Natalie Diaz — Of Course She Looked Back

10/12/20 • 15 min

3 Listeners

Is there a character (from history, politics, or literature) whose story you want to tell from a new perspective?

This poem is told from the point of view of “Lot’s wife,” a biblical character who was turned into salt because she looked back to see the burning of Sodom, her home city. The poet shows us what Lot’s wife sees: towers swaying, guitars popping, dogs weeping and roosters howling. By mixing the modern with the everlasting, Lot’s wife is humanized and justified.

Natalie Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She was a 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and has written two books of poetry, When My Brother Was an Aztec, and Postcolonial Love Poem. She teaches at the Arizona State University Creative Writing MFA program.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Is there a character (from history, politics, or literature) whose story you want to tell from a new perspective?

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Previous Episode

Natasha Trethewey — Miscegenation

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Were you born during a time when laws were different? What impact did those laws have on you?

In this poem, Natasha Trethewey recalls the story of how her parents crossed state lines to wed because Mississippi forbade interracial marriage at the time. It is written in the form of a ghazal, with birth and belonging, names and death coming together.

Natasha Trethewey served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2012-2014. She is the author of a memoir, Memorial Drive, and five collections of poetry including Monument and Native Guard, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Next Episode

Molly McCully Brown — Transubstantiation

Are there places you've lived or visited that others would disregard? What do you see in them that others might miss?"

This poem takes place at night, describing a scene from a town on the edge of a city. The poet feels at home in a “nowhere” town, with cattle pacing in the fields, boarded houses, and rowdy filling stations. This is a place that through the eyes of some would be considered a “shit town,” but to the poet it is home.

Molly McCully Brown is the author of The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics and Feebleminded, which was named a The New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017, and the forthcoming essay collection, Places I’ve Taken My Body. She teaches at Kenyon College, where she is the Kenyon Review Fellow in Poetry.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.