Poetry For All
Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen
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Top 10 Poetry For All Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Poetry For All episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Poetry For All 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 Poetry For All episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Episode 30: John Keats, To Autumn
Poetry For All
10/20/21 • 22 min
To Autumn
by John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
For more on John Keats, see the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats
Further Resources:
Keats's Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives, ed. Brian Rejack and Michael Theune:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/keatss-negative-capability-9781786941817?cc=us&lang=en&
Keats Letters Project:
https://keatslettersproject.com/
Anahid Nersessian, Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo77573957.html
Links:
Episode 47: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Poetry For All
04/22/22 • 26 min
In this episode, Christopher Hanlon joins us to discuss an excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. We discuss the poem's prophetic voice, its patterns of repetition, the connective tissue that binds his ideas and invites readers in, and the cultural context in which Whitman produced his work.
To read the text of this poem, click here or see below:
To learn more about Walt Whitman and his work, visit the Walt Whitman Archive, a magnificent compendium of information about Whitman's life, cultural context, and editions of Leaves of Grass.
To learn more about scholar Christopher Hanlon, click here.
Text from Leaves of Grass:
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, soon out of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Episode 22: Two Poems of World War I
Poetry For All
04/27/21 • 24 min
In this episode, we talk with Vince Sherry about two poems of WWI: Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" and Ivor Gurney's "To His Love." The first poem, a stately beauty, imagines war almost peacefully; the second poem, scarred by combat, speaks back nervously and angrily. We talk through this remarkable set of poems and experiences and examine how a careful use of language conveys their effects.
"The Soldier"
by Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
To His Love
by Ivor Gurney
He's gone, and all our plans
Are useless indeed.
We'll walk no more on Cotswold
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed.
His body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn river
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through.
You would not know him now ...
But still he died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride
Purple from Severn side.
Cover him, cover him soon!
And with thick-set
Masses of memoried flowers—
Hide that red wet
Thing I must somehow forget.
For more on Rupert Brooke, see The Poetry Foundation.
For more on Ivor Gurney, see The Poetry Foundation.
Gurney was also a prolific composer. For a sample of his music, see his Goucestershire Rhapsody.
Links:
Episode 85: Jacob Stratman, To Momento Mori
Poetry For All
01/22/25 • 20 min
In this episode, we read and discuss a poem that takes its inspiration from a painting by Andrew Wyeth. The poem provides a meditation on what we perceive and interpret when we look at a painting, and at one another.
Episode 82: Sidney, Translation of Psalm 52
Poetry For All
11/14/24 • 26 min
Psalm 52 concerns a lying tyrant and God's impending judgment. Mary Sidney, who lived 1561-1621, was an extraordinary writer, editor, and literary patron. Like many talented writers of her time, she translated all the psalms. Here we talk about translation, early modern women's writing, religious engagements with politics, and the power of Psalm 52.
For more on Mary Sidney, see The Poetry Foundation page: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-sidney-herbert
For the Geneva translation of Psalm 52, which Mary Sidney would have known, see here:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2052&version=GNV
For a new collection of English translations of the psalms in the early modern era, see The Psalms in English 1530-1633 (Tudor and Stuart Translations), edited by Hannibal Hamlin.
Psalm 52
translated by Mary Sidney
Tyrant, why swell’st thou thus,
Of mischief vaunting?
Since help from God to us
Is never wanting.
Lewd lies thy tongue contrives,
Loud lies it soundeth;
Sharper than sharpest knives
With lies it woundeth.
Falsehood thy wit approves,
All truth rejected:
Thy will all vices loves,
Virtue neglected.
Not words from cursed thee,
But gulfs are poured;
Gulfs wherein daily be
Good men devoured.
Think’st thou to bear it so?
God shall displace thee;
God shall thee overthrow,
Crush thee, deface thee.
The just shall fearing see
These fearful chances,
And laughing shoot at thee
With scornful glances.
Lo, lo, the wretched wight,
Who God disdaining,
His mischief made his might,
His guard his gaining.
I as an olive tree
Still green shall flourish:
God’s house the soil shall be
My roots to nourish.
My trust in his true love
Truly attending,
Shall never thence remove,
Never see ending.
Thee will I honour still,
Lord, for this justice;
There fix my hopes I will
Where thy saints’ trust is.
Thy saints trust in thy name,
Therein they joy them:
Protected by the same,
Naught can annoy them.
02/15/21 • 15 min
The episode explores Milton's great sonnet spun from the difficulties of middle age and new disappointments. We consider how he pulls consolation from his sense of defeat and near despair. Faced with his coming blindness, he hears the voice of Patience giving him the strength to wait.
John Milton, "When I Consider How My Light is Spent"
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Episode 65: Du Fu, Facing Snow
Poetry For All
10/19/23 • 23 min
In this episode, Lucas Bender guides us through his translation of Du Fu's "Facing Snow," one of the most famous poems in the Chinese language.
To learn more about Du Fu's life, work, and cultural significance, please see Lucas Bender's Du Fu Transforms: Tradition and Ethics amid Societal Collapse (Harvard University Press, 2021).
Episode 86: Gwendolyn Bennett, I Build America
Poetry For All
02/20/25 • 25 min
Gwendolyn Bennett was a poet, journalist, editor, and activist whose contributions helped to fuel the Harlem Renaissance. In this episode, we read "I Build America," a poem that exposes and critiques the exploitation and suffering of ordinary workers.
To learn more about Gwendolyn Bennett, see Heroine of the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Gwendolyn Bennett's Selected Writings, edited by Belinda Wheeler and Louis J. Parascandola (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018). Thanks to Pennsylvania State University Press for granting us permission to read this poem.
You can also click here to read a brief biography of Bennett.
09/15/20 • 14 min
To view the poem, please see: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45465/on-being-brought-from-africa-to-america
To hear Cornelius Eady reading the poem and discussing it, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QezAVP_HiY
For a foundational essay about Phillis Wheatley and her work, please see June Jordan's essay, "The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America."
For two examples of the way Wheatley has inspired other artists and writers, please see the work of Cornelius Eady and Honoree Fanonne Jeffers.
Eady, "Diabolic"
Eady, "To Phillis Wheatley's Mother"
Eady, Interview
Jeffers, The Age of Phillis
Links:
Episode 64: Shakespeare, Sonnet 29
Poetry For All
09/22/23 • 19 min
In episode 64, we talk about Shakespeare's sonnet 29, a poem about comparison and competition, leading the poet almost to despise himself before, by chance, he remembers his dear friend and is lifted by the deep joy of that relationship.
We link our discussion to present-day concerns about social media, the Surgeon General's warning about an epidemic of loneliness in this country, and a long-term Harvard study of happiness. Links below.
Here is the poem:
Sonnet 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Links to the Surgeon General's Warning about Social Media
Various Links on the Harvard Happiness Study
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/harvard-happiness-study-relationships/672753/
Links:
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FAQ
How many episodes does Poetry For All have?
Poetry For All currently has 90 episodes available.
What topics does Poetry For All cover?
The podcast is about Poetry, Literature, Teaching, Podcasts, Education and Arts.
What is the most popular episode on Poetry For All?
The episode title 'Episode 32: Rick Barot, Cascades 501' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Poetry For All?
The average episode length on Poetry For All is 22 minutes.
How often are episodes of Poetry For All released?
Episodes of Poetry For All are typically released every 13 days, 22 hours.
When was the first episode of Poetry For All?
The first episode of Poetry For All was released on Aug 31, 2020.
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