“Children Thinking”: This episode features the voices of children–filtered through adult poets–in three poems that express a variety of insights. These poems may prompt you to wonder, did you once think like these three children? The poems are read in this order: William Wordsworth, “We Are Seven” (originally published in 1798). Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Waiting Room,” from The…
Poems for Company
On this theme-based show, host Brian Dillon reads and comments on poems from the ancient world to the present. Topics include Unlived Lives, Inanimate Objects, Swimming, Advice, and Unrequited love, among many others. Produced by the studios of KMUN.
“Desk Jobs”: Did you ever have a job you abruptly quit soon after it began? Why did you do that? The first three lines of our first poem refer to a job the speaker quit after just one shift. The next two poems feature office interactions between the speaker and a work colleague and boss. …
“Manual Labor”: What do you remember from your first paid job? Did you develop any work-habits that you carried into adulthood? From your twenties on, has much of your identity been shaped by your work? Poems on this and next month’s episodes offer a variety of perspectives on work. Three poems are featured: Jericho Brown’s…
“Swimming”: We dive in with two action-packed excerpts from ancient poetic narratives. Both depict heroic swimmers moving through dangerous waters. This episode concludes with a contemporary American poet’s solitary naked swim in a pond in the early morning mist. Homer, The Odyssey (trans. Robert Fitzgerald), from Book V, lines 403-408, 415-437, 441-486. Beowulf (trans. Seamus Heaney), lines 506-510, 515-518, 532-581…
“Meta-Verse”: The four poems on this episode make a virtue out of being self-conscious. Each poem comments on the very poem we’re reading. The poem pulls back the curtain and reveals the composing process. Or at least that’s what the poem pretends to do. Billy Collins, “The Suggestion Box,” from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random…
“Where Is My Home?” (Part 2): The four poems on this episode address this question from a variety of perspectives: home as an imaginary place; home valued for the quality of one’s neighbors; home as a portable existence, a van; and home as the indoor / outdoor zone where multiple generations in a family live…
“Where Is My Home?”: Do you carry in your mind images of a former landscape you lived in, an extended area you called home? The first poem is spoken in the voice of Robinson Crusoe as a old man back in England, wondering if this island of his origin, the place where his life will…
“Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass”: Though Frederick Douglass grew up not knowing his exact birthdate and even uncertain just how old he was, historians presume he was born in February 1818. Douglass wrote, “I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday.” His master “deemed all such inquiries…
“Imagining Our Parents Before We Were Born”: What do you know about the life of either of your parents before you were born? The three contemporary poems featured on this episode suggest the poets knew just a few facts, perhaps derived from family lore. Then they speculated or fabricated the rest to achieve some coherent…
“Some Horses, Some Oxen”: Four poems are featured on this show, three about horses and one about oxen. All of the horse poems tell us as much about the speaker as they do about the horses, and the final poem details a most curious Christmas folk belief. What are all these animals thinking? The poems…
“Responding to Loss”: All three poems in this episode reflect on the loss of a person, when loss is final. Perhaps one or more of these poems speak to feelings you have experienced but could not define quite like these poets do. Are poems and songs useful for facing one’s own demise or for dealing…
“Civilians in the First World War”: All four poems on today’s episode focus on civilians in the First World War, particularly women: how were they affected? Jessie Pope, “War Girls.” Siegfried Sassoon, “Glory of Women.” May Wedderburn Cannan, “Rouen.” E. E. Cummings, “my sweet old etcetera.” There are many fine anthologies that present poetry from…
“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…
Ancient Chinese Poetry: This show features the work of two poets. Do they express concerns many of us think about in the 21st century? Do they suggest how to adjust certain of our attitudes? All the poems are from A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, translated by Arthur Waley (Knopf, 1919). (Many poems by these same authors…
“Inanimate Objects”: Have you inherited an inanimate object that carries emotional weight? Have you bestowed a name on your bicycle or your car? The poems featured in this episode respond in a variety of ways to inanimate objects. Leigh Stein, “What Happens If You Click It,” from What To Miss When (NY: Soft Skull Press, 2021). Richard…
“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…
“Posing Questions”: “Who hangs a birdhouse from a sapling?” How would you answer that question? One poem featured on today’s episode places that question in a startling context. Questions shape all of the poems on today’s episode. Some are addressed; others are left for us to sort out. Today’s episode features these poems: Christina Rossetti,…
“Poems About Writing”: When you were a student, did you find joy in the writing tasks required of you? Did self-disclosure make you uncomfortable, or did you welcome the opportunity to express your individuality? Poems in this episode may take you back to the classroom, with reflections from some students and instructors. Today’s show features these poems:…
“Unrequited Love,” Part One: Poets respond in a variety of ways when their strong desires for another are not returned: from anger to bewilderment to resignation. Over time, a number of episodes of Poems for Company will focus on this theme. Today’s show features these poems: Sappho, Poem # 94, translator Michael R. Burch (thehypertexts.com/Sappho Longer Poems in Translations by Michael R. Burch.htm), read with…
“Unlived Lives”: What prompted you to make personal life-altering choices? Do you believe a sky-god or some other cosmic force oversees your personal choices? Has your life unfolded due to random events? The three contemporary poems in this episode reflect on our personal choices that at times lead us to fantasize about how it all could…
“Dogs in Homer, Homer’s Dog, Other Dogs.” What truths about dogs did Homer know nearly 3000 years ago? If Homer lived with a dog, what did this dog think of the epic poet? The poems in this episode address these and other canine-related questions in intriguing ways. Homer, snippets from The Iliad, Books 22 and 23; a passage…
What do you think of the remarks by the old people you know? Do they offer wisdom? Do they complain? Are they forward-looking? Are they funny? The seven poems featured on this episode offer a variety of responses. William Matthews, “Grandmother Talking,” from Search Party: Collected Poems, ed. by Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly, Houghton Mifflin…
How do we respond to the birds in our community? What do they tell us about ourselves? This show features eight poems: Emily Dickinson, “A Bird Came Down the Walk”; Isaac Rosenberg, “Returning, We Hear the Larks”; Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, from the opening of 3.5; W. B. Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole”; Greg Delanty, “On…
Do we imagine the dead as content in their zone, or do they express anxieties about how the world of the living functions in their absence? Poems in this episode offer contrasting answers: Frederic Weatherly’s “Danny Boy”; A.E. Housman’s “Is My Team Ploughing?”; Thomas Hardy’s “Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?”; John McCrae’s “In…