Poems for Company – June 26th, 2023

“Lust or Love”: In your own life, have you always been able to distinguish which powerful emotional response to another person grips you?  In the four poems featured on this episode, can you determine whether it’s lust or love that directs the poem’s speaker?  Ellen Bass, “Gate C22,” from The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007).  Frank O’Hara, “Having a Coke with You,” from The Selected Poems of Frank O’Hara, ed. Mark Ford (Knopf, 2009), used with kind permission from the Estate of Frank O’Hara.  Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I shall forget you presently, my dear.”  “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter,” by Ezra Pound, original by Rihaku, from PERSONAE, copyright 1926 by Ezra Pound, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.  The show’s theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the Sun,” from his CD Live from Montana (Sweetgrassmusic.com).