established to look at whole of citizen engagement in government and is running active programmes in Wales and elsewhere in areas such as social inclusion, self-organising communities and nudge economics together with a broad range of programmes in health.  The Centre will establish Wales as a centre of excellence for the integration of academic and practitioner work in creating a science-based approach to understanding society.   Social Media and Website LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/dave-snowden-2a93b Twitter: @snowded Website: Cognitive Edge https://www.cognitive-edge.com/   Books/ Resources: Book: Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World by Dave Snowden and Friends https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cynefin-Weaving-Sense-Making-Fabric-World/dp/1735379905 Book: Hope Without Optimism by Terry Eagleton https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hope-Without-Optimism-Terry-Eagleton/dp/0300248679/ Book: Theology of Hope by Jurgen Moltmann https://www.amazon.co.uk/Theology-Hope-Classics-Jurgen-Moltmann/dp/0334028787 Poem: ‘Mending Wall' by Robert Frost https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall Video: Dave Snowden on ‘Rewilding Agile' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrgaPDqet4c Article reference to ‘Rewilding Agile' by Dave Snowden https://cynefin.io/index.php/User:Snowded Field Guide to Managing Complexity (and Chaos) In Times of Crisis https://cynefin.io/index.php/Field_guide_to_managing_complexity_(and_chaos)_in_times_of_crisis Field Guide to Managing Complexity (and Chaos) In Times of Crisis (2) https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/managing-complexity-and-chaos-times-crisis-field-guide-decision-makers-inspired-cynefin-framework Cynefin Wiki https://cynefin.io/wiki/Main_Page   Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku:  Dave, thank you for making the time for this conversation. I read in your, your latest book - the book, Cynefin: Weaving Sense Making into the Fabric of Our World, which was released, I believe, in celebration of the twenty first year of the framework. And you mentioned that in your childhood, you had multidisciplinary upbringing which involved lots of reading. Could you tell us a bit more about that? Dave Snowden:  I think it wasn't uncommon in those days. I mean, if you did… I mean, I did science A levels and mathematical A levels. But the assumption was you would read every novel that the academic English class were reading. In fact, it was just unimaginable (that) you wouldn't know the basics of history. So, if you couldn't survive that in the sixth form common room, and the basics of science were known by most of the arts people as well. So that that was common, right. And we had to debate every week anyway. So, every week, you went up to the front of the class and you were given a card, and you'd have the subject and which side you are on, and you had to speak for seven minutes without preparation. And we did that every week from the age of 11 to 18. And that was a wonderful discipline because it meant you read everything. But also, my mother was… both my parents were the first from working class communities to go to university. And they got there by scholarship or sheer hard work against the opposition of their families. My mother went to university in Germany just after the war, which was extremely brave of her -  you know, as a South Wales working class girl. So, you weren't allowed not to be educated, it was considered the unforgivable sin. Ula Ojiaku:   Wow. Did it mean that she had to learn German, because (she was) studying in Germany…? Dave Snowden:  She well, she got A levels in languages. So, she went to university to study German and she actually ended up as a German teacher, German and French. So, she had that sort of background. Yeah. Ula Ojiaku:  And was that what influenced you? Because you also mentioned in the book that you won a £60 prize? Dave Snowden:  Oh, no, that was just fun. So, my mum was very politically active. We're a South Wales labor. Well, I know if I can read but we were labor. And so, she was a local Councilor. She was always politically active. There's a picture of me on Bertrand Russell's knee and her as a baby on a CND march. So it was that sort of background. And she was campaigning for comprehensive education, and had a ferocious fight with Aiden Williams, I think, who was the Director of Education, it was really nasty. I mean, I got threatened on my 11 Plus, he got really nasty. And then so when (I was) in the sixth form, I won the prize in his memory, which caused endless amusement in the whole county. All right. I think I probably won it for that. But that was for contributions beyond academic. So, I was leading lots of stuff in the community and stuff like that. But I had £60. And the assumption was, you go and buy one massive book. And I didn't, I got Dad to drive me to Liverpool - went into the big bookshop there and just came out with I mean, books for two and six pence. So, you can imagine how many books I could get for £60. And I just took everything I could find on philosophy and history and introductory science and stuff like that and just consumed it. Ula Ojiaku:  Wow, it seemed like you already knew what you wanted even before winning the prize money, you seem to have had a wish list... Dave Snowden:  I mean, actually interesting, and the big things in the EU field guide on (managing) complexity which was just issued. You need to build…, You need to stop saying, ‘this is the problem, we will find the solution' to saying, ‘how do I build capability, that can solve problems we haven't yet anticipated?' And I think that's part of the problem in education. Because my children didn't have that benefit. They had a modular education. Yeah, we did a set of exams at 16 and a set of exams that 18 and between those periods, we could explore it (i.e. options) and we had to hold everything in our minds for those two periods, right? For my children, it was do a module, pass a test, get a mark, move on, forget it move on. So, it's very compartmentalized, yeah? And it's also quite instrumentalist. We, I think we were given an education as much in how to learn and have had to find things out. And the debating tradition was that; you didn't know what you're going to get hit with. So, you read everything, and you thought about it, and you learn to think on your feet. And I think that that sort of a broad switch, it started to happen in the 80s, along with a lot of other bad things in management. And this is when systems thinking started to dominate. And we moved to an engineering metaphor. And you can see it in cybernetics and everything else, it's an attempt to define everything as a machine. And of course, machines are designed for a purpose, whereas ecosystems evolve for resilience. And I think that's kind of like where I, my generation were and it's certainly what we're trying to bring back in now in sort of in terms of practice. Ula Ojiaku:  I have an engineering background and a computer science background. These days, I'm developing a newfound love for philosophy, psychology, law and, you know, intersect, how do all these concepts intersect? Because as human beings we're complex, we're not machines where you put the program in and you expect it to come out the same, you know, it's not going to be the same for every human being. What do you think about that? Dave Snowden:  Yeah. And I think, you know, we know more on this as well. So, we know the role of art in human evolution is being closely linked to innovation. So, art comes before language. So, abstraction allows you to make novel connections. So, if you focus entirely on STEM education, you're damaging the human capacity to innovate. And we're, you know, as creatures, we're curious. You know. And I mean, we got this whole concept of our aporia, which is key to connecting that, which is creating a state of deliberate confusion, or a state of paradox. And the essence of a paradox is you can't resolve it. So, you're forced to think differently. So, the famous case on this is the liar's paradox, alright? I mean, “I always lie”. That just means I lied. So, if that means I was telling the truth. So, you've got to think differently about the problem. I mean, you've seen those paradoxes do the same thing. So that, that deliberate act of creating confusion so people can see novelty is key. Yeah. Umm and if you don't find… finding ways to do that, so when we looked at it, we looked at linguistic aporia, aesthetic aporia and physical aporia. So, I got some of the… one of the defining moments of insight on Cynefin was looking at Caravaggio`s paintings in Naples. When I realized I've been looking for the idea of the liminality. And that was, and then it all came together, right? So those are the trigger points requiring a more composite way of learning. I think it's also multiculturalism, to be honest. I mean, I, when I left university, I worked on the World Council of Churches come, you know program to combat racism. Ula Ojiaku:  Yes, I'd like to know more about that. That's one of my questions… Dave Snowden:  My mother was a good atheist, but she made me read the Bible on the basis, I wouldn't understand European literature otherwise, and the penetration guys, I became a Catholic so… Now, I mean, that that was fascinating, because I mean, I worked on Aboriginal land rights in Northern Australia, for example. And that was when I saw an activist who was literally murdered in front of me by a security guard. And we went to the police. And they said, it's only an Abo. And I still remember having fights in Geneva, because South Africa was a tribal conflict with a racial overlay. I mean, Africa, and its Matabele Zulu, arrived in South Africa together and wiped out the native population. And if you don't understand that, you don't understand the Matabele betrayal. You don't understand what happened. It doesn't justify apartheid. And one of the reasons there was a partial reconciliation, is it actually was a tribal conflict. And the ritual actually managed that. Whereas in Australia, in comparison was actually genocide. Yeah, it wasn't prejudice, it was genocide. I mean, until 1970s, there, were still taking half -breed children forcibly away from their parents, inter-marrying them in homes, to breed them back to white. And those are, I think, yeah, a big market. I argued this in the UK, I said, one of the things we should actually have is bring back national service. I couldn't get the Labor Party to adopt it. I said, ‘A: Because it would undermine the Conservatives, because they're the ones who talk about that sort of stuff. But we should allow it to be overseas.' So, if you put two years into working in communities, which are poorer than yours, round about that 18 to 21-year-old bracket, then we'll pay for your education. If you don't, you'll pay fees. Because you proved you want to give to society. And that would have been… I think, it would have meant we'd have had a generation of graduates who understood the world because that was part of the objective. I mean, I did that I worked on worked in South Africa, on the banks of Zimbabwe on the audits of the refugee camps around that fight. And in Sao Paulo, in the slums, some of the work of priests. You can't come back from that and not be changed. And I think it's that key formative period, we need to give people. Ula Ojiaku:  True and like you said, at that age, you know, when you're young and impressionable, it helps with what broadening your worldview to know that the world is bigger than your father's … compound (backyard)… Dave Snowden:  That's the worst problem in Agile, because what, you've got a whole class of, mainly white males and misogynism in Agile is really bad. It's one of the worst areas for misogyny still left, right, in terms of where it works. Ula Ojiaku:  I'm happy you are the one saying it not me… Dave Snowden:  Well, no, I mean, it is it's quite appalling. And so, what you've actually got is, is largely a bunch of white male game players who spent their entire time on computers. Yeah, when you take and run seriously after puberty, and that's kind of like a dominant culture. And that's actually quite dangerous, because it lacks, it lacks cultural diversity, it lacks ethnic diversity, it lacks educational diversity. And I wrote an article for ITIL, recently, which has been published, which said, no engineers should be allowed out, without training in ethics. Because the implications of what software engineers do now are huge. And the problem we've got, and this is a really significant, it's a big data problem as well. And you see it with a behavioral economic economist and the nudge theory guys - all of whom grab these large-scale data manipulations is that they're amoral, they're not immoral, they're amoral. And that's actually always more scary. It's this sort of deep level instrumentalism about the numbers; the numbers tell me what I need to say. Ula Ojiaku:  And also, I mean, just building on what you've said, there are instances, for example, in artificial intelligence is really based on a sample set from a select group, and it doesn't necessarily recognize things that are called ‘outliers'. You know, other races… Dave Snowden:  I mean, I've worked in that in all my life now back 20, 25 years ago. John Poindexter and I were on a stage in a conference in Washington. This was sort of early days of our work on counter terrorism. And somebody asked about black box AI and I said, nobody's talking about the training data sets. And I've worked in AI from the early days, all right, and the training data sets matter and nobody bothered. They just assumed… and you get people publishing books which say correlation is causation, which is deeply worrying, right? And I think Google is starting to acknowledge that, but it's actually very late. And the biases which… we were looking at a software tool the other day, it said it can, it can predict 85% of future events around culture. Well, it can only do that by constraining how executive see culture, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then the recruitment algorithms will only recruit people who match that cultural expectation and outliers will be eliminated. There's an HBO film coming up shortly on Myers Briggs. Now, Myers Briggs is known to be a pseudo-science. It has no basis whatsoever in any clinical work, and even Jung denied it, even though it's meant to be based on his work. But it's beautiful for HR departments because it allows them to put people into little categories. And critically it abrogates, judgment, and that's what happened with systems thinking in the 80s 90s is everything became spreadsheets and algorithms. So, HR departments would produce… instead of managers making decisions based on judgment, HR departments would force them into profile curves, to allocate resources. Actually, if you had a high performing team who were punished, because the assumption was teams would not have more than… Ula Ojiaku:  Bell curve... Dave Snowden:  …10 percent high performance in it. All right. Ula Ojiaku:  Yeah. Dave Snowden:  And this sort of nonsense has been running in the 80s, 90s and it coincided with… three things came together. One was the popularization of systems thinking. And unfortunately, it got popularized around things like process reengineering and learning organization. So that was a hard end. And Sanghi's pious can the sort of the, the soft end of it, right? But both of them were highly directional. It was kind of like leaders decide everything follows. Yeah. And that coincided with the huge growth of computing - the ability to handle large volumes of information. And all of those sorts of things came together in this sort of perfect storm, and we lost a lot of humanity in the process. Ula Ojiaku:  Do you think there's hope for us to regain the humanity in the process? Because it seems like the tide is turning from, I mean, there is still an emphasis, in my view, on systems thinking, however, there is the growing realization that we have, you know, knowledge workers and people… Dave Snowden:  Coming to the end of its park cycle, I see that all right. I can see it with the amount of cybernetics fanboys, and they are all boys who jump on me every time I say something about complexity, right? So, I think they're feeling threatened. And the field guide is significant, because it's a government, you know, government can like publication around effectively taken an ecosystems approach, not a cybernetic approach. And there's a book published by a good friend of mine called Terry Eagleton, who's… I don't think he's written a bad book. And he's written about 30, or 40. I mean, the guy just produces his stuff. It's called “Hope without Optimism”. And I think, hope is… I mean, Moltman just also published an update of his Theology of Hope, which is worth reading, even if you're not religious. But hope is one of those key concepts, right, you should… to lose hope is a sin. But hope is not the same thing as optimism. In fact, pessimistic people who hope actually are probably the ones who make a difference, because they're not naive, right? And this is my objection to the likes of Sharma Ga Sengi, and the like, is they just gather people together to talk about how things should be. And of course, everything should be what, you know, white MIT, educated males think the world should be like. I mean, it's very culturally imperialist in that sort of sense. And then nobody changes because anybody can come together in the workshop and agree how things should be. It's when you make a difference in the field that it counts, you've got to create a micro difference. This is hyper localization, you got to create lots and lots of micro differences, which will stimulate the systems, the system will change. I think, three things that come together, one is COVID. The other is global warming. And the other is, and I prefer to call it the epistemic justice movement, though, that kind of like fits in with Black Lives Matter. But epistemic justice doesn't just affect people who are female or black. I mean, if you come to the UK and see the language about the Welsh and the Irish, or the jokes made about the Welsh in BBC, right? The way we use language can designate people in different ways and I think that's a big movement, though. And it's certainly something we develop software for. So, I think those three come together, and I think the old models aren't going to be sustainable. I mean, the cost is going to be terrible. I mean, the cost to COVID is already bad. And we're not getting this thing as long COVID, it's permanent COVID. And people need to start getting used to that. And I think that's, that's going to change things. So, for example, in the village I live in Wiltshire. Somebody's now opened an artisan bakery in their garage and it's brilliant. And everybody's popping around there twice a week and just buying the bread and having a chat on the way; socially-distanced with masks, of course. And talking of people, that sort of thing is happening a lot. COVID has forced people into local areas and forced people to realise the vulnerability of supply chains. So, you can see changes happening there. The whole Trump phenomenon, right, and the Boris murmuring in the UK is ongoing. It's just as bad as the Trump phenomenon. It's the institutionalization of corruption as a high level. Right? Those sorts of things trigger change, right? Not without cost, change never comes without cost, but it just needs enough… It needs local action, not international action. I think that's the key principle. To get a lot of people to accept things like the Paris Accord on climate change, and you've got to be prepared to make sacrifices. And it's too distant a time at the moment, it has to become a local issue for the international initiatives to actually work and we're seeing that now. I mean… Ula Ojiaku:  It sounds like, sorry to interrupt - it sounds like what you're saying is, for the local action, for change to happen, it has to start with us as individuals… Dave Snowden:  The disposition… No, not with individuals. That's actually very North American, the North European way of thinking right. The fundamental kind of basic identity structure of humans is actually clans, not individuals. Ula Ojiaku:  Clans... Dave Snowden:  Yeah. Extended families, clans; it's an ambiguous word. We actually evolved for those. And you need it at that level, because that's a high level of social interaction and social dependency. And it's like, for example, right? I'm dyslexic. Right? Yeah. If I don't see if, if the spelling checker doesn't pick up a spelling mistake, I won't see it. And I read a whole page at a time. I do not read it sentence by sentence. All right. And I can't understand why people haven't seen the connections I make, because they're obvious, right? Equally, there's a high degree of partial autism in the Agile community, because that goes with mathematical ability and thing, and that this so-called education deficiencies, and the attempt to define an ideal individual is a mistake, because we evolved to have these differences. Ula Ojiaku:  Yes. Dave Snowden:  Yeah. And the differences understood that the right level of interaction can change things. So, I think the unit is clan, right for extended family, or extended, extended interdependence. Ula Ojiaku:  Extended interdependence… Dave Snowden:  We're seeing that in the village. I mean, yeah, this is classic British atomistic knit, and none of our relatives live anywhere near us. But the independence in the village is increasing with COVID. And therefore, people are finding relationships and things they can do together. Now, once that builds to a critical mass, and it does actually happen exponentially, then bigger initiatives are possible. And this is some of the stuff we were hoping to do in the US shortly on post-election reconciliation. And the work we've been doing in Malmo, in refugees and elsewhere in the world, right, is you change the nature of localized interaction with national visibility, so that you can measure the dispositional state of the system. And then you can nudge the system when it's ready to change, because then the energy cost of change is low. But that requires real time feedback loops in distributed human sensor networks, which is a key issue in the field guide. And the key thing that comes back to your original question on AI, is, the internet at the moment is an unbuffered feedback loop. Yeah, where you don't know the source of the data, and you can't control the source of the data. And any network like that, and this is just apriori science factor, right will always become perverted. Ula Ojiaku:  And what do you mean by term apriori? Dave Snowden:  Oh, before the facts, you don't need to, we don't need to wait for evidence. It's like in an agile, you can look at something like SAFe® which case claims to scale agile and just look at it you say it's apriori wrong (to) a scale a complex system. So, it's wrong. All right. End of argument right. Now let's talk about the details, right. So yeah, so that's, you know, that's coming back. The hyper localization thing is absolutely key on that, right? And the same is true to be honest in software development. A lot of our work now is to understand the unarticulated needs of users. And then shift technology in to actually meet those unarticulated needs. And that requires a complex approach to architecture, in which people and technology are objects with defined interactions around scaffolding structures, so that applications can emerge in resilience, right? And that's actually how local communities evolve as well. So, we've now got the theoretical constructs and a lot of the practical methods to actually… And I've got a series of blog posts - which I've got to get back to writing - called Rewilding Agile. And rewilding isn't returning to the original state, it's restoring balance. So, if you increase the number of human actors as your primary sources, and I mean human actors, not as people sitting on (in front of) computer screens who can be faked or mimicked, yeah? … and entirely working on text, which is about 10%, of what we know, dangerous, it might become 80% of what we know and then you need to panic. Right? So, you know, by changing those interactions, increasing the human agency in the system, that's how you come to, that's how you deal with fake news. It's not by writing better algorithms, because then it becomes a war with the guys faking the news, and you're always gonna lose. Ula Ojiaku:  So, what do you consider yourself, a person of faith? Dave Snowden:  Yeah. Ula Ojiaku:  Why? Dave Snowden:  Oh, faith is like hope and charity. I mean, they're the great virtues… I didn't tell you I got into a lot in trouble in the 70s. Dave Snowden:  I wrote an essay that said Catholicism, Marxism and Hinduism were ontologically identical and should be combined and we're different from Protestantism and capitalism, which are also ontologically identical (and) it can be combined. Ula Ojiaku:  Is this available in the public domain? Dave Snowden:  I doubt it. I think it actually got me onto a heresy trial at one point, but that but I would still say that. Ula Ojiaku:  That's amazing. Can we then move to the framework that Cynefin framework, how did it evolve into what we know it as today? Dave Snowden:  I'll do a high-level summary, but I wrote it up at length in the book and I didn't know I was writing for the book. The book was a surprise that they put together for me. I thought that was just writing an extended blog post. It started when I was working in IBM is it originates from the work of Max Borrasso was my mentor for years who tragically died early. But he was looking at abstraction, codification and diffusion. We did a fair amount of work together, I took two of those aspects and started to look at informal and formal communities in IBM, and its innovation. And some of the early articles on Cynefin, certainly the early ones with the five domains come from that period. And at that time, we had access labels. Yeah. And then then complexity theory came into it. So, it shifted into being a complexity framework. And it stayed … The five domains were fairly constant for a fairly long period of time, they changed their names a bit. The central domain I knew was important, but didn't have as much prominence as it does now. And then I introduced liminality, partly driven by agile people, actually, because they could they couldn't get the concept there were dynamics and domains. So, they used to say things like, ‘look, Scrum is a dynamic. It's a way of shifting complex to complicated' and people say ‘no, the scrum guide said it's about complex.' And you think, ‘oh, God, Stacey has a lot to answer for' but… Ula Ojiaku: Who`s Stacey? Dave Snowden:  Ralph Stacey. So, he was the guy originally picked up by Ken when he wrote the Scrum Guide… Ula Ojiaku:  Right. Okay. Dave Snowden:  Stacey believes everything's complex, which is just wrong, right? So, either way, Cynefin evolved with the liminal aspects. And then the last resolution last year, which is… kind of completes Cynefin to be honest, there's some refinements… was when we realized that the central domain was confused, or operatic. And that was the point where you started. So, you didn't start by putting things into the domain, you started in the operatic. And then you moved aspects of things into the different domains. So that was really important. And it got picked up in Agile, ironically, by the XP community. So, I mean, I was in IT most of my life, I was one of the founders of the DSDM Consortium, and then moved sideways from that, and was working in counterterrorism and other areas, always you're working with technology, but not in the Agile movement. Cynefin is actually about the same age as Agile, it started at the same time. And the XP community in London invited me in, and I still think Agile would have been better if it had been built on XP, not Scrum. But it wouldn't have scaled with XP, I mean, without Scrum it would never have scaled it. And then it got picked up. And I think one of the reasons it got picked up over Stacey is, it said order is possible. It didn't say everything is complex. And virtually every Agile method I know of value actually focuses on making complex, complicated. Ula Ojiaku:  Yes. Dave Snowden:  And that's its power. What they're… what is insufficient of, and this is where we've been working is what I call pre-Scrum techniques. Techniques, which define what should go into that process. Right, because all of the Agile methods still tend to be a very strong manufacturing metaphor - manufacturing ideas. So, they assume somebody will tell them what they have to produce. And that actually is a bad way of thinking about IT. Technology needs to co-evolve. And users can't articulate what they want, because they don't know what technology can do. Ula Ojiaku:  True. But are you saying… because in Agile fundamentally, it's really about making sure there's alignment as well that people are working on the right thing per time, but you're not telling them how to do it? Dave Snowden:  Well, yes and no - all right. I mean, it depends what you're doing. I mean, some Agile processes, yes. But if you go through the sort of safe brain remain processes, very little variety within it, right? And self-organization happens within the context of a user executive and retrospectives. Right, so that's its power. And, but if you look at it, it took a really good technique called time-boxing, and it reduced it to a two-week sprint. Now, that's one aspect of time boxing. I mean, I've got a whole series of blog posts next week on this, because time boxing is a hugely valuable technique. It says there's minimal deliverable project, and maximum deliverable product and a minimal level of resource and a maximum level of resource. And the team commits to deliver on the date. Ula Ojiaku:  To accurate quality… to a quality standard. Dave Snowden:  Yeah, so basically, you know that the worst case, you'll get the minimum product at the maximum cost, but you know, you'll get it on that date. So, you can deal with it, alright. And that's another technique we've neglected. We're doing things which force high levels of mutation and requirements over 24 hours, before they get put into a Scrum process. Because if you just take what users want, you know, there's been insufficient co-evolution with the technology capability. And so, by the time you deliver it, the users will probably realize they should have asked for something different anyway. Ula Ojiaku:  So, does this tie in with the pre-Scrum techniques you mentioned earlier? If so, can you articulate that? Dave Snowden:  So, is to say different methods in different places. And that's again, my opposition to things like SAFe, to a lesser extent LeSS, and so on, right, is they try and put everything into one bloody big flow diagram. Yeah. And that's messy. All right? Well, it's a recipe, not a chef. What the chef does is they put different ingredients together in different combinations. So, there's modularity of knowledge, but it's not forced into a linear process. So, our work… and we just got an open space and open source and our methods deliberately, right, in terms of the way it works, is I can take Scrum, and I can reduce it to its lowest coherent components, like a sprint or retrospective. I can combine those components with components for another method. So, I can create Scrum as an assembly of components, I can take those components compared with other components. And that way, you get novelty. So, we're then developing components which sit before traditional stuff. Like for example, triple eight, right? This was an old DSDM method. So, you ran a JAD sessions and Scrum has forgotten about JAD. JAD is a really…  joint application design… is a really good set of techniques - they're all outstanding. You throw users together with coders for two days, and you force out some prototypes. Yeah, that latching on its own would, would transform agile, bringing that back in spades, right? We did is we do an eight-hour JAD session say, in London, and we pass it on to a team in Mumbai. But we don't tell them what the users ask for. They just get the prototype. And they can do whatever they want with it for eight hours. And then they hand it over to a team in San Francisco, who can do whatever they want with it in eight hours. And it comes back. And every time I've run this, the user said, ‘God, I wouldn't have thought of that, can I please, have it?' So, what you're doing is a limited life cycle -  you get the thing roughly defined, then you allow it to mutate without control, and then you look at the results and decide what you want to do. And that's an example of pre-scrum technique, that is a lot more economical than systems and analysts and user executives and storyboards. And all those sorts of things. Yeah. Ula Ojiaku:  Well, I see what you mean, because it seems like the, you know, the JAD - the joint application design technique allows for emergent design, and you shift the decision making closer to the people who are at the forefront. And to an extent my understanding of, you know, Scrum … I mean, some agile frameworks - that's also what they promote… Dave Snowden:  Oh, they don't really don't. alright. They picked up Design Thinking which is quite interesting at the moment. If you if you look at Agile and Design Thinking. They're both at the end of their life cycles. Ula Ojiaku:  Why do you say that? Dave Snowden:  Because they're being commodified. The way you know, something is coming to the end of its life cycle is when it becomes highly commodified. So, if you look at it, look at what they are doing the moment, the Double Diamond is now a series of courses with certificates. And I mean, Agile started with bloody certificates, which is why it's always been slightly diverse in the way it works. I mean, this idea that you go on a three-day course and get a certificate, you read some slides every year and pay some money and get another certificate is fundamentally corrupt. But most of the Agile business is built on it, right? I mean, I've got three sets of methods after my name. But they all came from yearlong or longer courses certified by university not from tearing apart a course. Yeah, or satisfying a peer group within a very narrow cultural or technical definition of competence. So, I think yeah, and you can see that with Design Thinking. So, it's expert ideation, expert ethnography. And it still falls into that way of doing things. Yeah. And you can see it, people that are obsessed with running workshops that they facilitate. And that's the problem. I mean, the work we're doing on citizen engagement is actually… has no bloody facilitators in it. As all the evidence is that the people who turn up are culturally biased about their representative based opinions. And the same is true if you want to look at unarticulated needs, you can't afford to have the systems analysts finding them because they see them from their perspective. And this is one of one science, right? You did not see what you do not expect to see. We know that, alright? So, you're not going to see outliers. And so, the minute you have an expert doing something, it's really good - where you know, the bounds of the expertise, cover all the possibilities, and it's really dangerous. Well, that's not the case. Ula Ojiaku:  So, could you tell me a bit more about the unfacilitated sessions you mentioned earlier? Dave Snowden:  They're definitely not sessions, so we didn't like what were triggers at moments. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Dave Snowden:  So, defining roles. So, for example, one of the things I would do and have done in IT, is put together, young, naive, recently graduated programmer with older experienced tester or software architect. So, somebody without any… Ula Ojiaku:  Prejudice or pre-conceived idea... Dave Snowden:  … preferably with a sort of grandparent age group between them as well. I call it, the grandparents syndrome - grandparents say things to their grandchildren they won't tell their children and vice versa. If you maximize the age gap, there's actually freer information flow because there's no threat in the process. And then we put together with users trained to talk to IT people. So, in a month's time, I'll publish that as a training course. So, training users to talk to IT people is more economical than trying to train IT people to understand users. Ula Ojiaku:  To wrap up then, based on what you said, you know, about Cynefin, and you know, the wonderful ideas behind Cynefin. How can leaders in organizations in any organization apply these and in how they make sense of the world and, you know, take decisions? Dave Snowden:  Well, if there's actually a sensible way forward now, so we've just published the field guide on managing complexity.  Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Dave Snowden:  And that is actually, it's a sort of ‘Chef's guide'. It has four stages: assess, adapt, exert, transcend, and within that it has things you could do. So, it's not a list of qualities, it's a list of practical things you should go and do tomorrow, and those things we're building at the moment with a lot of partners, because we won't try and control this; this needs to be open. Here's an assessment process that people will go through to decide where they are. So that's going to be available next week on our website. Ula Ojiaku:  Oh, fantastic! Dave Snowden:  For the initial registration.  Other than that, and there's a whole body of stuff on how to use Cynefin. And as I said, we just open source on the methods. So, the Wiki is open source. These… from my point of view, we're now at the stage where the market is going to expand very quickly. And to be honest, I, you know, I've always said traditionally use cash waiver as an example of this. The reason that Agile scaled around Scrum is he didn't make it an elite activity, which XP was. I love the XP guys, but they can't communicate with ordinary mortals. Yeah. It takes you about 10 minutes to tune into the main point, and even you know the field, right. And he (Jeff Sutherland) made the Scrum Guide open source. And that way it's great, right. And I think that that's something which people just don't get strategic with. They, in early stages, you should keep things behind firewalls. When the market is ready to expand, you take the firewalls away fast. Because I mean, getting behind firewalls initially to maintain coherence so they don't get diluted too quickly, or what I call “hawks being made into pigeons”. Yeah. But the minute the market is starting to expand, that probably means you've defined it so you release the firewall so the ideas spread very quickly, and you accept the degree of diversity on it. So that's the reason we put the Wiki. Ula Ojiaku:  Right. So, are there any books that you would recommend, for anyone who wants to learn more about what you've talked about so far. Dave Snowden:  You would normally produce the theory book, then the field book, but we did it the other way around. So, Mary and I are working on three to five books, which will back up the Field Guide. Ula Ojiaku:  Is it Mary Boone? Dave Snowden:  Mary Boone. She knows how to write to the American managers, which I don't, right… without losing integrity. So that's coming, right. If you go onto the website, I've listed all the books I read. I don't think… there are some very, very good books around complexity, but they're deeply specialized, they're academic. Gerard's book is just absolutely brilliant but it's difficult to understand if you don't have a philosophy degree. And there are some awfully tripe books around complexity - nearly all of the popular books I've seen, I wouldn't recommend. Yeah. Small Groups of Complex Adaptive Systems is probably quite a good one that was published about 20 years ago. Yeah, but that we got a book list on the website. So, I would look at that. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Thank you so much for that. Do you have any ask of the audience and how can they get to you? Dave Snowden:  We've open-sourced the Wiki, you know, to create a critical mass, I was really pleased we have 200 people volunteered to help populate it. So, we get the all the methods in the field guide them. And they're actively working at that at the moment, right, and on a call with them later. And to be honest, I've done 18-hour days, the last two weeks, but 8 hours of each of those days has been talking to the methods with a group of people Academy 5, that's actually given me a lot of energy, because it's huge. So, get involved, I think it's the best way… you best understand complexity by getting the principles and then practicing it. And the key thing I'll leave us with is the metaphor. I mentioned it a few times - a recipe book user has a recipe, and they follow it. And if they don't have the right ingredients, and if they don't have the right equipment, they can't operate. Or they say it's not ‘true Agile'. A chef understands the theory of cooking and has got served in apprenticeship. So, their fingers know how to do things. And that's… we need… a downside.. more chefs, which is the combination of theory and practice. And the word empirical is hugely corrupted in the Agile movement. You know, basically saying, ‘this worked for me' or ‘it worked for me the last three times' is the most dangerous way of moving forward. Ula Ojiaku:  Because things change and what worked yesterday might not work Dave Snowden:  And you won't be aware of what worked or didn't work and so on. Ula Ojiaku:  And there's some bias in that. Wouldn't you say? Dave Snowden:  We've got an attentional blindness if you've got Ula Ojiaku:  Great. And Dave, where can people find you? Are you on social media? Dave Snowden:  Cognitive. Yeah, social media is @snowded. Yeah. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Two websites – the Cognitive Edge website, which is where I blog, and there's a new Cynefin Center website now, which is a not-for-profit arm. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. All these would be in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time, Dave. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Dave Snowden:  Okay. Thanks a lot.

Danielle McLaughlin leads us through a poetic journey through memory and meaning. We reflect on the poems we carry from childhood to adulthood, from Dennis Lee to Robert Frost. Discover the history of poet laureates, hear a few stirring recitations, and enjoy listening to our own experimental poetry. AMI Audiobook Review is broadcast on AMI-audio in Canada and publishes three new podcast episodes a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.Follow AMI Audiobook Review on YouTube & Instagram!We want your feedback!Be that comments, suggestions, hot-takes, audiobook recommendations or reviews of your own… hit us up! Our email address is: audiobookreview@ami.caAbout AMIAMI is a media company that entertains, informs and empowers Canadians with disabilities through three broadcast services — AMI-tv and AMI-audio in English and AMI-télé in French — and streaming platform AMI+. Our vision is to establish AMI as a leader in the offering of accessible content, providing a voice for Canadians with disabilities through authentic storytelling, representation and positive portrayal. To learn more visit AMI.ca and AMItele.ca.Find more great AMI Original Content on AMI+Learn more at AMI.caConnect with Accessible Media Inc. online:X /Twitter @AccessibleMediaInstagram @AccessibleMediaInc / @AMI-audioFacebook at @AccessibleMediaIncTikTok @AccessibleMediaInc

Sabiduría, Karma y Autoconocimiento: El Camino hacia tu Mejor Versión ✨

Melanie St. Pierre-Bednis, Neil Bednis, and Fraser McClean from Casper Skulls discuss their new album Kit-Cat, the TV show character Frasier Crane, the significance of alt-rock radio and MuchMusic on young minds, Robert Frost poems and being goth, the Bunnies in Berlin record made at the Romano brothers' studio in Welland, moving from stark post-punk to heartfelt indie-rock, loving bands like Sonic Youth and Silver Jews, inspirations like “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, a Richard Hell biography, and There Will Be Blood, upcoming shows, writing new songs, other future plans, and much more!EVERY OTHER COMPLETE KREATIVE KONTROL EPISODE IS ONLY ACCESSIBLE TO MONTHLY $6 USD PATREON SUPPORTERS. This one is fine, but please subscribe now on Patreon so you never miss full episodes. Thanks!Thanks to Blackbyrd Myoozik, the Bookshelf, Planet Bean Coffee, and Grandad's Donuts. Support Y.E.S.S., Pride Centre of Edmonton, and Letters Charity. Follow vish online. Support vish on Patreon!Related episodes/links:Ep. #958: Nels ClineEp. #910: The Hard QuartetEp. #734: Bonnie TrashEp. #713: Built to SpillEp. #677: PavementEp. #673: Sonic YouthEp. #481: David BermanSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/kreative-kontrol. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

All fresh back from the latest EPOS meeting in Toulouse! We Welcome listeners back to the 12th EPISODE of the BSCOS Paediatric Orthopaedic Digest (POD)cast with special guest Darius Rad of Southampton Childrens Hospital! Heradling from Transylavania in Romania, he trained at Royal London Hospital, Great Ormond Street and Noah's Ark Children's Hospital for Wales before being appointed as a consultant in Southampton where hei s part of a growing team! His favourite poem is The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost: “I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.” We scoured 35 journals & highlighted the most impactful studies that we feel can change practice or improve outcomes in Paediatric Orthopaedics. Also…we play EURO-HOT or EURO-NOT so stay tuned and be educated on 90's European Dance Music!Follow Updates on @BSCOS_UK on X / Instagram!REFERENCES:1.    Autism screening and diagnostic outcomes among toddlers born preterm. Hamner et al. Dev Med Child Neurol. March 2025. PMID: 39165130 2.    The effect of vitamin D on the speed and quality of pediatric fracture healing. Hendrych et al. J Child Orthop. November 2024. PMID: 39563984 3.    Spontaneous recovery in the majority of stable dysplastic hips treated with active surveillance. Theunissen et al. Bone Joint J. February 2025. PMID: 39889762. 4.    Proximal versus distal tenotomy of the iliopsoas tendon in the surgical treatment of developmental dysplasia of the hip: a randomized clinical trial. Doski J. Int Orthop. March 2025. PMID: 39853427. 5.     Intraoperative Tranexamic Acid Infusion Reduces Perioperative Blood Loss in Pediatric Limb-Salvage Surgeries: A Double-Blinded Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial. El Ghoneimy et al. J Bone Joint Surg Am. March 2025.  PMID: 39841811. 6.     Morphological Improvement of the Epiphyseal Plate and Trochlea After Surgical Correction in Skeletally Immature Patients With Patellar Dislocation and Trochlear Dysplasia. Hao et al.  Am J Sports Med. February 2025. PMID: 39743963. 7.     Dexterity assessment of hospital workers: prospective comparative study. Joseph et al. BMJ. December 2024. PMID: 39706594. 8.     Subtalar arthroereisis with metallic implant is a safe and effective treatment for pediatric patients with symptomatic flexible flatfeet. A 10-year clinical and radiographic follow-up. Moraca et al. Foot Ankle Surg. Jan 2025. PMID: 38972783 9.     The risk of refracture and malunion in children treated for diaphyseal forearm fractures: a retrospective cohort study. Husum et al. Acta Orthop. Feburary 2025. PMID: 39993177; 10.  Optimal Timing for Advanced Imaging in Childhood Bone and Joint Infection. Hunter et al. J Pediatr Orthop. Feburary 2025. PMID: 39307981. 11.  Get Over It: Surgical Residents' Responses to Simulated Harassment. A Multi Method Study. Johnson et al. J Surg Educ. March 2025. PMID: 39818080. 12.  Oral Infigratinib Therapy in Children with Achondroplasia. Savarirayan et al. N Engl J Med. February 2025. PMID: 39555818. 13.  From Sheep to Sling: Pediatric Injuries Due to Rodeo Mutton Bustin'. Schultz et al. J Pediatr Orthop.April 2025. PMID: 39831656. Follow Hosts: @AnishPSangh @AlpsKothari @Pranai_BTune in for the next episode in Summer! Have a fantastic Easter!

Sabiduría, Karma y Autoconocimiento: El Camino hacia tu Mejor Versión ✨

The poet Robert Frost famously talked about two roads diverging in a yellow wood. In Psalm 119:101, the psalmist talks about forks in the road of our life that we encounter every day.Music Credit: Johann Sebastian Bach, Trio from Brandenburg Concerto, No. 1, Movement 4

Where can you find peace and happiness?  Perhaps listen and pray this poem, “A Prayer in Spring” by Robert Frost.  Read by Renee Stockberger.  A Production of We Are One Body® Audio Theatre.

It seems like such a simple question, but how to read a poem, like poetic interpretation itself, can be answered in many different ways. But what's the best way to go about reading a poem? Katie turns to art criticism for a process that guides the episode to a deep reading of poems by: Billy Collins, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and John Ashbury.At the table:Katie DozierTimothy GreenJoe BarcaBrian O'SullivanDick WestheimerNate Jacob

Benjamin Franklin was a little bit of everything: inventor, diplomat, statesman, author, publisher, a Founding Father and a bad boy. He helped guide America through the growing pains of becoming a constitutional republic guiding its own destiny separate from Great Britain. Philadelphia became his home and the caretaker of the cemetery where he was buried in that city once said, "If Ben Franklin haunts the city and the streets of Philadelphia, he haunts it with his personality and his invention." And it might seem that he haunts a couple of places with his actual spirit as well. Join us for the history and hauntings of Benjamin Franklin. The Moment in Oddity features Pound Cake and This Month in History features a Robert Frost poem published.   Check out the website: http://historygoesbump.com Show notes can be found here:    Become an Executive Producer: http://patreon.com/historygoesbump Music used in this episode:  Main Theme: Lurking in the Dark by Muse Music with Groove Studios (Moment in Oddity) "Vanishing" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (This Month in History) "In Your Arms" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Outro Music: Happy Fun Punk by Muse Music with Groove Studios Other music used in this episode: Franklin Theme created and produced by History Goes Bump Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Right now I'm reading a book titled “Star Splitter” written by Matthew J. Kirby. In the book they reference the poem “The Star-Splitter” written by Robert Frost. That's what we are going to read today.   Website: http://www.thefightingmoose.com/   Blog https://thefightingmoosepodcast.blogspot.com/   iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fighting-moose/id1324413606?mt=2/   Story (PDF): http://ww.thefightingmoose.com/episode444.pdf   Reading List: http://www.thefightingmoose.com/readinglist.pdf   YouTube: https://youtu.be/7tG4cE8dBmk/   Book(s): “New Hampshire” http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611   Music/Audio: Artist – Analog by Nature http://dig.ccmixter.org/people/cdk   National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): http://www.nasa.gov   Song(s) Used: cdk - Sunday by Analog By Nature (c) copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/cdk/53755 

Philip Dusenberry once said, “I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.”I can testify that Dusenberry is correct. The best ad writers make more money than the most highly paid lawyers and heart surgeons.Great advertising makes an enormous difference in the top line revenue of a company. A reputation for being able to write great ads makes an enormous difference in your bank account. But only if you get paid according to the growth of the businesses you write for.Did you notice that I ended that sentence with a preposition? A pedantic will tell you that I should have said, “But only if you get paid according to the growth of the businesses for whom you write ads.” But I chose not to do that. If you can tell me why, you might have the makings of an ad writer.Do you have a friend who reads the books of the world's most famous authors?If you say, “Call me Ishmael,” and your friend says, “Moby Dick,” your friend has the ingredients to bake a wordcake.Say to your friend, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”If your friend says, “Robert Frost,” he or she has the ability to lead people to places they have never been.Say, “The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.”If your friend looks at you and says, “Tom Robbins died last month,” they definitely have the makings of ad writer.“As you read, so will you write.”If the cadence and rhythm and unpredictable phrases singular to poets, screenwriters and novelists are echoing in your brain, your mind will spew rainbows of words like ocean water from the blowhole of a whale.Luke records Jesus as having said, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” If you want to know what is inside a person, listen to what they say and read what they write.The minds of great writers are filled with the music of other great writers. Music cannot flow from your fingertips if it does not live in your mind.I don't mean to be unkind, but most writers have no music in their mind.Tom Robbins told NPR in 2014, “I would tell stories aloud to himself, but always out in the yard with a stick in my hand. I would beat the ground as I told the story. And we moved fairly frequently. We would leave houses behind where one section of the yard was completely bare from where I had destroyed the grass. But I realized much later in life that what I was doing was drumming. I was building a rhythm. Even today as a writer I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm in my work.”When Tom Robbins died, hypnotic passages from his bestselling novels were quoted by NPR and The New York Times in their eulogies of his life.Character dialogue written by Aaron Sorkin is the standard by which all screenwriting is judged. Aaron says, “It's not just that dialogue sounds like music to me. It actually is music. Anytime someone is speaking for the purpose of performance, whether they're doing it from a pulpit in a church, whether it's a candidate on the stump or an actor on a stage, anytime they're speaking for the purposes of performance, all the rules of music apply.”The workload of my 81 Wizard of Ads partners will soon be at maximum capacity.I am looking for brilliant ad writers. Between now and the end of the year I will onboard a small group of writers who are worth a lot more money than they are currently being paid. They will attend the partner meeting this autumn.Selection, orientation, and enculturation requires diligence and patience on both sides.Our journey will begin when you send exactly 12

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 9, 2025 is: wend • WEND • verb Wend is a literary word that means “to move slowly from one place to another usually by a winding or indirect course”; wending is traveling or proceeding on one's way in such a manner. // Hikers wend along the marked trails to the top of the mountain, which provides a panoramic view of the area towns. // We wended our way through the narrow streets of the city's historic quarter. See the entry > Examples: “Otters do not like to share food.... There is a flickering movement of jaws before they swallow and dive again. For a moment I think they have left, then they surface once more and I make out two long shapes, one just ahead of the other. They wend their way further down the waterway before insinuating themselves back into the dark.” — Miriam Darlington, Otter Country: In Search of the Wild Otter, 2024 Did you know? “Out through the fields and woods / And over the walls I have wended …” So wrote poet Robert Frost in “Reluctance,” using the word's familiar sense of “to direct one's course.” By the time of the poem's publication in 1913, many other senses of wend had wended their way into and out of popular English usage including “to change direction,” “to change someone's mind,” “to transform into something else,” and “to turn (a ship's head) in tacking.” All of that turning is linked to the word's Old English ancestor, wendan, which shares roots with the Old English verb, windan, meaning “to twist” (windan is also the ancestor of the English verb wind as in “the river winds through the valley”). Wend is also to thank for lending the English verb go its past tense form went (as a past tense form of wend, went has long since been superseded by wended).

It seems like such a simple question, but how to read a poem, like poetic interpretation itself, can be answered in many different ways. But what's the best way to go about reading a poem? Katie turns to art criticism for a process that guides the episode to a deep reading of poems by: Robert Frost,  Carolina Ebeid, Alex Dimitrov, Ezra Pound, and Billy Collins. At the table:Katie DozierTimothy GreenJoe BarcaBrian O'SullivanDick WestheimerNate Jacob

Barry continues to think through how to get back to civil discourse, using Robert Frost's poem, The Gift Outright, to remind us of what we have in common. Simplifying our differences to one or the other side of a political divide does very little for either side and does no justice to our beautiful, complicated […]

'It was not easy to find a poet in the United States in my reading,who wrote with the clarity and intelligence that Larkin possessed. I found him to be full of surprises..'My guest today is writer David Biespiel who was born in Texas and who is now Poet in residence at Oregan state university. He has written for numerous publications and reviewed poetry for the Washington Post and the New York Times. He has taught creative writing at university across the US., has won many awards and published several books of his own poetry. In preparation for talking to David, he recommended that I have a look at his book A Long High Whistle: Selected Columns on Poetry, published in 2015, which is a collection of his pithy and fascinating articles on poets and poetry.‘I love that they are slender, I love that they are pocket sized, the whole texture of them- the Faber books.'Larkin poems mentioned:Church Going, This Be The Verse, I Remember, I Remember, Dockery and Son, Talking In Bed, Sad Steps, Friday Night In the Royal Station Hotel, Broadcast, An Arundel Tomb, The MowerPoets:John Ashberry, Walt Whitman, TS Eliot, Thom Gunn, Keats, Chaucer, Donne, Elizabeth Bishop, Herbert, Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, William Stafford, Henry Allenhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/06/03/philip-larkins-everyday-poetry/1a53b1df-d319-43fc-9249-af52238ced60/The Paris Review, Archie Burnett, Martin Amis and Anthony Thwaite collections, US/UK poetry, railway journeys, rhyme schemes, literary tours of UK/Italyhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-High-Whistle-David-Biespiel/dp/1938308107“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”  William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (1950)For more about Larkin's Coventry, please watch: Philip Pullen's fantastic 2022 talk at the PLS AGM in Coventry at Larkin's school King Henry VII School.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDOqZ4N_fUk&t=3106s

You have probably encountered poet Robert Frost through his famous poems “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” or "The Road Not Taken." But how much do you know about the man behind the poetry, and the rest of his poems? This hour, we learn about the life and poetry of Robert Frost, and discover how he's helped to inspire other poets. You can hear Adam Plunkett talk about his new book on Monday, February 24 at 7 p.m. at The University of Saint Joseph. GUESTS: Adam Plunkett: Literary critic and author of Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry Sydney Lea: Former Poet Laureate of Vermont, and a recipient of Vermont’s highest artistic distinction, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He is the author of sixteen poetry collections, seven collections of personal essays, and two novels Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There may be no poet more integral to the American identity are more widely known among Americans than Robert Frost. Yet, his life and the extent of his influence are unfamiliar or misunderstood by many. In the new book “Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost's Poetry” Adam Plunkett challenges previous biographers' interpretations of Frost's life and work breaking away from what he sees as “clichés” to construct an original portrait of the poet.

Another day in the last days of the "Grand Experiment" in liberal democracy. No One Elected this South African Sociopath Billionaire But here We Are. We discuss the madness. _________________________________ Head on with Robyn Kincaid is on 5 nights a week! https://headon.live/ Tarabuster is among the independent media voices at APSRadioNews.com Tarabuster is also on https://rokfin.com/tarabuster BECOME A "TARABUSTER" PATRON: www.patreon.com/taradevlin Join the Tarabuster community on Discord too!! https://discord.gg/PRYDBx8 Buy some Resistance Merch and help support our progressive work! http://tarabustermerch.com/ Contact Tarabuster: tarabustershow@maskedfort.com Buy some Resistance Merch and help support our progressive work! http://tarabustermerch.com/ Donate to Tarabuster: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/taradacktyl 00:00:00 Introduction 00:04:50 Meet Boudica and Francis: Adorable Pets on Camera 00:09:00 The Concept of Soft Voter Suppression 00:13:03 The Debate Over Renaming West Virginia's River 00:16:49 Robert Frost's Influence on Modern Storytelling 00:20:57 No, Traitor Trump Does NOT have a Mandate 00:25:06 Political Stalemate: Senate Holds and Filibuster Debate 00:29:07 Traitor Trump is Enacting Project 2025 00:33:07 Political Discourse on Employment and Economic Decisions 00:37:07 A Psalm's Harsh Wishes and Modern Interpretations 00:42:15 Elon Musk and his Toddlers in the Oval Office 00:45:24 Discussion on Leadership and Democracy 00:50:53 Criticism of Elon Musk and Billionaires 00:54:09 Fundraising and Survival Tactics 00:57:38 Linguistic Origins of the Ligature 'Æ' and its Pronunciations 01:02:03 Speculation on Future Leadership Changes 01:06:02 Criticisms of Elon Musk and Donald Trump 01:10:09 Judge Limits on Executive Power 01:14:00 Controversy Over Nancy Mace's Hotline Initiative 01:18:19 Allegations and Accusations: A Closer Look at Controversies 01:21:53 Musk's Government Efficiency Layoffs 01:26:16 Understanding Internal Political Coups: A Fascist Perspective 01:29:39 Cost Overruns in Military Shipbuilding 01:33:50 Judge Temporarily Blocks OPM Buyout Plan 01:37:30 Critique on Donald Trump's Leadership and Censorship 01:41:38 GOP Response to Trump's Impeachments 01:44:49 The Historical Continuum of Political Figures 01:48:48 Critique of Government Corruption and Economic Inequality 01:52:31 European Security and the China Threat 01:57:00 Upcoming Show on Political Voices Channel 02:00:13 Reflections on Being on the Right Side of History

Send us a textEpisode 176"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood… and with those words, Robert Frost carved his name into the heart of American poetry. A man of quiet strength and unwavering vision, Frost captured the beauty and the burden of choice, the weight of time, and the whisper of the New England landscape in every line he wrote. But beyond the pastoral charm of his verse lay a life of ambition, tragedy, and resilience—a life spent wandering the roads of literature, loss, and legacy. As always,Thank you.......Support the showInsta@justpassingthroughpodcastContact:justpassingthroughpodcast@gmail.com

Daily QuoteThe days were short, the nights were long, and the cold was intense. The world seemed to have shrunk into a small, icy prison, where every step was an effort and every breath a struggle. (George Eliot)Poem of the DayA Prayer in SpringRobert FrostBeauty of Words雪梁实秋

National corn chip day. Entertainment from 1991.Kansas became 34th state, 1st class inducted into baseball hall of fame, Scotland held first Burns Night, Romeo & Juliet performed for 1st time. Todays birthdays - William McKinley, John Forsythe, Katherine Ross, Tom Selleck, Heather Graham, Sara Gilbert, Adam Lambert. Robert Frost died. Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard http://defleppard.com/Corn chips make me happy - The Hungry Food BandThe first time - SurfaceDaddys come around - Paul OverstreetBirthday - The BeatlesBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/Magnum PI TV themeRoseanne TV themeWhataya want from me - Adam LambertExit - Its not love - Dokken http://dokken.net/

The imagery of rebirth and change in winter might be the only thing you remember from your Robert Frost lesson in English class, so let’s go back to school and compose a short essay on the significance of featuring this song during this season. Just kidding. Austin’s Futon Blonde have spent the last decade making […] The post Futon Blonde: “3 Color Flag” appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

It's an exclusive club that may or may not add to its members every four years: inaugural poets. There have only been six in the history of the United States, from Robert Frost in 1961 to Amanda Gorman in 2021. How did the tradition become part of the pomp and circumstance of Inauguration Day? And what kind of message is central to inaugural poetry? We speak with two poets – including an inaugural poet – more about this special inauguration tradition.

Daily QuoteHe's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. (Emily Bronte)Poem of the DayNothing gold can stayRobert FrostBeauty of WordsThe Snow Queen in Seven Stories - Sixth StoryHans Christian Andersen

Text your questions, comments, & topic suggestions here! You can also email billy@mindfulmidlifecrisis.com.In this episode, I unpack one of life's most relatable dilemmas: whether to go all in on a dream or play it safe. Drawing inspiration from Robert Frost's “The Road Not Taken,” I explore my recent decision to either go all in as a digital nomad coach or honor a teaching contract in Seoul. Along the way, I reflect on social perfectionism, fear of failure, and impostor syndrome while sharing practical steps to navigate uncertainty and make aligned, confident decisions.Key Talking Points:Living at a Crossroads: Reflecting on my recent life decision to choose financial stability over pursuing a high-risk dream.Social Perfectionism and Anxiety: How the pressure to be perfect influences decision-making and how mindfulness can help ease that burden.Courage vs. Confidence: Why leading with courage, rather than waiting for confidence, is the key to making bold decisions.Balancing Risk and Stability: How to weigh the thrill of chasing a dream against the value of a safety net.Logic Meets Intuition: The importance of integrating practical considerations with gut instincts to make well-rounded decisions.All of our episodes are available at www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.com.Need a place to start? Check out our Fan Faves Page!Join the Mindful Midlife Community Newsletter!Thank you for listening to The Mindful Midlife Crisis!If this episode resonates with you, please share it with your family and friends.Follow us!Instagram:  @mindful_midlife_crisisFacebook: The Mindful Midlife Crisis PodcastLinkedIn: Billy LahrThis Week's Sponsors:The B.E.L.L. Center: Expand your understanding of mindfulness and breathwork with their MindHacking Meditation Course.Kari Schwear: Explore what drives your habits, refocus what truly matters, and develop daily tools to start moving forward with Decide30.Genie Love: Schedule your FREE consultation to empower your neurodivergent strengths!Brian Gallagher: Download your Solo Business Blueprint and escape the 9-5 grind!This Week's Affiliates:Buzzsprout:  Launch your podcast today and get $20 worth of credit towards your account!Fiverr:  Get your next project done brilliantly by skilled professionals and earn 10% off your first purchase.Systeme.IO:  Simplify your online business.Riverside.fm:  Record your podcast in studio-quality audio and video.Please leave us a 5-Star ReSupport the show

Send us a textThis episode is centered on winter. Our roving correspondent, Matt, asked our staff to tell us their favorite things about the season. Then Dave reads a poem by Robert Frost. And finally we wrap things up by talking about our favorite books, movies and anything else from 2024. Matt also discusses seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a condition that can affect many people at this time of year.

“How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you," says Darice Auston, quoting Robert Frost. In Episode 206, Darice joins Cynthia and Susan to share some of the things that have occurred to her, and where those insights are leading her now. It's a conversation that illustrates the ways our unique experiences can shape and inform our spiritual life and church engagement, leading to a truer expression of our deepest personal beliefs.

Cranberries are the heart of Thanksgiving dinner. You don't want a gourmet dinner that distracts you from your life blessings, so you serve turkey, a profoundly average dish. Every turkey dinner is about as good as any other turkey dinner. Same with pumpkin pie. But cranberries are terribly exciting. They are the Robert Frost of fruits, the Flaubert, the Frank Lloyd Wright, the Gabriel Fauré. You can overcook the turkey and serve a pumpkin pie that is just pudding with a crust, but if you serve cranberries you're okay.Be happy, my dears. America will soon see the return of the dopiest president in our history. Anyone who nominates Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General and Bobby Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health needs GPS to show him the way to the bathroom, but keep this in mind: many of America's cranberry growers voted for him and many people whose cranberry sauce has the power to make you stand on your tiptoes and yodel. Think about that for a moment. There is some good in all of us, maybe more than we know. And be happy on Thanksgiving. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit garrisonkeillor.substack.com/subscribe

Your heart tells you who you are. Your heart contains all your beliefs.PowerSelling radiates outward from the pulsating fact that people don't bond with companies; people bond with people; personalities that share their beliefs.Your company needs a personality if you want your customers to feel a connection to it. Does your company have a personality?Are you communicating that personality in your advertising?Personification puts the power in PowerSelling.When you speak about something that cannot think as though it can think, you are using the art of personification.“The shattered water made a misty din.Great waves looked over others coming inand thought of doing something to the shorethat water never did to land before.”When you speak about something that cannot ask questions as though it can ask questions, you are using personification.“My little horse must think it queerto stop without a farmhouse nearbetween the woods and frozen lakethe darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shaketo ask if there is some mistake.”When you speak about something that cannot move as though it can move, you are using the art of personification.“It rained endlessly and the forests wept.The darkness fell and the trees moved closer.”When you can breathe life into something that is not alive, you are a god.Robert Frost and John Steinbeck were able to provide us with those examples of personification because they are Nobel Prize-winning writers. But we couldn't write like that, could we?“Your house will giggle with glee when it sees the smart thermostat you bought for it.”Your logical mind tells you that your customers wouldn't fall for that, but they've been falling for it all their lives. Superman is merely ink on a page or pixels on a screen, but your customers know that Superman can fly, squeeze a lump of coal into a diamond, and that he is in love with Lois Lane.The book of Genesis tells us that God spoke our universe into existence, then it tells us that we are made in the image of God.Did it ever occur to you that you speak new worlds into existence in the minds of others every time you describe a possible future?Personification is powerful because it uses magical thinking to open a portal into that world of imagination where hope is alive and well and singing in the shower, where the glass slipper fits the foot of Cinderella, and a wooden puppet named Pinocchio becomes a real live human boy.I am now going to shake you by the shoulders to wake you up. What I am about to say is hard to hear, but I am saying it because I love you: If you believe a brand is a logo, a color palette, a slogan, a visual style guide, and a company name that people have heard of, then your company is just another dreary, drab, and bland corporation in an ocean of bland corporations. Your company has no soul.Remember: People don't bond with companies; people bond with personalities that share their beliefs.PowerSelling happens when you win the customer's heart, knowing that their mind will follow. Their mind will always create logic to justify what their heart has already decided.This is what you must learn to do if you want to create a bond with your customers:Breathe life into your company through the skillful use of personification in all your corporate communications, beginning with your advertising.Employ magical thinking to deepen the public perception that your company has beliefs, values, motives, can make choices, and that it has life.Bond with customers who believe in the

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How to Give Critical / Negative Feedback In a Loving, Constructive Way AND How to Avoid the Common Traps Today's podcast features Dr. Jill Levitt, Director of Training at the www.FeelingGoodInstitute.com in Mountain View, California and co-leader of David's weekly TEAM-CBT training group at Stanford. Rhonda and I are psyched, because every podcast or teaching event with Jill is almost certain to be fabulous. And this podcast is no exception! Rhonda asks members of her Wednesday training group (see below for contact information of you think you might want to join) to take turns teaching the group.  One week she was puzzled because almost no one filled in their feedback forms, and when she asked them why, they said that they had some concerns about the teaching but didn't feel comfortable criticizing the person who taught. Some of the criticisms they share with Rhonda were: It was boring. I didn't learn anything new. The teacher didn't explain anything in a way that I could understand. Is this a problem that you have as well? Do you find it hard to criticize others, and keep quiet on the assumption that saying nothing is better than opening your mouth and saying something hurtful? If so, I have some good news and some bad news for you. First, the bad news. Tonight, you'll discover exactly why and how saying nothing is actually a pretty hostile and mean thing to do. But here's the GOOD news. You'll also learn the secrets of how to deliver criticism in a way that's loving, authentic, and helpful if—and that might be a big IF—that's something you're willing to do! A sage—cannot remember who—once said that “When you say nothing, you're actually shouting quietly. What in the world does THAT mean? And Robert Frost, in his famous poem, Fire and Ice, wrote: Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. Essentially, Frost is saying that if you're angry, there are two classic ways of being aggressive; you can be fiery and agitated and attack the other person, verbally or physically, or you can be cold and withdraw, saying nothing, so as to freeze the other person out. These are opposite extremes but are equally destructive. And, for most of us, difficult impulses to resist. But there's a third alternative, which might be, according to Robert Frost, the “road less traveled by.” You can express your negative feelings, including anger, in a respectful, or even loving way. And that's the focus of today's show. My show notes will only give an overview, but the richness of this particular podcast is in the actual dialogue and role-play demonstrations with critical feedback. We began with an overview of some of the key techniques when giving someone negative feedback, including stroking and “I Feel” Statements, but emphasized that your tone, goal, and spirit is the entire key to how you come across, and how the other person responds. Jill told a moving and dramatic story of an interaction with her mother, who has been quite ill, and she'd been having a really hard week. Her mom sent Jill a lengthy text outlining all of her problems and ending with, “you guys don't really know how I'm hurting,” and the implication was, “you don't know--or care.” This was understandably hurtful to Jill. Jill's about the most awesome daughter any mother could have. Jill wanted to clear the air and tell her mom how she'd felt, rather than keeping her negative feedback hidden. Her mom clearly felt lonely, so when Jill saw her in person, she said something along these lines: “I know you've been struggling, but I felt hurt and discounted when I read your note. I felt like the things I've done didn't matter, and I felt hurt.” Her mom began to cry and said, “the last thing I want you to feel is that I don't appreciate you.” This conversation was challenging, but brought them much closer together. The podcast crew discussed the important question of our mixed motivations about sharing our feelings, and our confusion about how to do this in an effective, loving way, if you do decide to open up. Rhonda confided that she'd never had those kinds of open conversations with either of her parents, and that these kinds of difficult conversations can come from a place of love. You can review the Five Secrets of Effective Communication if you click HERE. The Five Secrets are all about talking with your EAR: E = Empathy, A = Assertiveness, and R = Respect. However, there's a lot of intense resistance to using the Five Secrets, so I promised to include my list of 12 GOOD Reasons NOT to Listen (E = Empathy) Share your feelings (A = Assertiveness) Treat the other person with respect (R = Respect) That makes 36 reasons in all! You can link to the list HERE. People want to feel understood, and the best way to make that happen is by giving what you hope to receive. And you can learn how to listen more skillfully If you read my book, Feeling Good Together, and do the written exercises while reading. You'll learn a ton that can change your life and greatly enhance your relationships with the people you love. Thanks for listening today!! Jill, Rhonda, and David

ABOUT MARDI NAJAFI:LINKEDIN PROFILE:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mardi-najafi-rdi-idc-772b1328/MARDI'S BIO:Mardi Najafi is an award-winning, multidisciplinary designer with over 30 years of experience at the forefront of the design world. A visionary leader in the field, Mardi believes that design has the power to evoke emotion, create unforgettable experiences, and leave a lasting impact. His work spans a diverse range of high-profile retail environments, from intimate boutiques to large-scale, branded experiences for some of the world's most iconic companies, including Coca-Cola, Adidas, Virgin Mobile, Telus, Loblaws, Penguin Random House, Keilhauer, and Versace. His global portfolio reflects his ability to blend innovation and cultural context, with projects across Paris, New York, Toronto, and beyond.As the Principal, Chief Creative Officer, and Retail & Hospitality Practice Lead at SDI Design, Mardi is passionate about pushing the boundaries of design to craft immersive, transformative environments that captivate audiences. Known for his attention to detail and his ability to seamlessly merge art and commerce, he excels at creating spaces that are not only visually striking but also deeply meaningful and engaging. His work continues to redefine the retail landscape, setting new standards for brand experiences that resonate long after customers leave.Beyond his design practice, Mardi is an active voice in the industry as an accomplished speaker, educator, and panelist. He is deeply committed to fostering innovation, sharing his expertise with the next generation of designers through mentorship and his involvement in various professional advisory committees. A lifelong advocate for education, Mardi has taught at prestigious design schools around the world, inspiring students and shaping the future of the design community.In 2023, Mardi was honored as the first Canadian inductee into the Retail Design Institute's prestigious Legions of Honor, recognizing his exceptional contributions to the field. He is also currently serving as the President of the Retail Design Institute Canada, where he continues to shape industry standards and advocate for the advancement of design excellence. SHOW INTRO:Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.EPISODE 73… and my conversation with Mardi Najafi. On the podcast, our dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human's influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.    The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD Magazine part of the Smartwork Media family of brands.VMSD brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant. You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience. SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.orgMardi Najafi  is the Principal, Chief Creative Officer, and Retail & Hospitality Practice Lead at SDI Design.We discuss his life of growing up the son of an Iranian diplomat, a professional path through the fashion, exhibit design and retail industries and how teaching is about giving back to young designers in their fledgling careers…We'll get to all of that in a moment but first, a few thoughts…             *                         *                         *There are interviews that I have done over the past 73 episodes that have been specifically about a person's work, There have been those that have been about a brand or product category, Or the study of neuroscience and its role in experience making,  We've delved into art and creativity, leadership, climate issues, and many other subjects.And there are other interviews that I have done that focused in on a person's career path, how their experiences brought them to where they are today. In these cases, I often find that my guest and I identify how serendipity stepped in front of them as they careened through a career, how taking the road less traveled lead them to creative professional journeys that were unexpected, and how a shift in their mindset resulted in profoundly rewarding roles at companies or with personal and professional relationships. I love discussions about serendipity – how our life paths seem to be guided by novel circumstances that were unforeseen, yet when confronted with them, we found a moment to step aside from our pre-determined story, one that we might have created with specific objectives, a place to be at some future moment, and in the midst of new circumstances, a choice was to be made about what the next move would be without really knowing where it would lead.There seems to be some magic in this process – a sense of wonder that keeps the creative spirit alive. There is also a good dose of courage needed at the nexus of ‘now and next, when a calling summons new thinking and a re-evaluation of our pre-suppositions about how things are supposed to be now, or in the future, need re-evaluation.I think it is often the case with creative paths or projects.To start out knowing where you are going would suggest that you have you have already been. To start out with the end in mind creates a path of production, of doing, rather than one of seminal discoveries along the way.There is something in the unknowing that I believe maintains the creative path as an adventure, one where in the doing of the thing we are continuously discovering rather than just in production mode.In the discovering, we remain engaged, learning, exploring and the path is laid out as we move along it. However… being in a place of unknowing, can be fear inducing since I think we so often like the assuredness of the pre-determined and predicable.I have found this particularly true in teaching at universities in design fields. Students don't like the unpredictable so much. Many prefer the determinism of knowing where their projects will eventually end up. But I think in taking this approach we short circuit the opportunity to discover something new – something we could not have predicted but when discovered, results in a sense of awe that shifts our perspective and maybe our purpose. And I think it takes courage to follow a set of rules about designing something, call it strategy, and let the rules of the strategy guide the process. As we pursue the path of the work the rules help to guide decisions that make the next step self-evident. Then the next, and the next and so on, until a conclusion to the process meets the requirements of the design brief.Assuming the strategy is well founded, you can rely on the rules to guide the process and decision-making. Along the design path, all decisions can be cross-referenced against the strategy and the outcomes that don't align with the determined set of rules can be set aside in a preference for the ones that best exemplify them.Then there is the emergence of circumstances that throw you a curve ball – conditions shift within which you have little control – and your path necessarily changes. The resilience and the flexible mindset that is required in these moments are factors that influence your ability to adjust – to find yourself in a place of positive transformation or maybe to simply survive.I have found that the key to positive transformation is to keep saying yes to serendipity. To loosen the rigidity in my mindset and welcome the unexpected. It can be a struggle because I have generally been geared to knowing where I'm going. I don't mind saying that I have long preferred the predictable over the mercurial. It is at times not easy, but these moments of re-alignment with new realities can be the success factor supporting our determination to keep going and to leverage the “new” for the purpose of re-making ourselves. I think that in this, there is a sense of agency. I think that we are, in fact, in little control of anything but for our own reactions to adversity or the everchanging circumstances of life.Perhaps this is the proverbial ‘making lemonade out of lemons.' When life gives you lemons… you know… make lemonade.And this is where the life path of my guest in this episode comes in. Mardi Najafi has had a colorful host of experiences influencing his professional path.Having grown up the son of an Iranian Diplomat, he was schooled in multiple countries including Iran, France and Russia. He was conscripted into Iranian military service and made a friend with whom he, after his release from service, created a business bringing watches into Iran. That adventure eventually allowed him to earn enough money to buy his father's release from prison and ironically lead to a career in design.After a building a successful professional track record working in Europe, he landed in Canada where he fostered his interest in retail design. In 2023, Mardi was honored as the first Canadian inductee into the Retail Design Institute's prestigious Legion of Honor, recognizing his exceptional contributions to the retail design field. He is also currently serving as the President of the Retail Design Institute Canada, where he continues to shape industry standards and advocate for the advancement of design excellence.Mardi Najafi is an award-winning, multidisciplinary designer with over 30 years of experience at the forefront of the design world. A visionary leader in the field, Mardi believes that design has the power to evoke emotion, create unforgettable experiences, and leave a lasting impact.His work spans a diverse range of high-profile retail environments, from intimate boutiques to large-scale, branded experiences for some of the world's most iconic companies, including Coca-Cola, Adidas, Virgin Mobile, Telus, Loblaws, Penguin Random House and Versace.Mardi is deeply committed to fostering innovation, sharing his expertise with the next generation of designers through mentorship and his involvement in various professional advisory committees.After having a few conversations with Mardi, I would say he lands squarely in the camp of actually following Robert Frost's ‘Road Not Taken' welcoming the discovery born of life's moment of significant change - even when it is uncomfortable.             *                         *                         *ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582bWebsites:  https://www.davidkepron.com    (personal website)vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)Email: david.kepron@NXTLVLexperiencedesign.comTwitter: DavidKepronPersonal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/Bio:David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why', ‘what's now' and ‘what's next'. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe. David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott's “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels. In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies. As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace. David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine's Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation's Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.He has held teaching positions at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.  In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.  The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound. The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.

What does it mean to perceive reality? How do art, science, and philosophy converge in shaping our understanding of the world? In this episode of Departures with Robert Amsterdam, we sit down with William Egginton, acclaimed author and professor, to dive into his latest book, "The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality." Egginton weaves a captivating narrative that bridges the literary genius of Jorge Luis Borges, the groundbreaking physics of Werner Heisenberg, the poetry of Robert Frost, and the profound philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Egginton explores how these thinkers confronted the boundaries of human knowledge, the mysteries of perception, and the paradoxes of existence, fate, and choice. In this conversation with Robert Amsterdam, Egginton shares his insights into the unexpected connections and overlapping themes with these towering figures, the questions they asked, and how their ideas resonate with our quest to make sense of an increasingly complex universe. The remarkable harmony between nature, science, art, philosophy and literature during these critical years resonated deeply with us, and we hope you enjoy this conversation about this special book.

Rhina P. Espaillat was born in the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. After Espaillat's great-uncle opposed the regime, her family was exiled to the United States and settled in New York City. She began writing poetry as a young girl—in Spanish and then English—and has published in both languages.Espaillat's numerous poetry collections include And After All (2019); Her Place in These Designs (2008); Playing at Stillness (2005); Rehearsing Absence (2001), recipient of the 2001 Richard Wilbur Award; a bilingual chapbook titled Mundo y Palabra/The World and the Word (2001); Where Horizons Go (1998), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; and Lapsing to Grace (1992).On Rehearsing Absence, Robert B. Shaw wrote in Poetry, “To Rhina Espaillat the quotidian is no malady … it is the source of inspiration. Hers is a voice of experience, but it is neither jaded nor pedantic. She speaks not from some cramped corner but from somewhere close to the center of life.” Awarding Espaillat the 1998 T.S. Eliot Prize for Where Horizons Go, X.J. Kennedy noted that “such developed skill and such mastery of rhyme and meter are certainly rare anymore; so is plainspeaking.”Espaillat's work has garnered many awards, including the Sparrow Sonnet Prize, three Poetry Society of America prizes, the Der-Hovanessian Translation Prize, and—for her Spanish translations of Robert Frost—the Robert Frost Foundation's Tree at My Window Award. She is a two-time winner of The Formalist's Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award and the recipient of a 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award from Salem State College. She is a founding member of the Fresh Meadows Poets and a founding member and former director of the Powow River Poets. For over a decade, she coordinated the Newburyport Art Association's Annual Poetry Contest.-bio via Poetry Foundation Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost Check out John Lee Dumas' award winning Podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire on your favorite podcast directory. For world class free courses and resources to help you on your Entrepreneurial journey visit EOFire.com

A conversation between Dr Jay Parini, a prolific author and the D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College, and Dr Stephen Blackwood, the founding president of Ralston College, recorded on the occasion of the release of a Ralston College short course, “Robert Frost: The American Voice,” taught by Dr Parini. Dr Parini discusses the film adaptation of his most recent book Borges and Me (2020), shares stories of his friendships with literary figures including Jorge Luis Borges, W. H. Auden, and Iris Murdoch, explains why poetry matters, and shares the fruits of a life “lived in literature.” Applications are now open for next year's MA program. Full scholarships are available. https://www.ralston.ac/apply Authors, Artists, and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Jay Parini, Borges and Me Alan Cumming Jorge Luis BorgesBeowulf Robert Burns Isaiah Berlin Homer Aeschylus Dante Michel de Montaigne William Wordsworth W. B. Yeats Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Iris Murdoch, The Bell W.H. Auden Boethius Jay Parini, Robert Frost: A Life Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice” Jay Parini, Robert Frost: 16 Poems to Learn by Heart Robert Frost, “The Road Less Traveled” Robert Frost, “After Apple-Picking” Robert Frost, “Birches” Robert Frost, “Directive” Robert Frost, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” Gerard Manley Hopkins Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Poet and translator Henry Taylor was born in Lincoln, Virginia on June 21, 1942. He earned a BA from the University of Virginia and an MA from Hollins University. Taylor's many poetry collections include Crooked Run (2006); Understanding Fiction: Poems 1986-1996; The Flying Change (1985), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize; An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards (1975); and The Horse Show at Midnight(1966). He has translated works from Bulgarian, French, Hebrew, Italian, and Russian. His translations include Black Book of the Endangered Species (1999) by the Bulgarian poet Vladimir Levchev and Electra (1988) by Sophocles. Taylor is a professor of literature and codirector of the MFA program in creative writing at American University in Washington, DC. In 2001 he was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers.After winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for his book, The Flying Change: Poems, poet Henry Taylor remarked to Joseph McLellan of the Washington Post: “The Pulitzer has a funny way of changing people's opinions about it. If you haven't won one, you go around saying things like ‘Well, it's all political' or ‘It's a lottery' and stuff like that. I would like to go on record as saying that although I'm deeply grateful and feel very honored, I still believe that it's a lottery and that nobody deserves it.” Despite his disbelief that he could earn such a prestigious award, the Pulitzer is not the only major prize Taylor has won. His other honors include the Witter Bynner Foundation Poetry Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Golden Crane Award of the Washington Chapter of the American Literary Translators Association.Taylor also has a sense for the comic. Indeed, the poet has remarked that he was first recognized as the author of several verse parodies, which he submitted to the magazine Sixties. “I was mildly nettled to find that they were better known, at least among poets, than anything else I had done,” Taylor reflects in the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series. These parodies, along with other poems, appear in the author's first poetry collection, The Horse Show at Midnight (1966). This book also contains poems concerned with the unavoidable changes people must go through in life, a theme that dominates many of Taylor's verses. Dillard explains, “Henry Taylor has for all his poetic career been drawn inexorably to questions of time and mutability, of inevitable and painful change in even the most fixed and stable of circumstances.” The conflict between a desire for life to remain constant and predictable and the realization of the necessity for change in the form of aging, personal growth, and death creates a tension in Taylor's poems that is also present in his other collections, including An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards. Dillard calls this third collection, which contains all the poems previously published in Breakings, Taylor's “best work” up to that time, “clearly marking growth and progress to match his own changes in the years since The Horse Show at Midnight.”A lover of horses since his childhood in rural Virginia, Taylor uses an equestrian term for the title of his fifth book of poems, The Flying Change (1985). The name refers to the mid-air change of leg, or lead, a horse may sometimes make while cantering. Several of the poems contained in the collection describe similarly unexpected changes that occur in the course of otherwise predictable lives spent in relaxed, countryside settings. “Thus in the best poems here,” comments New York Times Book Review contributor Peter Stitt, “we find something altogether different from the joys of preppy picnicking. Mr. Taylor seeks for his poetry [a] kind of unsettling change, [a] sort of rent in the veil of ordinary life.” Some examples of this in The Flying Change are the poems “Landscape with Tractor,” in which the narrator discovers a corpse in a field, and “At the Swings,” in which the poet reflects on his cancer-stricken mother-in-law, while pushing his sons on a swing set. Other poems in the book explore the effects of such incidents as a small herd of deer suddenly interrupting the peace of a lazy day in which the narrator has been reflecting on his old age, or the surprise of seeing a horse rip its neck on a barbed wire fence.A number of critics, like Washington Times reviewer Reed Whittemore, laud Taylor's calm thoughtfulness in these and other poems, comparing it to the tone of other current poets. “Much contemporary verse is now so flighty,” says Whittemore, “so persistently thoughtless, that in contrast the steadiness of [The Flying Change], its persistence in exploring the mental dimensions of a worthwhile moment, is particularly striking, a calmness in the unsettled poetic weather.” Other critics, like Poetry contributor David Shapiro, also compliment the writer on his sensitivity to the atmosphere of the countryside. “Taylor is a poet of white clapboard houses that have existed ‘longer / than anyone now alive,'” observes Shapiro, who quotes the poet. “That is why Taylor can be such a satisfactory poet,” the reviewer concludes.Though he has written award-winning verses, Taylor remains under the radar. According to Garrett and others, this is due to Taylor's nonconformist approach. The critic continues: “In forms and content, style and substance, he is not so much out of fashion as deliberately, determinedly unfashionable. His love of form is (for the present) unfashionable. His sense of humor, which does not spare himself, is unfashionable. His preference for country life, in the face of the fact that the best known of his contemporaries are bunched up in several urban areas, cannot have made them, the others, feel easy about him, or themselves for that matter. They have every good reason to try to ignore him.” Whittemore compares Taylor's technically well-ordered style and leisurely reflections of life to the poetry of Robert Frost and Howard Nemerov. “Among 20th-century poets,” Whittemore concludes, “Mr. Taylor is ... trying to carry on with this old and honorable, but now unfavored, mission of the art. He enjoys such reflections, reaching (but modestly) for what, remember, we even used to call wisdom.”Taylor lives and works in Leesburg, Virginia.-bio via Poetry Foundation Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Today's poem offers a needful portrait of ‘manly talk.' Happy reading.Louis Untermeyer was the author, editor or compiler, and translator of more than 100 books for readers of all ages. He will be best remembered as the prolific anthologist whose collections have introduced students to contemporary American poetry since 1919. The son of an established New York jeweler, Untermeyer's interest in poetry led to friendships with poets from three generations, including many of the century's major writers. His tastes were eclectic. In the Washington Post, Martin Weil related that Untermeyer once “described himself as ‘a bone collector' with ‘the mind of a magpie.'” He was a liberal who did much to allay the Victorian myth that poetry is a highbrow art. “What most of us don't realize is that everyone loves poetry,” he was quoted by Weil as saying, pointing out the rhymes on the once-ubiquitous Burma Shave road signs as an example.Untermeyer developed his taste for literature while a child. His mother had read aloud to him from a variety of sources, including the epic poems “Paul Revere's Ride” and “Hiawatha.” Bedtime stories he told to his brother Martin combined elements from every story he could remember, he revealed in Bygones: The Recollections of Louis Untermeyer. When he learned to read for himself, he was particularly impressed by books such as Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Dante's Inferno. Gustave Dore's illustrations in these books captivated him and encouraged his imagination toward fantasy. Almost 50 years later, Untermeyer published several volumes of retold French fairy tales, all illustrated by the famous French artist.In addition to children's books and anthologies, Untermeyer published collections of his own poetry. He began to compose light verse and parodies during his teen years after dropping out of school to join his father's business. With financial help from his father, he published First Love in 1911. Sentiments of social protest expressed in the 1914 volume Challenge received disapproval from anti-communist groups 40 years later; as a result of suspicion, Untermeyer lost his seat on the “What's My Line” game show panel to publisher Bennett Cerf. During the 1970s, he found himself “instinctively, if incongruously, allied with the protesting young,” he wrote in the New York Times. In the same article he encouraged the spirit of experiment that characterized the decade, saying, “it is the non-conformers, the innovators in art, science, technology, and human relations who, misunderstood and ridiculed in their own times, have shaped our world.” Untermeyer, who did not promote any particular ideology, remained a popular speaker and lecturer, sharing criticism of poetry and anecdotes about famous poets with audiences in the United States and as far away as India and Japan.Untermeyer resigned from the jewelry business in 1923 in order to give all his attention to literary pursuits. Friendships with Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Arthur Miller, and other literary figures provided him with material for books. For example, The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer contains letters selected from almost 50 years of correspondence with the New England poet. The anthologist's autobiographies From Another World and Bygones relate as much about other writers as they do about his personal life. Bygones provides his reflections on the four women who were his wives. Jean Starr moved to Vienna with Untermeyer after he became a full-time writer; Virginia Moore was his wife for about a year; Esther Antin, a lawyer he met in Toledo, Ohio, married him in 1933; 15 years later, he married Bryna Ivens, with whom he edited a dozen books for children.In his later years, Untermeyer, like Frost, had a deep appreciation for country life. He once told Contemporary Authors: “I live on an abandoned farm in Connecticut … ever since I found my native New York unlivable as well as unlovable. … On these green and sometimes arctic acres I cultivate whatever flowers insist on growing in spite of my neglect; delight in the accumulation of chickadees, juncos, cardinals, and the widest possible variety of songless sparrows; grow old along with three pampered cats and one spoiled cairn terrier; season my love of home with the spice of annual travel, chiefly to such musical centers as Vienna, Salzburg, Milan, and London; and am always happy to be home again.” Untermeyer died in 1977.-bio via Poetry Foundation Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Today's poem is Birches by Robert Frost. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. It's fall, and that means “back-to-school”. We put together this week's episodes for the educators in our audience — especially those of you who may be looking for a little Slowdown treatment on those classroom classics, from Shakespeare to Frost. We hope you all enjoy these selections, as learners of any age. In this episode, Major writes… “I have long admired today's poem by Robert Frost. “Birches” spotlights a young boy who makes his own fun in the outdoors. It's a poem about self-reliant play. It is powerful for how it precisely describes a boy's ascent up a tree then his launch onto solid ground. In that sense, the poem becomes an allegory for the speaker, who himself wishes to climb out of his adult world.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

James Arlington Wright was born on December 13, 1927, in Martins Ferry, Ohio. His father worked for fifty years at a glass factory, and his mother left school at fourteen to work in a laundry; neither attended school beyond the eighth grade. While in high school in 1943, Wright suffered a nervous breakdown and missed a year of school. When he graduated in 1946, a year late, he joined the U.S. Army and was stationed in Japan during the American occupation. He then attended Kenyon College on the G.I. Bill, and studied under John Crowe Ransom. While there, he also befriended future fellow poet Robert Mezey. Wright graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1952. Wright traveled to Austria, where, on a Fulbright Fellowship, he studied the works of Theodor Storm and Georg Trakl at the University of Vienna. He returned to the U.S. and earned master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Washington, studying with Theodore Roethke and Stanley Kunitz. He went on to teach at The University of Minnesota, Macalester College, and New York City's Hunter College.The poverty and human suffering Wright witnessed as a child profoundly influenced his writing and he used his poetry as a mode to discuss his political and social concerns. He modeled his work after that of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, whose engagement with profound human issues and emotions he admired. The subjects of Wright's earlier books, The Green Wall (Yale University Press, 1957), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and Saint Judas (Wesleyan University Press, 1959), include men and women who have lost love or have been marginalized from society and they invite the reader to step in and experience the pain of their isolation. Wright possessed the ability to reinvent his writing style at will, moving easily from stage to stage. His earlier work adheres to conventional systems of meter and stanza, while his later work exhibits more open, looser forms, as with The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University Press, 1963).Wright was elected a fellow of the Academy of American Poets in 1971, and, the following year, his Collected Poems (Wesleyan University Press) received the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.Wright died in New York City on March 25, 1980. Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Today, we bring you a special bonus - a SMACKDOWN episode of NPR's It's Been a Minute featuring our own hosts Nick and Hannah! IBAM host Brittany Luse has been taking this smackdown on the road  to cities all across the country.  Hear the other debates on the It's Been a Minute podcast. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!

Who will win today's cage match?Welcome to The Smackdown! For the next several weeks Brittany is hosting debates in cities and regions across the United States to find out who and what are the most influential things from those places. This episode Brittany lands in Concord, New Hampshire, the Granite State, and debates with New Hampshire Public Radio reporters Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, the hosts of the excellent podcast Civics 101. There will be winners. There will be losers. There will be surprises.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy