Poems for Company – September 25th, 2023

“Advice”: Have you ever urged anyone to procreate?  If so, what motivated you to do that?  Today’s episode presents poems that offer direct advice, not only about when to have children and why, but also about what to eat, how to interact with others, and additional concerns.  Shakespeare, Sonnet # 3.  Catherine Tufariello, “Useful Advice,” from Keeping My Name (Texas Tech UP, 2004).  A passage from Book 15 of Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated and notes by Charles Martin (Norton, 2004), and read with kind permission of the translator.  Rudyard Kipling, “If.”  Elizabeth Lincoln Otis, “An ‘If’ for Girls.”  Naomi Shihab Nye, “To Manage,” from Voices in the Air (Harper Collins, 2018), and read with kind permission of the author.  The show’s theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the-Sun,” from his CD Live from Montana (Sweetgrassmusic.com) and used with kind permission of Philip Aaberg.