Today we had Peggy Shumaker on the show. Peggy read some of her own work from her "Greatest Hits 1974-2005" chapbook. She also shared "Blaze" a collaboration with the painter Kesler E. Woodward. Lastly, we got a sneak peek into her newest book "Just Breathe Normally." Peggy is charming and a brilliant conversationalist. She was a real joy to have on the program and I hope she visits us again soon. For those of you who just cant get enough of a good thing check out her website.
Strong Stars
Mottled grouse peck
up gizzard stones
before the first snow-
seasons move on
as if the human heart were not
infinitely fragile.
The sow bear's stained snout lifts,
sniffs the wind, then bows
to claws raking in
stems, berries, rasping leaves.
A twelve-year-old, pleased, tells her aunt
I kissed a boy four times and my tooth
grew back in.
Beside the barrow ditch, the bandy-legged fox
bounds into finger-thin willow.
Strong stars surround the green
wash of the aurora, God's love, the moisture
of a woman's orgasm...
From here, we can see much farther
than we can walk.
We walk to the edges of our bodies.
-Peggy Shumaker
Peggy also edited "Hidden Alaska" a Special Feature in the current Alaska Quarterly Review. Here is a sample poem by Renee Singh that Peggy read for our listeners.
At Fish Camp
smoke rises, twisting
against kings sliced
dripping slow deliberate
delicious clear oils
that run then drop
down gently into ashes
below
23 July
I was joined by John Morgan on the show today. Mr. Morgan read his work and offered advice to developing poets. He said the way he knows when he has a poem is if he thinks about it when he's not working on it. "If I sit down and don't know what to work on I probably don't have anything."
DJ Dorian is still attending the Summer Arts Festival so I bungled my way through two stutter-filled hours. Good times. Next week Peggy Shumaker will be on the show.
DJ Dorian is still attending the Summer Arts Festival so I bungled my way through two stutter-filled hours. Good times. Next week Peggy Shumaker will be on the show.
16 July
Dr. Derick Burleson joined the show today. He shared his favorite Elizabeth Bishop poems with our audience. Dr. Burleson also discussed Bishop's impact on American poetry and how she transmuted personal difficulty into art. Dr. Burleson suggested that the incredibly detailed minutiae found in many of Elizabeth Bishop's poems may be a reflection of her rigorous revision process.
Some of the poems read were:
A Cold Spring
The Fish
First Death in Nova Scotia
Visits to St. Elizabeths
The Moose
One Art
At the Fishhouses
The Bight
Arrival at Santos
Today's poems were selected from Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems 1927-1979.
Sandpiper
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.
--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,
looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.
Some of the poems read were:
A Cold Spring
The Fish
First Death in Nova Scotia
Visits to St. Elizabeths
The Moose
One Art
At the Fishhouses
The Bight
Arrival at Santos
Today's poems were selected from Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems 1927-1979.
Sandpiper
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.
--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,
looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.
- Elizabeth Bishop
9 July
On this show I read the poems of Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke, and Ander Monson. Some of the poems read were:
Robert Frost
Into My Own
Acquainted with the Night
Sitting by a Bush in Broad Sunlight
Theodore Roethke
I Knew a Woman
Journey to the Interior
My Papa's Waltz
Ander Monson
Salt
Vacationland
Proposed Self-Elegy with Torque
I read from Theodore Roethke's The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. The Frost selections were provided by Frost, Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays. Winer of the Yupelo Press Editor's Prize in Poetry, Vacationland is where you can find Ander Monson's work.
Into My Own
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if I still held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew-
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
-Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Into My Own
Acquainted with the Night
Sitting by a Bush in Broad Sunlight
Theodore Roethke
I Knew a Woman
Journey to the Interior
My Papa's Waltz
Ander Monson
Salt
Vacationland
Proposed Self-Elegy with Torque
I read from Theodore Roethke's The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. The Frost selections were provided by Frost, Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays. Winer of the Yupelo Press Editor's Prize in Poetry, Vacationland is where you can find Ander Monson's work.
Into My Own
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if I still held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew-
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
-Robert Frost
2 July
This week we read Asian poetry in translation and Asian-American poetry. We focused on the works of: Bei Dao, Kimiko Hahn, Li-Young Lee, Basho, and Ho Xuan Huong. For good measure we threw in some Blake as well. I was joined by my daughter Emmaline, who loves Blake (memorized The Tiger in grade school), and the Basho-Bawdy Tara.
Some of my favorites read were:
Bei Dao
The August Sleepwalker
Bodhisattva
Harbor Dreams
Kimiko Hahn
The Artist's Daughter
The Breast's Syllabics
Li-Yound Lee
Pillow
With Ruins
A Table in the Wilderness
Basho
105
107
219
Ho Xuan Huong
Young Scholars
On a Portait of Two Beauties
Old Pagoda
The Bei Dao selections were taken from The August Sleepwalker. I broght my copy of Kimiko Hahn's The Artist's Daughter and searched online for her poems. Li-Young Lee's poems were selected from the city in which i love you and Book of My Nights. Basho's On Love and Barley provided our Haiku. Spring Essence (which is a rough translation of the poet's name) carried Ho Xuan Huong's poems across two hundred years.
Friends part
forever – wild geese
lost in cloud.
-Basho, Haiku 219
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