Get Lit Minute
Get Lit - Words Ignite
A weekly podcast focusing on all things poetic, poetry and poets. Each week we will feature a poet and their poem. We will be highlighting classic poets from our In-School Anthology, sharing brief bios on the poet and a spoken word reading of one of their poems. We will also be introducing contemporary poets from the greater poetry community and our own Get Lit poets into the podcast space.
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Top 10 Get Lit Minute Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Get Lit Minute episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Get Lit Minute for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Get Lit Minute episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Sylvia Plath | "Heavy Women"
Get Lit Minute
04/06/20 • 14 min
This week, we focus on American confessional poet and novelist, Sylvia Plath. We trace the multitude of experiences, both painful and revelatory, that led to Plath's most famous work, The Bell Jar. Though Plath did not receive wide-spread acclaim during her lifetime, she became one of the most well-known poets of the 20th century, largely due to the strength of her poetry collection Ariel. Her work remains an incisive, important insight into mental health and the pursuit of an enlarged life.
Historical Research: The Poetry Foundation
More: GetLit.Org
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Kevin Young | “Ode to Midwest”
Get Lit Minute
08/23/21 • 7 min
In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight Kevin Young, American poet and teacher of poetry and the director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Read his full poem "Ode to Midwest" via our Get Lit Anthology.
Rumi | "The Breezes at Dawn"
Get Lit Minute
04/14/20 • 12 min
In this episode, we focus on Persian mystic, poet, and lecturer, Rumi. We follow his path across the Middle East with his theologian father and the artistic influences and mentors that guided his writing into adulthood. We conclude with the iconic poem, Breezes at Dawn, which compels us all to ask, in this time of quarantine-quiet, what do you really want?
Historical Research: Encyclopedia Brittanica
03/31/21 • 9 min
In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, we discuss the life and work of francine j. harris. She was a writer in residence at Washington University in St. Louis and taught creative writing at University of Michigan and Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. She is currently an associate professor of English at the University of Houston. Included in this episode is a reading of her poem “Single Lines Looking Forward. or One Monostich Past 45."
Full Poem:
The joke is orange. which has never been funny.
For awhile I didn’t sleep on my bright side.
Many airplanes make it through sky.
The joke is present. dented and devil.
For awhile, yellow spots on the wall.
Obama on water skis, the hair in his armpits, free.
I thought the CIA was operative.
Across the alley, a woman named Mildred.
Above the clouds in a plane, a waistline of sliced white.
I don’t sound like TED Talk, or smart prose on Facebook.
These clouds are not God.
I keep thinking about Coltrane; how little he talked.
This is so little; I give so little.
Sometimes when I say something to white people, they say “I’m sorry?”
During Vietnam, Bob Kaufman stopped talking.
The CIA was very good at killing Panthers.
Mildred in a housecoat, calling across the fence, over her yard.
If I were grading this, I’d be muttering curses.
The joke is a color. a color for prison.
Is it me, or is the sentence, as structure, arrogant?
All snow, in here, this writing, departure.
All miles are valuable. all extension. all stretch.
I savor the air with both fingers, and tongue.
Mildred asks about the beats coming from my car.
I forgot to bring the poem comparing you to a garden.
Someone tell me what to say to my senators.
No one smokes here; in the rain, I duck away and smell piss.
I thought the CIA was. the constitution.
I feel like he left us, for water skis, for kitesurfing.
The sun will not always be so gracious.
From the garden poem, one line stands out.
Frank Ocean’s “Nights” is a study in the monostich.
Pace is not breathing, on and off. off.
Mildred never heard of Jneiro Jarel.
I’m afraid one day I’ll find myself remembering this air.
The last time I saw my mother, she begged for fried chicken.
My father still sitting there upright, a little high.
Melissa McCarthy could get it.
Sometimes, I forget how to touch.
In a parking garage, I wait for the toothache.
I watch what I say all the time now.
She said she loved my touch, she used the word love.
In 1984, I’d never been in the sky.
My mother walked a laundry cart a mile a day for groceries.
Betsy DeVos is confirmed. with a broken tie.
Mildred’s five goes way up, and my five reaches.
Nate Marshall | “Praise Song”
Get Lit Minute
08/16/21 • 6 min
In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight Nate Marshall, an award-winning author, editor, poet, playwright, performer, educator, speaker, and rapper. Interested in learning more about poetry or bringing our spoken word curriculum into a school near you? Visit https://www.getlit.org/ for more info.
"Praise Song"
praise the Hennessy, the brown
shine, the dull burn. praise
the dare, the take it, the no face
you’re supposed to make.
praise the house, its many rooms,
hardwood and butter leather couches;
its richness. praise the rich, their friendship.
praise the friends: the child of the well off,
the child of the well off, the child of well,
the child of welfare, the child of welfare.
praise the diversity but praise the Hennessy,
and again, and again. praise
the new year upon us. praise my stumble,
the shaky eye, the fluid arm, but the steady
hand. praise my hand, the burning it has.
praise the dive into the gut of a friend; the dousing
of my hand in his ribs. praise the softness of skin,
the way it always gives.
praise the pulling, the calming down.
Read the full poem here.
Traci Brimhall | "Oh Wonder"
Get Lit Minute
01/11/22 • 19 min
In this episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Traci Brimhall. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and New England Review, among others. Some of her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best of the Net, PBS Newshour, and Best American Poetry 2013 & 2014. Source
This episode includes a reading of her poem, "Oh Wonder", featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology.
"Oh Wonder"
It’s the garden spider who eats her mistakes
at the end of day so she can billow in the lung
of night, dangling from an insecure branch
or caught on the coral spur of a dove’s foot
and sleep, her spinnerets trailing radials like
ungathered hair. It’s a million pound cumulus.
It’s the stratosphere, holding it, miraculous. It’s
a mammatus rolling her weight through dusk
waiting to unhook and shake free the hail.
Sometimes it’s so ordinary it escapes your notice—
pothos reaching for windows, ease of an avocado
slipping its skin. A porcelain boy with lamp-black
eyes told me most mammals have the same average
number of heartbeats in a lifetime. It is the mouse
engine that hums too hot to last. It is the blue whale’s
slow electricity—six pumps per minute is the way
to live centuries. I think it’s also the hummingbird
I saw in a video lifted off a cement floor by firefighters
and fed sugar water until she was again a tempest.
It wasn’t when my mother lay on the garage floor
and my brother lifted her while I tried to shout louder
than her sobs. But it was her heart, a washable ink.
It was her dark’s genius, how it moaned slow enough
to outlive her. It is the orca who pushes her dead calf
a thousand miles before she drops it or it falls apart.
And it is also when she plays with her pod the day
after. It is the night my son tugs at his pajama
collar and cries: The sad is so big I can’t get it all out,
and I behold him, astonished, his sadness as clean
and abundant as spring. His thunder-heart, a marvel
I refuse to invade with empathy. And outside, clouds
groan like gods, a garden spider consumes her home.
It’s knowing she can weave it tomorrow between
citrus leaves and earth. It’s her chamberless heart
cleaving the length of her body. It is lifting my son
into my lap to witness the birth of his grieving.
Jamaal May | “Pomegranate Means Grenade”
Get Lit Minute
08/31/21 • 11 min
In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we feature the life and work of American Poet Jamaal May. Born and raised in Detroit, May's first book, Hum (2013), won a Beatrice Hawley Award and an American Library Association Notable Book Award and was an NAACP Image Award nominee. Hum explores machines, technology, obsolescence, and community; in an interview, May stated of this collection, “Ultimately, I’m trying to say something about dichotomy, the uneasy spaces between disparate emotions, and by extension, the uneasy spaces between human connection.”
“Pomegranate Means Grenade”
The heart trembles like a herd of horses. —Jontae McCrory, age 11
Hold a pomegranate in your palm,
imagine ways to split it, think of the breaking
skin as shrapnel. Remember granada
means pomegranate and granada
means grenade because grenade
takes its name from the fruit;
identify war by what it takes away
from fecund orchards. Jontae,
there will always be one like you:
a child who gets the picked over box
with mostly black crayons. One who wonders
what beautiful has to do with beauty, as he darkens
a sun in the corner of every page,
constructs a house from ashen lines,
sketches stick figures lying face down-
I know how often red is the only color
left to reach for. I fear for you.
You are writing a stampede
into my chest, the same anxiety that shudders
me when I push past marines in high school
hallways, moments after video footage
of young men dropping from helicopters
in night vision goggles. I want you to see in the dark
without covering your face and carry verse
as countermeasure to recruitment videos
and remember the cranes buried inside the poems
painted on banners that hung in Tiananmen Square—
remember because Huang Xiang was exiled
for these. Remember because the poet Huang Xiang
was exiled for this: the calligraphy of revolt.
Always know that you will stand nameless
in front of a tank, always know you will not stand
alone, but there will always be those
who would rather see you pull a pin
from a grenade than pull a pen
from your backpack. Jontae,
they are afraid.
More at http://getlitanthology.org/poemdetail/74/
09/09/21 • 12 min
In the latest episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight John Murillo, the author of the poetry collection Up Jump the Boogie (Cypher 2010, Four Way Books 2020. Learn more about Murillo and discover his other poems by visiting our Virtual Anthology.
Ocean Vuong | "Kissing in Vietnamese"
Get Lit Minute
06/17/24 • 12 min
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FAQ
How many episodes does Get Lit Minute have?
Get Lit Minute currently has 124 episodes available.
What topics does Get Lit Minute cover?
The podcast is about Poetry, History, Podcasts, Books, Arts and Performance Art.
What is the most popular episode on Get Lit Minute?
The episode title 'Sylvia Plath | "Heavy Women"' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Get Lit Minute?
The average episode length on Get Lit Minute is 11 minutes.
How often are episodes of Get Lit Minute released?
Episodes of Get Lit Minute are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Get Lit Minute?
The first episode of Get Lit Minute was released on Feb 22, 2020.
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