Poetry For All

Latest Episodes:

Episode 97: Donald Justice, Pantoum of the Great Depression Sep 17, 2025

Show notes

This episode begins a three-part series on the pantoum and looks at how the repetitions work especially well for a poem that dwells incessantly in memories of the past, trying to recover, trying to move forward.

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

Episode 96: Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur Sep 03, 2025

Show notes

Today we look at a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins that dwells equally in the grandeur of God and the wreck made of earth. Hopkins wonders how these two aspects of our world could possibly relate, and he holds out hope for the dearest freshness deep down things.

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.

Episode 95: Ted Kooser, Student Aug 20, 2025

Show notes

It's back to school time, and we're back at Poetry For All, heavy with hope for another season. Today we look at a poem unified by an extended metaphor describing a student who makes his heroic way to the library. Short and simple--and so much to love.

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/

Episode 94: Sumer is icumen in Jun 19, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, we offer a close reading of "Sumer is icumen in," a Middle English song that anticipates the abundant joys of summer.

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.

Episode 92: Dorianne Laux, Singer May 08, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, we read and discuss "Singer," a narrative poem that celebrates the poetic speaker's mother in all of her complexity.

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.

Episode 91: Joanne Diaz, Two Emergencies Apr 24, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, Katy Didden and Abram Van Engen discuss the extraordinary leaps, narrative disjunctions, and temporal frames that fill Diaz's extraordinary ekphrastic poem, a reflection on Bruegel's painting, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" written in conversation with W.H. Auden's poem "Musée des Beaux Arts."

"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

Episode 90: N. Scott Momaday, The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee Apr 16, 2025

Show notes

This episode explores the incantation and mystic union of Momaday's famous delight poem, ending with a recorded recitation in his own rich voice. We explain anaphora and explore its power, and we trace the links and connections from one thought to the next throughout the poem.

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.

Episode 89: Pádraig Ó Tuama, excerpts from Kitchen Hymns Apr 03, 2025

Show notes

This episode was recorded on March 2, 2025 at the Phillis Wheatley Heritage Center in St. Louis., Missouri. In this conversation, Pádraig Ó Tuama reads several poems from Kitchen Hymns (Copper Canyon Press, 2024), his newest collection. We discuss subversive speech, belief and doubt, lyrical poetry, the psychology of poetic forms, and the power of ancient myths.

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.

Episode 88: Oksana Maksymchuk, Tempo Mar 20, 2025

Show notes

Oksana Maksymchuk joins us for a reading and discussion of "Tempo," a poem that explores the how war causes us to "whirl with / planets and stars that coil / around our fragile core."

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.

Episode 87: Monica Ong, Her Gaze Mar 06, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, Monica Ong joins us to discuss "Her Gaze," a visual poem that celebrates the achievements of astronomer Caroline Herschel. "Her Gaze" appears in Planetaria, Ong's new collection that merges archival materials with striking lyric poems.

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.

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