“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,…
Brian Dillon
“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…