Here is the poem:

I Wonder If I Will Miss the Moss
—Jane Mead (1958-2019)

I wonder if I will miss the moss
after I fly off as much as I miss it now
just thinking about leaving.

There were stones of many colors.
There were sticks holding both
lichen and moss.
There were red gates with old
hand-forged hardware.
There were fields of dry grass
smelling of first rain
then of new mud. There was mud,
and there was the walking,
all the beautiful walking,
and it alone filled me—
the smells, the scratchy grass heads.
All the sleeping under bushes,
once waking to vultures above, peering down
with their bent heads the way they do,
caricatures of interest and curiosity.
Once too a lizard.
Once too a kangaroo rat.
Once too a rat.
They did not say I belonged to them,
but I did.

Whenever the experiment on and of
my life begins to draw to a close
I’ll go back to the place that held me
and be held. It’s O.K. I think
I did what I could. I think
I sang some, I think I held my hand out.

For The New Yorker, see here.

For a reflection on the poem by the poet Devin Kelly, see Kelly's Substack Ordinary Plots.

For more on Jane Mead, see The Poetry Foundation.

For the memorial service and the tribute by Kathleen Finneran, see Mead's personal webpage.

To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth

By Phillis Wheatley

Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold.
Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies

She shines supreme, while hated faction dies:
Soon as appear'd the Goddess long desir'd,
Sick at the view, she languish'd and expir'd;
Thus from the splendors of the morning light
The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night.
No more, America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain,
No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain,
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land.

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?
Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd
That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due,
And thee we ask thy favours to renew,
Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before,
To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore.
May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give
To all thy works, and thou for ever live
Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame,
Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name,
But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane,
May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain,
And bear thee upwards to that blest abode,
Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.

For more on Wheatley, see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/phillis-wheatley

For more on Professor Kirsten Lee, see her website: https://cla.auburn.edu/directory/kirsten-lee/

For the full text of the poem, see here:
https://mail.readwildness.com/25/zwart-rusting

For more on the poet Jane Zwart, see her personal website:
https://www.janezwart.com/

To see her new book and purchase a copy, see "Oddest & Oldest & Saddest & Best" at Orison Books:
https://www.orisonbooks.com/product-page/oddest-oldest-saddest-best-poems-by-jane-zwart

Friendship

Oh, the comfort—
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Phillis Levin is the author of six poetry collections, including An Anthology of Rain. She is also the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. Levin’s honors include a Fulbright Scholar Award to Slovenia, an Ingram Merrill Grant, the Richard Hugo Prize from Poetry Northwest, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Trust of Amy Lowell.

To learn more about Phillis and her work, please visit her website. https://phillislevin.com

Photo credit: Sigrid Estrada

Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake is an Indigenous poet from the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma. Winner of the 2024 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award for poetry and the recipient of the 2023 Indigenous Nations Poets fellowship, they live in St. Louis.

Portrait by Erin Lewis Photography

The poem was featured on Poem-a-Day and can be found at the Academy of American Poets.

See here for the poem online.

Someday I’ll Love—

Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake
—after Frank O’Hara

like I dreamt of the lamb—slaughtered,
forgotten,
lying on porcelain tile, on crimson-filled grout—
and woke up thinking of my grandmother,
of her Betty Boop hands that held
marbled stone, held dough-balled flour,
held the first strands of my hair floating atop the river—

like winter apples, the ones that hang outside
my living room window and survive first snowfall
to feed the neighborhood crows,
how they fall
beneath my boots, staining my rubber
soles with epigraphs of rot, epigraphs
of fors, of dears, of holding on till frost’s end.

Someday I will see long-forgotten fingerprints
on the inside of my eyelids as I go to sleep,
as I close my eyes for silence on a Wednesday,
mourning—seeking—creases and smile lines,
porch lights and swing sets,
summer nights of lightning bugs and Johnny Cash.

I think it will be a Tuesday, or maybe someday
is yesterday, is two months from now, is going
to be a day when I forget what I’m supposed
to be remembering.

For now, I will paint my nails cradle, adorn
my skin in cloth that doesn’t choke,
tell my bones that they are each
a lamb
remembered.

Copyright © 2024 by Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. Used by permission.

The whole poem can be found below.

The image is of Thomas Gray's monument in Stoke Poges, inscribed with his elegy. Photo by UKgeofan at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10552507

For more on Thomas Gray, see The Poetry Foundation.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

By Thomas Gray

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

To learn more about Oliver de la Paz, visit his website.

If you love this poem as much as we do, please purchase a copy of The Diaspora Sonnets (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2023), which was long-listed for the 2023 National Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize. Thanks to Liveright and W. W. Norton for granting us permission to read this poem.

Arthur Sze is the 25th Poet Laureate of the United States. To learn more about Arthur Sze and his amazing work, click here.

Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for granting us permission to read this poem. You can find "Papyrus Pantoum" in Into the Hush (Copper Canyon Press, 2025).

For the text of the poem, see The Poetry Foundation:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58080/pantoum-of-the-great-depression

For more on Donald Justice, see The Poetry Foundation:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/donald-justice

Copyright Credit: Donald Justice, "Pantoum of the Great Depression" from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2004 by Donald Justice. Read on our podcast by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

God's Grandeur
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

This poem comes from Ted Kooser's Pulitzer-Prize winning book, Delights and Shadows, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2004. Thank you to Copper Canyon Press for permission to read the poem for this episode.

For the text of the poem, see here: https://www.versedaily.org/student.shtml

For Ted Kooser's personal webpage, see here: https://www.tedkooser.net/

Thanks to the Pias Group for granting us permission to share the Hilliard Ensemble's rendition of this song. You can find the manuscript that includes the lyrics and music at the British Library.

Dorianne Laux is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Life on Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of a new craft book titled Finger Exercises for Poets.

“Singer” appears in LIFE ON EARTH by Dorianne Laux. Copyright © 2024 by Dorianne Laux. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

"Two Emergencies," appears in My Favorite Tyrants (University of Wisconsin Press 2014), winner of the 2014 Brittingham Prize in Poetry.

For more poetry of Joanne Diaz, see also The Lessons (Silverfish Review Press 2011), winner of the Gerald Cable Book Award.

For W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Artes" see The Poetry Foundation

Special thanks to Universty of California Television (UCTV) for permission to share the audio of Momaday's reading. For the interview with Momaday from which this reading has been pulled, see "A Conversation with N. Scott Momaday -- Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2023" on Youtube. "The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee" appears in In the Presence of the Sun by N. Scott Momaday. Copyright © 2009 University of New Mexico Press, 2009.

For the text of the poem, see The Poetry Foundation here.

For more on Momaday, see his biography at the Poetry Foundation.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet with interests in conflict, language and religion. He presents Poetry Unbound from On Being Studios, and has published two anthologies (2022, 2025, both with WW Norton) from that podcast. A freelance artist, one of Ó Tuama’s projects is poet in residence with the Cooperation and Conflict Resolution Center at Columbia University. He splits his time between Belfast and New York City.

To learn more about Ó Tuama, you can visit his website.

Oksana Maksymchuk is a bilingual Ukrainian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator. Her debut English-language poetry collection Still City is the 2024 Pitt Poetry Series selection, published by University of Pittsburgh Press (US) and Carcanet Press (UK). And while Still City is Oksana’s first poem in English, she is an accomplished poet in the Ukrainian as well. She is also the co-editor of Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, an anthology of contemporary poetry.

Monica Ong is the author of two books: Silent Anatomies, which was the winner of the Kore Press First Book Award in 2015; and Planetaria, which will be released in May 2025. Last year, Ong was named a United States Artists Fellow. Ong’s visual poetry has been published in many literary magazines and exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world.

To learn more about Ong's work, please visit her website.

To purchase a copy of Planetaria, visit the Proxima Vera website.

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.

To learn more about Ted Kooser, visit his website.

If you like these poems that we discussed in this episode, please read Ted Kooser's Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001). Thanks to Carnegie Mellon Press for granting us permission to read these poems aloud.

I went to thank Her

I went to thank Her—
But She Slept—
Her Bed—a funneled Stone—
With Nosegays at the Head and Foot—
That Travellers—had thrown—

Who went to thank Her—
But She Slept—
'Twas Short—to cross the Sea—
To look upon Her like—alive—
But turning back—'twas slow—

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.

To learn more about Niki Herd, you can visit her website.

The Stuff of Hollywood was just published by Copper Canyon Website. Please visit their website to purchase a copy.

Photo credit: Madeline Brenner

This is one of several duplex poems that you can find in The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for granting us permission to read this poem.

To learn more about Jericho Brown, visit his website.

To learn more about the duplex form, you can read Brown's essay on the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog. We also love Jericho Brown's interview with Michael Dumanis in the Bennington Review.

Cover art: Lauren “Ralphi” Burgess. To learn more about her work, visit her website.

For the poem, see here: https://www.nereview.com/vol-40-no-1-2019/the-conversion-of-paul/

For Grotz's incredible book, Still Falling, see Graywolf Press here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/still-falling

“Still Falling is an undeniably gorgeous book of love poems full of grief. In these pages, Jennifer Grotz writes line after line of direct statement in rhythms that would leave any reader breathless and wanting more. . . . I am in awe of Grotz’s power to grow and transform book after book. I cannot read Still Falling without crying.”—Jericho Brown

For the Caravaggio painting, The Conversion on the Way to Damascus, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_on_the_Way_to_Damascus

For more episodes on ekphrasis, please see our website and keywords here:
https://poetryforallpod.com/episodes/

Thanks to Graywolf Press for permission to read this poem on the podcast. Jennifer Grotz's "The Conversation of Paul" was published in her collection titled Still Falling (Graywolf, 2023).

Click here to read "What Work Is": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52173/what-work-is

Photo credit: Geoffrey Berliner

"What Work Is" was published in What Work Is (Knopf, 1991). Thanks to Penguin Random House for granting us permission to read this poem.

Click here to learn more about Du Fu.

Lucas Bender is the author of Du Fu Transforms: Tradition and Ethics amid Societal Collapse (Harvard University Press, 2021).

To learn more about Luke Bender, visit his website.

Cover art: Wang Hui, Ten Thousand Li up the Yangtze River, Qing Dynasty. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Thank you to Graywolf Press for permission to read and discuss the poem. Diane Seuss's "[The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do]" was published in her collection titled frank: sonnets (Graywolf, 2021).

See the work (and buy it!) here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/frank-sonnets

For more on Diane Seuss, see here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/diane-seuss

For more on the Sealey Challenge, see here: https://www.thesealeychallenge.com/

Professor Kirk read Edith Grossman's translation of "Sonnet 189" from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works. Copyright (c) 2014 by Edith Grossman. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

To learn more about Stephanie Kirk’s scholarship, you can click here.

Cover image: Miguel Cabrera, posthumous portrait of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, 1750. Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City, Mexico. Public domain.

On January 31, we met at Calvin University for its January Series and spoke with Marilyn Nelson about poetry and her work for a live audience.

For more on Marilyn Nelson, visit her website or The Poetry Foundation.

This poem is the title poem of an extraordinary book called How I Discovered Poetry

It was originally published in The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems

Thank you to LSU Press for permission to read and discussion this poem on our podcast.

https://poetryforallpod.com/

In this episode, we quote a few pieces from The New Yorker. Here they are, plus a few other resources.

"The Aesthetic Insight of W.S. Merwin" by Dan Chiasson

"The Final Prophecy of W.S. Merwin" by Dan Chiasson

"The Palm Trees and Poetry of W.S. Merwin" by Casey Cep

"When You Go Away: Remembering W.S. Merwin" by Kevin Young

See also The Poetry Foundation.

The poem originally appeared in Present Company (Copper Canyon Press, 2005). Thanks to the Wylie Agency for granting us permission to read this poem on the episode.

For more on Carl Phillips, please visit the Poetry Foundation.

For more on David Baker, please visit the Poetry Foundation.

"To Autumn" has been read from Carl Phillips' latest book of poetry, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.

The latest book by Carl Phillips is a collection of essays called My Trade Is Mystery. Purchase at Yale University Press or Amazon or wherever you get your books.

Carter Revard was a prolific poet and scholar. To learn more about his work, click here.

"What the Eagle Fan Says" was published in How the Songs Came Down (Salt Publishing, 2005).

To learn more about accentual verse, read this brief treatment by poet Dana Gioia.

To learn more about Shakespeare's sonnets, visit Folger Shakespeare page.

Our favorite editions of Shakespeare's sonnets are edited by Colin Burrow and Stephen Booth.

Sir Patrick Stewart's reading of Sonnet 73 is one of our favorites.

To read the poem, click here.

This is the first poem that appears in Floaters, the winner of the 2021 National Book Award. To purchase a copy of the book, click here.

Photo credit: Lauren Marie Schmidt (cropped to fit dimensions)

Thanks to the Georges Borchardt, Inc. for granting us permission to read this poem. You can find "Primary Care" in Alternative Medicine (Duke University Press, 2013).

Links:

• Campo reads Primary Care
• Campo Author Page
• Campo at the Poetry Foundation

"When I Am Asked" appears in Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, published by Louisiana State University Press (1996). Thanks to LSU Press for granting us permission to read this poem on the podcast.

For the text of the poem, click here: "When I Am Asked"

Note: When out of copyright, we reproduce the text of the poem ourselves. When still in copyright, we link to the text of the poem elsewhere.

For more on Lisel Mueller, see the Poetry Foundation.

You can find the text of "An American Sunrise" here, though this is an earlier version of the poem. The final version appears in her finished book of the same title, which you can find here.

For an introduction to The Golden Shovel form, see here.

Links:

• Joy Harjo Official Site - Joy Harjo
• An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo | Poetry Magazine
• An American Sunrise - Joy Harjo
• Introduction: The Golden Shovel by Don Share | Poetry Magazine

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.

Clifton wrote from the perspective of a Black woman and many of her most famous poems address race and gender. Clear-eyed about struggles and hardships, insistent in her calls for justice and equality, Clifton's poetry carries a consistent joy and hope, which is apparent (and abundant) in "spring song."

Clifton's poetry was known for its lean style, paring everything down to its essential elements. In addition to award-winning collections of poetry, Clifton also wrote sixteen books for children (and had six children herself).

For the text of "spring song," and for a recording of Lucille Clifton reading it, see The Poetry Foundation.

For more on Lucille Clifton see her biography at The Poetry Foundation.

For an introduction to Lucille Clifton, see the poem sampler "Lucille Clifton 101" by Benjamin Voigt.

Links:

• spring song by Lucille Clifton | Poetry Foundation
• Poetry Foundation
• About Lucille Clifton | Academy of American Poets
• Lucille Clifton 101 by Benjamin Voigt | Poetry Foundation

Links:

• Home – Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Here is the poem:

On my First Son

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

To learn more about the magnificent Ben Jonson, check this page on the British Library website.

To learn more about couplets, epigrams, elegies, and apostrophes, click this page on the Academy of American Poets website.

Ann is the author of two collections of poetry: The Armillary Sphere, which was selected by Mary Kinzie as the winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and published by Ohio University Press; and Glow, published by Next Page Press. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Crab Orchard Review, North American Review, Orion, Prairie Schooner, and The Seattle Review. Ann is senior editor for RHINO.

To learn more about Ann's work, please visit her website.

Margaret Noodin is the author of two bilingual collections of poetry in both Anishinaabemowin and English: Weweni and What the Chickadee Knows. She is a professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she also serves as director of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education.

To learn more about Ahishinaabemowin, visit ojibwe.net.

To hear the sound of the spring peeper, click on this link.

Photo of Margaret Noodin © Troye Fox.

Thanks to W.W. Norton & Company for granting us permission to read this poem. Reginald Dwayne Betts's introduction to the Collected Poems of Robert Hayden is very moving, as is the afterword by Arnold Rampersad.

For a series of insightful observations about Hayden's sonnet, see Ross Gay, Aracelis Girmay, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Patrick Rosal, and Ira Sadoff, "Poets Respond: A Discussion of "Frederick Douglass" by Robert Hayden." American Poetry Review, 38.3 (2009): 25-28.

For a helpful close reading of the poem, see Fred M. Fetrow, "Robert Hayden's 'Frederick Douglass': Form and Meaning in a Modern Sonnet." CLA Journal 17.1 (September 1973): 78-84.

For the full text of the poem, see here: "Learning to Read"

Janaka Bowman Lewis is an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina--Charlotte, and she includes a chapter on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in Freedom Narratives of African American Women: A Study of 19th Century Writings.

For a good recent article about this poem by Madeline Zehnder, see Commonplace.

For more on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, see the Poetry Foundation.

For good resources on F.E.W. Harper, especially materials related to the recovery and teaching of her first book of poems, Forest Leaves, see the Just Teach One archive at Commonplace.

For the best collection of Harper's work, see Frances Smith Foster, A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader

For further reading, see Harper's most famous novel, Iola Leroy.

Links:

• Learning to Read by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper | Poetry Foundation
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper | Poetry Foundation
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Media Theorist - Commonplace - The Journal of early American Life
• Just Teach One: Early African American Print » Frances Ellen Watkins (Harper)’s Forest Leaves (ca. 1846)
• A Brighter Coming Day — Feminist Press
• Iola Leroy by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: 9780143106043 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

We Wear the Mask
BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

For more on Paul Laurence Dunbar, visit The Poetry Foundation.

For more on Rafia Zafar, see her personal website at Washington University in St. Louis.

Youtube has a brief clip from the Library of America hosting Kevin Young's discussion of "We Wear the Mask."

Elizabeth Alexander also discusses this poem for the Library of America.

For more on the poetic form of the rondeau, see the Academy of American Poets.

Links:

• Paul Laurence Dunbar | Poetry Foundation
• Rafia Zafar | Arts & Sciences
• Home | Rafia Zafar | Washington University in St. Louis
• Kevin Young Discusses "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar - YouTube
• Elizabeth Alexander Comments on "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar - YouTube
• Rondeau | Academy of American Poets

This conversation is an excerpt from our virtual visit with the students in Grace Talusan's creative writing workshop at Brandeis University. Grace uses our podcast in her course, and her students have gone on to create their own podcasts that focus on close readings of poems. If you want more information on how to use our podcast in the classroom, please reach out to us via Facebook, Twitter, or our gmail account (poetryforall2020).

For more on Grace Talusan and her excellent work, please see here.

Links:

• Writer | Grace Talusan

To read "On the Mystery of the Incarnation," click here.

To read Levertov's essay "Some Notes on Organic Form," click here.

''On the Mystery of the Incarnation'' by Denise Levertov comes from her book A DOOR IN THE HIVE, copyright ©1989 by Denise Levertov. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Photo of Denise Levertov © David Geier. For more information see National Portrait Gallery at The Smithsonian Institution: https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2011.103

To read "Poem for Wisconsin," click here.

"Poem for Wisconsin" originally appeared in the collection Sun Bear. Thanks to Copper Canyon Press for granting us permission to read this poem on the podcast.

For a glimpse of the "Bronze Fonz," click here.

To see how the Milwaukee Art Museum opens its wings, watch this time-lapse video.

For a sense of the "many moods" of Lake Michigan, see the photography of the wonderful Jin Lee.

For the poem (including a reading and discussion of the poem by Tracy Smith), see the Poetry Foundation.

For Solmaz Sharif's discussion of the political implications of erasure poetry, see "The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure": https://thevolta.org/ewc28-ssharif-p1.html

See also "Erasure in Three Acts" by Muriel Leung.

For more on Tracy K. Smith, see The Library of Congress.

For a look at the various drafts of the Declaration of Independence, visit this page on the Library of Congress website: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jeffdec.html

Thanks to Graywolf Press for granting us permission to read this poem, which appears in Wade in the Water (2018).

Thanks to Harvard University and photographer Stephanie Mitchell for granting us permission to reproduce Tracy Smith's photo.

Links:

• Declaration by Tracy K. Smith | Poetry Foundation
• Tracy K. Smith | Library of Congress
• Look | Graywolf Press
• Erasure in Three Acts: An Essay by Muriel Leung | Poetry Foundation

For the text of Langston Hughes's poem "Johannesburg Mines," see here.

For more on Langston Hughes, see the Poetry Foundation.

For more on social poetics, see Mark Nowak's book by that name.

For more on the poetry of witness, see Sandra Beasley's essay "Flint and Tinder."

For Anna Akhmatova's "Instead of a Preface" in her great work Requiem as an alternative approach, see here.

Thanks to Harold Ober Associates, Inc., for granting us permission to read this poem on our podcast.

Links:

• Poem: Johannesburg Mines by Langston Hughes
• Langston Hughes | Poetry Foundation
• Social Poetics – Coffee House Press
• Sandra Beasley: “Flint and Tinder – Understanding the Difference Between ‘Poetry of Witness’ and ‘Documentary Poetics’”
• Requiem Poem by Anna Akhmatova - Poem Hunter

"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:

• The Soldier by Rupert Brooke | Poetry Magazine
• To His Love by Ivor Gurney | Poetry Foundation
• Ivor Gurney: A Gloucestershire Rhapsody - YouTube
• Vincent Sherry | Arts & Sciences
• Rupert Brooke | Poetry Foundation
• Ivor Gurney | Poetry Foundation

In this poem, we explore what makes a poem "poetry" versus some other genre, and we consider what difference such designations make while walking through a longer, narrative poem.

For the text of the poem, see here: https://poets.org/poem/gate-4

For more on Naomi Shihab Nye, see the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/naomi-shihab-nye

This poem comes from Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose.

The image has a creative commons license and can be found here.

See her poem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ejbSCjg2qo

See this great article by Virginia Jackson and Meredith Martin about Amanda Gorman's Inauguration Poem at Avidly:
The Poetry of the Future

For more on Amanda Gorman, see The Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/amanda-gorman