Close Talking: A Poetry Podcast

A slight departure from our regular format. On today's show, Connor and Jack remember the recently departed poet Charles Simic. They read some of his poems, reflect on them, discuss his life and legacy, and even give a shoutout to the Oak Park Public Library. Poems Connor and Jack read in this episode include: "Summer Morning" "Hotel Insomnia" "Watermelons" and "Back at the Chicken Shack." At the end of the episode, hear Simic read his poem "December 21." Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cardboardboxproductionsinc Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@cardboardboxproductionsinc You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack bid farewell to the year they've taken to calling "Twenty Twenty Poo" and contemplate the complexities of language in a wide-ranging conversation about a spectacular untitled poem by Diné poet Sherwin Bitsui, from his 2009 collection Flood Song. They discuss movement, the natural world, an extremely informative dissertation and more. Learn more about Bitsui, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sherwin-bitsui [Flicking off the light switch.] By: Sherwin Bitsui Flicking off the light switch. Lichen buds the curved creases of a mind pondering the mesquite tree’s dull ache as it gathers its leaves around clouds of spotted doves— calling them in rows of twelve back from their winter sleep. Doves’ eyes black as nightfall shiver on the foam coast of an arctic dream where whale ribs clasp and fasten you to a language of shifting ice. Seeing into those eyes you uncoil their telephone wires, gather their inaudible lions with plastic forks, tongue their salty ribbons, and untie their weedy stems from your prickly fingers. You stop to wonder what like sounds like when held under glacier water, how Ná ho kos feels under the weight of all that loss. Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@cardboardboxproductionsinc You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss the sonically and thematically dense poem "Topsoil, in Repentance" by Sherry Shenoda. Shenoda's book MUMMY EATERS was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2022. The conversation moves from an exploration of internal rhymes and alliteration, to the climate crisis, to the religious implications of the word "repentance," to soil strata, and to the relative weight of humanity. You can find out more about Sherry Shenoda, here: https://www.sherryshenoda.com/ Read the poem, here: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2022/march/topsoil-repentance-sherry-shenoda Topsoil, in Repentance By: Sherry Shenoda On my mind daily with the insistence of a metronome is that thin granular layer, rich humus, spare humility, black earth daily lifted and blown into the Gulf of Mexico. Thinnest of salvations with a margin of error wide as the pink, gelatinous body of the earthworm Which my spade barely misses, and every time my tines enter the ground, my wrist twists the damp loam, I breathe easier to see them wriggling, unburied fleeing the light, burrowing back down, aerating this earth we have packed down with our culpability this immense density of earth, only the topmost of which can support the unimaginable numbers of us, our great warm swarm Squinting up in immense sunlight I hear the silent swish and tick the back-and-forth rhythm, the last few seconds before midnight the enormity of the loan, which has been called in full The hazy buzzing of the furry bees, busy in the branches above my exposed neck, on any given day a stay for a little while longer, of execution Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cardboardboxproductionsinc You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

After a busy couple weeks at Close Talking headquarters, a slightly different show. This episode is from our sister-podcast, Poetry Spoken Here. The episode first aired in the summer of 2020 and was simply called "Black Lives Matter." The poems and voices featured are all from the Poetry Spoken Here archives and address race, policing, and more. Readers include Pulitzer Prize-winner Jericho Brown, the youngest ever Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate, Maren (Lovey) Wright Kerr, Chicago-area slam legend Maria "Mama" McCray, Sillerman First Book Prize winner Ladan Osman, and SlamFind creator and Bowery Arts and Science Executive Director Mason Granger. You can listen to full readings, and interviews with the poets featured in this episode, here: Jericho Brown, Episode #100: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-100-jericho-brown-reading-at-the-unamuno-author-festival Maren (Lovey) Wright Kerr, Episode #085: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-085-maren-lovey-wright-kerr-and-lynne-sharon-schwartz-reviewed Maria "Mama" McCray, Episode #058: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-058-tribute-to-maria-mama-mccray Ladan Osman, Episode #023: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-023-ladan-osman-and-the-book-thing Mason Granger, Episode #034: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-034-mason-granger-and-billy-collins Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In this special episode, Connor and Jack discuss the 2022 National Book Awards — the long list, the finalists, and the winner "Punks: New and Selected Poems" by John Keene. They read and explore a marvelous poem from the collection, "Folks Are Right, My Nose Was Wide Open," which also appeared in BOMB Magazine. Listen to the National Book Awards Award Ceremony, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hNtsKasx5U&ab_channel=NationalBookFoundation Get Punks here: https://the-song-cave.com/products/punks-by-john-keene Folks Are Right, My Nose Was Wide Open By: John Keene Folks are right: my nose is wide open. I left one man and fell for this one, he’s not the one, so what am I to do? I don’t. Instead, I stand in the doorway of the New Age café on Newbury Street waiting for Kevin, because we’re going to talk about poems. All the poems I haven’t written, because I spend my waking hours talking about them, reading the work of others, trying to remake myself as Essex Hemphill or Neruda or Celan. For example, I can’t write poems about this crazy dude I’m seeing, how he writhes in bed like a loose hose when he comes, how he stands for hours in front of the mirror admiring and caressing his muscles, saying nothing but “Looking good,” the yelps he serves up when I enter him. I don’t write poems about how he silences me with certain looks, his lies about being from “Black money,” how he laughs at the serious things I say. How often when I’m with him I feel more alone than the hardest years of high school. Rather, I write down lines towards poems, abstract pronouncements about unhappiness and being scared and unknown and misunderstood and death, which makes me think I’m addressing the problem. Love is a dream where both of us are trying, at the same speed, without quitting. Then Kevin shows up, and I’m not so sure, because before I can get a word in about my plight, before I can pass today’s halfstarts and failures across the table, he starts telling me about last night’s fight with his girlfriend. Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss a classic poem from a classic poet: The Dancing by the recently departed Gerald Stern. They marvel at how the poem is constructed, get deep into a discussion of encroaching fascism, and even have time to rage at the "evil Mellons," bring in Bruce Springsteen and Michael Bay, and pause to reflect on how lyric poetry can address structural inequalities. You can read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57177/the-dancing The Dancing By: Gerald Stern In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots I have never seen a postwar Philco with the automatic eye nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did in 1945 in that tiny living room on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming, my mother red with laughter, my father cupping his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum, half fart, the world at last a meadow, the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us screaming and falling, as if we were dying, as if we could never stop—in 1945 — in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away from the other dancing—in Poland and Germany— oh God of mercy, oh wild God. Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack have a time talking about the poem "A Time" by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. She is a multi-award winning poet whose latest book-length poem "Look at This Blue" is on the short list for the 2022 National Book Award. Come for the poetry analysis, stay for the discussion of red wolves, climate crisis, Tolkein, impermanence, and diectic words. You can read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89060/a-time-570d716c13a77 A Time By: Allison Adelle Hedge Coke The problem— it’s not been written yet, the omens: the headless owl, the bobcat struck, the red wolf where she could not be. None of it done and yet it’s over. Nothing yet of night when she called me closer asked me to bring her crow painting to stay straight across from her feet so she could waken into it, remember her friend. Of Old Chief alongside her shoulder still watching over her just as the mountain had done throughout her Alberta childhood. The Pendleton shroud bearing our braids, her figure in flaming pyre. The cards, the notes, the tasks the things undone, not done and she with us faraway as this has always been and ever will continue. We meet we leave we meld and vaporize from whatever it was that held us human in this life. And all the beautiful things that lead our thoughts and give us reason remain despite the leaving and all I know is what you know when it is over said and done it was a time and there was never enough of it. Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack dig into the list/poem/prose piece/literary mystery Not Writing by Anne Boyer. Along the way they discuss what they are and are not writing themselves, Jack asks about why the poem never becomes monotonous, and Connor offers his thoughts about how writing, time, and capitalism intersect both in the poem and in life. Read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58316/not-writing [I know, I know. This is usually where we put the poem. But this one's too long! It exceeds the 4000 character limit.] Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss Sasha Banks' poem, america, MINE from her collection of the same name. They start by examining some of the poem's formal elements like its lack of traditional punctuation, and quickly jump to big themes like how the idea of vengeance is transformed in the poem and the contested symbol of the American flag is used. Read the full poem below, or here: http://thecollagist.com/the-collagist/2016/8/27/america-mine.html america, MINE By: Sasha Banks the spit upon this/country's flag is mine and/I do/not weep at it/consider the twisted shape of grief about/the mouth upon learning the beast/under the bed has always been your country/careful, citizen/this nation will name you/daughter/while its tongue/sucks the muscle from every dark body/you have loved to the edge of this/vanished second/I let the rage be/like water/this time/drinking and drinking until/my darkness marries/my eyes to blindness/and I am/led by the ghosts still/awake/in the soil/still/thirsty from/below/the fear/is under my heal/now/there are multitudes/in my third rib and/we are not/asking anymore/do you see us now/this is the last kindness/we will have your sweat/and dress you in your own/curses/oh country/what I mean to say/is/all the living after/this/will be the vengeance. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Posted at long last after overcoming major technical difficulties!! Connor and Jack dive into the poem "I Hear a Dog Who is Always in My Death" by Samuel Ace. They discuss the poem's evocative imagery, ruminate on it's call to action against encroaching fascism, and find resonances with English and Egyptian mythology. They also make some time to dunk on transphobes. I Hear a Dog Who is Always in My Death By: Samuel Ace How is it you bring me back to the cliffs the bright heads of eagles the vessels of grief in the soil? I dig for you with a gentle bit of lighter fluid and three miniature rakes burning only a single speck of dirt to touch a twig as tiny as a neuron or even smaller one magic synapse inside the terminus limbs of your breath The fighter jets fly over the house every hour no sound but inside our hands I hear a far chime and I am cold a north wind and the grit of night first the murmur then the corpse first the paddling then the banquet first the muzzle then the hanging the plea first the break then the tap the tap I hear your skin the reach of your arms the slick along your thighs more floorboard than step first the flannel then the gag first the bells then the exhale I hear a dog who is always in my death the breath of a mother who holds a gun a pillow in the shape of a heart first the planes then the criminal ponds first the ghost boats then the trains first the gates then the bargain a child formed from my fingertip and the eye of my grandmother’s mother a child born at 90 the rise and rush of air a child who walks from the gas Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss the poem "First Snow" by Arthur Sze. They discuss life, death, being, nothingness, and all the hidden meaning waiting to leap out of the every day. They also talk about how some poems can urge us towards presence and mindfulness and the necessity of taking the occasional pause in life. First Snow By: Arthur Sze A rabbit has stopped on the gravel driveway: imbibing the silence, you stare at spruce needles: there's no sound of a leaf blower, no sign of a black bear; a few weeks ago, a buck scraped his rack against an aspen trunk; a carpenter scribed a plank along a curved stone wall. You only spot the rabbit's ears and tail: when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel, but when it stops, it blends in again; the world of being is like this gravel: you think you own a car, a house, this blue-zigzagged shirt, but you just borrow these things. Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams and stood at Gibraltar, but you possess nothing. Snow melts into a pool of clear water; and, in this stillness, starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

A dive into the Close Talking archives - one of the first episodes we ever recorded in which we discuss the poem "The Lynching Postcard, Duluth, Minnesota" by Ray Gonzalez. Poetry can seem a little insignificant in the face of an onslaught of historically awful news, like the one we've all been experience the last few weeks. But poems like this one have a special kind of power - cutting to deep truths and insisting on action in the face of the horrors of history. And reminding us that history walks along side us every day. The Lynching Postcard, Duluth, Minnesota By: Ray Gonzalez There is a postcard in an antique shop in Duluth with a photograph of the infamous lynching of a black man carried out in the town in the 1930s. The owner was turned down by eBay when he wanted to sell it there. Tourists walk into his shop and stare at the lone card in the glass case. The owner says it is better to sell it than donate it to a museum where it would be locked away in a drawer. Some people want it removed. Others snicker and stare, shake their heads and accept the fact this is "only Minnesota." Each morning, the shop owner glances at the case to make sure the postcard is there. Thousands have bowed over the glass. At night, when the shop is closed, the postcard lies in the case, the body hanging in the cold moonlight from Lake Superior, the shadow from the swinging body forming a shape that rises through the glass to darken the shop. Over a dozen people have come across it. They don't know the act of bending over the glass to study the dead body on the pole is forming an invisible arc of light over time, a shadow where those who bow to look imitate the shape of a hanging tree. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Tara Betts to discuss the poem "Small Illuminations" from her forthcoming collection REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR. They discuss the legacy of Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, the realities of incarceration, and how the collection REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR grew over time. Get a copy of REFUSE TO DISAPPEAR, here: https://wordworksbooks.org/product/refuse-to-disappear/#:~:text=In%20Refuse%20to%20Disappear%20Tara,devoted%20attention%20to%20Black%20Life. Small Illuminations By: Tara Betts I. Albert is a gentle tower. His arms arched over tabletop like bridge beams or girders. Even if he does not understand everything he reads, he smiles like a good kid, like the kid he probably was 30-some-years ago when he was in the wrong car with the wrong people at the wrong time that he will never get back. II. The attention to detail borders on flawless. Unscuffed white sneakers, perfected lined fades tucked under precisely folded skullies immaculate with what you got as a clean, hard-fought pride. III. One week, I bring crisp folders, a bundle of sharpened pencils with full pink erasers, round and soft as a doll’s blush. They rub away small errors, clearing smudges from a page like an actual correction. IV. I look for Albert’s easy grin first when I walk into the concrete block classroom. Locked in the education building, relieved that the broken window denies the cold like a plea. One brother in blues with thermal sleeves peeking out of the dull faded ocean of cloth arching over his torso. A cellmate hands me the slightly worn, safeguarded, staple-bound book of poems— the signature resolute and matching letters of a poet’s name who strolled into prison like a mother without fear of any child. Margaret Burroughs—more than a decade since she left the cell of her body. I clutch her poems knowing how they passed from her hands like a prayer. We both smile— small illuminations in a dark hell—when the cellmate says Albert wanted you to have this. He got transferred. He knew you’d keep it safe. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack are joined by poet, essayist, and journalist Noor Hindi. They dig into the poem "Self Interrogation" the first poem in Hindi's new collection DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW. coming out on 5/31 from Haymarket Books. She discusses the inspiration behind some of the poems in the book, the significance of the color yellow, and the importance of having a variety of experiences and perspectives in newsrooms. Learn more about Noor Hindi, here: https://noorhindi.com/ Get a copy of DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW., here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1871-dear-god-dear-bones-dear-yellow Self Interrogation By: Noor Hindi At the airport terminal, a woman is crying. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me, I -- Need to focus. On something besides. The ruse of migration. Lights so loud. The unending sound. Of a newscaster's voice. Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Mother. Please, forgive me. I want to call in dead. Last week, there was a child in a yellow dress reading a poem. For minutes on end, I could not be indifferent to anything. Not the grass, dying yellow. Not the bombs, twisting limbs. Not the gates. Not the--Yes. There is a woman crying at terminal six. Yes, I think of the child. The tiny silver heart she placed in my palm. How I threw it in the trash, seconds later. But I promise. I promise. I promise. I -- meant it as an act of survival. Maybe love. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack explore Aracelis Girmay's poem "Elegy" from her 2011 collection Kingdom Animalia. They talk through the opening line's call to community and the ways it resonates with Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese," they get scientific while discussing the nature imagery in the poem, and they delve into the poem's pandemic-era relevance. Elegy By: Aracelis Girmay What to do with this knowledge that our living is not guaranteed? Perhaps one day you touch the young branch of something beautiful. & it grows & grows despite your birthdays & the death certificate, & it one day shades the heads of something beautiful or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out of your house, then, believing in this. Nothing else matters. All above us is the touching of strangers & parrots, some of them human, some of them not human. Listen to me. I am telling you a true thing. This is the only kingdom. The kingdom of touching; the touches of the disappearing, things. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack conclude their exploration of poetic line breaks with a bit of a catch all episode looking at how line breaks can reveal information, play with time, and enhance surprise. They pull examples from Audre Lorde, Chris Tse, Rae Armantrout, and Emily Dickinson. There's even time for mentions of laminated dough and Indiana Jones. Episode 1 of Line Break Week - Why break lines?: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week - Drama: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Episode 3 of Line Break Week - Miming: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-159-dramas-silent-cousin-miming-with-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-3 Episode 4 of Line Break Week - Emphasis: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-160-using-poetic-line-breaks-for-emphasis-line-break-week-ep-4 Episode 5 of Line Break Week - Rhythm: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-161-from-meters-to-measures-rhythm-in-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-5 Episode 6 of Line Break Week - Ambiguity: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-162-ambiguity-in-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-6 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

As line break week hurdles towards its conclusion, Connor and Jack pause to consider ambiguity in line breaks. When the meaning of a word or phrase is altered by the positioning of a line break. They discuss the classic WB Yeats poem "Leda and the Swan" and Franz Wright's "Empty Cathedral." Along the way they talk about twists and turns in other literary work like Spiderman: Homecoming, Midnight Mass, and The Birds. Episode 1 of Line Break Week - Why break lines?: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week - Drama: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Episode 3 of Line Break Week - Miming: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-159-dramas-silent-cousin-miming-with-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-3 Episode 4 of Line Break Week - Emphasis: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-160-using-poetic-line-breaks-for-emphasis-line-break-week-ep-4 Episode 5 of Line Break Week - Rhythm: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-161-from-meters-to-measures-rhythm-in-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-5 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack delve ever deeper into the world of poetic line breaks. This time they're looking at how line breaks build rhythm in poems. They discuss rhythm within lines running through various literary terms and talking through some of the most popular meters. Then they move on to how line breaks facilitate rhythm through rhyme and anaphora. using examples from Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Forrest Gander. Stay tuned for the galactic premier of a new, impromptu song all about line breaks. Episode 1 of Line Break Week - Why break lines?: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week - Drama: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Episode 3 of Line Break Week - Miming: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-159-dramas-silent-cousin-miming-with-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-3 Episode 4 of Line Break Week - Emphasis: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-160-using-poetic-line-breaks-for-emphasis-line-break-week-ep-4 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack continue their exploration of all the ways lines can be broken and all the reasons a poet might have for breaking a line. Today they discuss using line breaks for emphasis focusing on the poem "The Pope's Penis" by Sharon Olds. They also discuss the sacred and profane resonances the poem has with Bob Dylan's masterpiece, "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." Episode 1 of Line Break Week - Why break lines?: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week - Drama: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Episode 3 of Line Break Week - Miming: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-159-dramas-silent-cousin-miming-with-line-breaks-line-break-week-ep-3 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack continue their dive into the intricacies of the poetic line break this time discussing miming in line breaks. They draw examples from Pierre Joris, James Wright, and Frank O'Hara to close out National Poetry Month 2022 in style! Episode 1 of Line Break Week: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Episode 2 of Line Break Week: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-158-who-will-bring-the-drama-the-line-break-line-break-week-ep-2 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack continue their week-long exploration of line breaks in poetry closing out National Poetry Month 2022. Today they focus on how line breaks can build drama in a poem. Do they take a detour into discussing Entourage along the way? Maybe. But that's all part of the drama. The focus on a poem by Tacey M. Atsitty that uses line breaks to create drama throughout. Check out Episode 1 of Line Break Week, here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-157-why-break-a-line-line-break-week-ep-1 Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Starting a little later than planned, but it's time for the fourth annual last-week-of-poetry-month Close Talking extravaganza! In past years Connor and Jack have talked about haiku, shared comforting poems, and investigated the sonnet. Now, they take on their grandest subject yet - the line break. They dig into why poets break lines, what makes line breaks so special, and even give examples ranging from Cynthia Cruz and Patrick Cotter to Gwendolyn Brooks. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss "Beckoned" by living legend Forrest Gander. The poem, from Gander's Pulitzer Prize winning collection "Be With" grapples with grief and loss. In the discussion, Connor and Jack touch on the poem's use of anaphora and use of sound, investigate the ways nature imagery shows up throughout, and even find some stylistic connections between the poem and the current Marvel Disney+ series, Moonknight. Beckoned By: Forrest Gander At which point my grief-sounds ricocheted outside of language. Something like a drifting swarm of bees. At which point in the tetric silence that followed I was swarmed by those bees and lost consciousness. At which point there was no way out for me either. At which point I carried on in a semi-coma, dreaming I was awake, avoiding friends and puking, plucking stingers from my face and arms. At which point her voice was pinned to a backdrop of vaporous color. At which point the crane's bustles flared. At which point, coming to, I knew I'd pay the whole flag-pull fare. At which point the driver turned and said it doesn't need to be your fault for it to break you. At which point without any lurching commencement, he began to play a vulture-bone flute. At which point I grew old and it was like ripping open the beehive with my hands again. At which point I conceived a realm more real than life. At which point there was at least some possibility. Some possibility, in which I didn't believe, of being with her once more. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Caitlin Scarano to discuss the poem "Buttercream" from her new collection THE NECESSITY OF WILDFIRE. The collection won the Wren Poetry Prize, selected by final judge Ada Limón. Scarano discusses the poem, the collection, and the ways her work has taken what she describes as an "environmental turn" since completing THE NECESSITY OF WILDFIRE. She also talks about some of her upcoming projects that blend art with environmental action. Order a copy of the book, here: https://www.blairpub.com/shop/necessity-of-wildfire Learn more about Caitlin Scarano, here:https://www.caitlinscarano.com/ Buttercream By: Caitlin Scarano I cut open an avocado only to find it dappled with rot. I eat it anyway. Because my blood burns, I decide not to have children. My father's father was full of copper. His son, a liver textured with scarring. I ate it anyway. I asked for guidance, not a leash and a collar. I turn my belly inside out - it's dappled with eggs the color of buttercream. My hens don't know which are fertilized and which aren't. My mother lost her wedding ring in vegetable garden dirt. I dig out the rot. I say I decided not to have children but no man ever asked me and meant it. If each parent gives you a defective gene, you can bake a cake or crawl across the floor between buckets of your own blood. I dig but never find the ring. Some hens sit on eggs until they rot. Some men take hammers to their wives. My lover yawns. Of all the stories I could tell, I've learned of all the stories you could tell. Her blood burned. My mother made a red velvet cake with buttercream frosting. She ate the whole thing. She never told anyone who believed her. He might have been sick his whole broken bowl of a life. I might find a golden ring around my iris. I might not be a creature versed in dirt. Anger, like a memory, takes away as much as it provides. Some hens leave their eggs where they land. Either way, we follow. We gather. We eat them. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Michael Kleber-Diggs for a conversation about the Gwendolyn Brooks poem "A Sunset of the City." Michael Kleber-Diggs won the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, has been widely published, and teaches poetry through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop. In addition to digging into Gwendolyn Brooks' captivating poem, the trio also discuss Kleber-Diggs' new collection "Worldly Things" from Milkweed Editions. Get a copy of "Worldly Things" here: https://milkweed.org/book/worldly-things A Sunset of the City By: Gwendolyn Brooks Kathleen Eileen Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love. My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls, Are gone from the house. My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite And night is night. It is a real chill out, The genuine thing. I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer Because sun stays and birds continue to sing. It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone. The sweet flowers indrying and dying down, The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown. It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes. I am aware there is winter to heed. There is no warm house That is fitted with my need. I am cold in this cold house this house Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls. I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs. I am a woman who hurries through her prayers. Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my Desert and my dear relief Come: there shall be such islanding from grief, And small communion with the master shore. Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin, Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry In humming pallor or to leap and die. Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss a classic poem by a classic poet - The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens. They talk about something. They talk about nothing. They talk about how the something of the poem perhaps resides in the nothing. Along the way they reference Taskmaster, King Lear, and much more. (Delayed after some technical difficulties!) The Snow Man By: Wallace Stevens One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss the poem I.R.L. by New Zealand poet Chris Tse. They talk about how media representations and creations can cross into reality, the meaning of "gritty," and why S.O.S is so evocative. In the second part of the show they answer a listener question about how to know where to submit poetry. Connor recommends a study that examines race- and state-specific vaccination rates, and Jack recommends "Reacher" on Amazon Prime, and "Man Like Mobeen" on Netflix. I.R.L. By: Chris Tse In real life you are aging at the rate of a short-lived sitcom and the only kind of loneliness worth laughing about is throwing out half a frozen meal for two because leftovers are never funnier the next day. In real life there is no such thing as a gritty reboot — it’s just fucking gritty all the time, mate, because your best-laid plans are always someone else’s chance to crash a car into the crowd at a men’s rights charity concert. In real life the nice guys pull out of the race when their tires are slashed or they turn back because they think they left the iron on and no one adheres to sports film clichés anyway — we’re all selfish and we want that trophy. In real life you’ll never make it out of your homophobic small town alive, so your left hand begs for water while your right hand swings an ax your left foot drags a church bell while your right foot taps — S.O.S., S.O.S., S.O.S. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss the generation melding poem "Hear the Dogs Crying" by Christy Passion. They discuss the power of car radios, the way the language of the poem leaps along with its subject matter, and even arrive at new readings of the last stanza in real time. In the second part of the show, Connor recommends the recent adaptation of "Station 11" and Jack recommends the music of Amyl and the Sniffers and the web series "Sweet Home Ketteringa" hosted by British comedian, James Acaster. Read the full poem below, or, here: https://www.bambooridge.org/renshi/no-choice-but-to-follow/poem/490/ Hear the Dogs Crying By: Christy Passion A recording of her voice, an old woman's voice full of gravel and lead steeped through the car radio. She spoke of gathering limu visitors on ships, and dusty roads in Waianae. In the distance you could almost hear the dogs crying, the mullet wriggling in the fish bag Nostalgic for a tutu I never knew, I feel the ocean pulse inside me waves rolling over, pushing me till I leap from this car through the congested H-1 across the noise and ashen sky emerge beneath the rains in Nu'uanu. I move past the fresh water ponds past the guava trees towards homes with flimsy tin roofs where my father, already late for school, races up Papakolea with a kite made of fishing twine. Framed in a small kitchen window, tutu scrapes the meat from awa skin for dinner tonight, wipes her hands on old flour bags for dish cloths. She is already small and wants to forget I may be too late- I have tomatoes and onion from the market tutu my hand is out, my plate is empty and some bones for the dogs to stop their crying do you know my name? I am listening for your stories to call me in my hand is out, my plate is empty for your stories to show me the way tutu, do you know my name? Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack celebrate the 150th episode of Close Talking with a classic poem from a living legend - "Dreams" by Nikki Giovanni. They dig into poem's coming-of-age narrative discussing and along the way make musical references galore. Ray Charles and Marjorie Hendrix are just the tip of a harmonious iceberg in this wide-ranging conversation. Learn more about Giovanni, here: https://nikki-giovanni.com/ Read the poem, here (or below): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48224/dreams-56d229494e255 Dreams By: Nikki Giovanni in my younger years before i learned black people aren’t suppose to dream i wanted to be a raelet and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears” or “tal kin bout tal kin bout” or marjorie hendricks and grind all up against the mic and scream “baaaaaby nightandday baaaaaby nightandday” then as i grew and matured i became more sensible and decided i would settle down and just become a sweet inspiration Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss Catherine Barnett's beautiful poem "Epistemology." Fittingly for the season of solstice logs, Hannukah bushes, and Christmas trees, this poem - which contemplates the nature of knowing - name checks "The Secret Life of Trees" and considers the aliveness of our arboreal friends. Learn more about Catherine Barnett, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/catherine-barnett Read the poem, here (or below): https://poets.org/poem/epistemology Epistemology By: Catherine Barnett Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more. Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know. Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord to keep it from fraying? Not the man who called my life a debacle, a word whose sound I love. In a debacle things are unleashed. Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary. I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate, the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing. They don’t use words, but they can be said to love. They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another tree. And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare, to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth. Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss a poem from Seema Yasmin's book "If God Is A Virus." They discuss Yasmin's status as a journalist, poet, and medical doctor; the way she weaves her many areas of expertise together in the poem; and what kind of art might one day represent this period of time. Read more about Yasmin, here: https://pulitzercenter.org/people/seema-yasmin Get a copy of "If God Is A Virus" here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1636-if-god-is-a-virus Read more poems from the book, here: https://pulitzercenter.org/IfGodIsaVirus If God Is a Virus By: Seema Yasmin She is vexed. Absolutely done with your shit. God wants to know why you didn't get a flu shot; why her minions made your left lung collapse white out on the X-ray, rack up a six-figure ICU bill when all they wanted was a warm vacation tropical waters, champagne plasma to sip - not to bring about death - not to turn prunes in pleural fluid. No body wants that. God thinks anti-vaxxers have a death wish. Wonders how they eat organic, snort coke and laundry detergent on weekends. Don't they know yogi detox tea is hepatotoxic? God knew Charles Darwin. Clever woman, she said. Who would want your lot extinct? Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In a slight departure from our regular format, Jack offers a brief remembrance of three recently departed poets - Kamilah Aisha Moon, Etel Adnan, and Robert Bly. Links to more information about the poets and to the poems read in the episode are below. Learn more about Kamilah Aisha Moon, here: http://www.kamilahaishamoon.org/ Read Disbelief here: https://poets.org/poem/disbelief Learn more about Etel Adnan, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/etel-adnan Read an excerpt from The Arab Apocalypse, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53855/xliv-from-the-arab-apocalypse Read an excerpt from The Spring Flowers Own here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53851/from-the-spring-flowers-own-the-morning-after-my-death Learn more about Robert Bly, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-bly Read "Why We Don't Die" here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/152560/why-we-dont-die Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In this special episode, Connor and Jack discuss the 2021 National Book Awards - the long list, the finalists, and the winner "Floaters: Poems" by Martín Espada. They dig into an excerpt from the title poem "Floaters" and discuss how it brings urgent attention to issues of immigration and uses narrative to fight against the dehumanizing language often used to describe those seeking a better life in the United States. Listen to the National Book Awards Finalist Reading, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts4YxshQK10 Learn more about Espada, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/martin-espada Get a copy of "Floaters: Poems" here: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393541038 Read all of "Floaters" here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151158/floaters-5d8d0d07466b9 Excerpt from Floaters By: Martín Espada "Ok, I’m gonna go ahead and ask ... have ya’ll ever seen floaters this clean. I’m not trying to be an a$$ but I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS, could this be another edited photo. We’ve all seen the dems and liberal parties do some pretty sick things." —Anonymous post, “I’m 10-15” Border Patrol Facebook group Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry, like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river, like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float. And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol, keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body, to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks. And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles, names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints: Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos. See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves. Say what we know of them now they are dead: Óscar slapped dough for pizza with oven-blistered fingers. Daughter Valeria sang, banging a toy guitar. He slipped free of the apron he wore in the blast of the oven, sold the motorcycle he would kick till it sputtered to life, counted off pesos for the journey across the river, and the last of his twenty-five years, and the last of her twenty-three months. There is another name that beats its wings in the heart of the trees: Say Tania Vanessa Ávalos, Óscar’s wife and Valeria’s mother, the witness stumbling along the river. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Dr. Len Lawson, co-editor of the new collection "The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry." just released from Blair Publishing. Together they discuss Lawson's poem "Amanda Waller Suite Episode 3: Amanda Waller Has a Woman-to-Woman with Harley Quinn." They discuss finding the complex human side of characters like Waller, the poem's resonance with Nikky Finney's Condoleezza suite, and how the collection "The Future of Black" came together. Get a copy of "The Future of Black" here: https://www.blairpub.com/shop/the-future-of-black Connor and Jack discuss a poem from Finney's Condoleezza Suite on Episode 73 of Close Talking: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-073-concerto-no-7-condoleezza-working-out-at-the-watergate-nikky-finney Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack dive into an iconic poem by an iconic poet - Oodgeroo Noonuccal, also known as Kath Walker, a trailblazing indigenous Australian writer and activist. They discuss the history of racism towards indigenous Australian people, explore the ways the poem plays with perspective, and get a little lost on an environmental tangent about invasive species. Lear more about Oodgeroo Noonuccal, here: https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/noonuccal-oodgeroo Read more of her poems, here: https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/noonuccal-oodgeroo/poems Learn more about the indigenous peoples of Australia, here: https://aiatsis.gov.au/ We Are Going By: Oodgeroo Noonuccal They came in to the little town A semi-naked band subdued and silent All that remained of their tribe. They came here to the place of their old bora ground Where now the many white men hurry about like ants. Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'. Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring. 'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers. We belong here, we are of the old ways. We are the corroboree and the bora ground, We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders. We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told. We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires. We are the lightening bolt over Gaphembah Hill Quick and terrible, And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow. We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon. We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low. We are nature and the past, all the old ways Gone now and scattered. The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter. The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place. The bora ring is gone. The corroboree is gone. And we are going.' Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

A return to when Connor and Jack explored Fady Joudah's poem "Additional Notes on Tea." They discuss how the poem moves around the globe, how it interrogates history, and engages with the concept of God. Close Talking Ep. 132: Poetry and Palestine - https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-132-poetry-and-palestine UNBOXED Vol 15: Poetry and Palestine - https://us2.campaign-archive.com/?u=fd945ee0dcd8acdc0e3aa0f22&id=1551facf0f Additional Notes On Tea By: Fady Joudah In Cairo a boy’s balcony higher than a man’s deathbed. The boy is sipping tea, The view is angular like a fracture. Surrounding the bed, women in wooden chairs. They signal mourning with a scream. Family men on the street run up the stairs and drink raven tea. On the operating table in Solwezi a doctor watches a woman die. Tea while the anesthetic wears off, While the blade is waiting, tea. The doctor says the woman knows god is sleeping Outside heaven in a tent. God is a refugee dreaming of tea. Once upon a time an ocean married a sea to carry tea around. Land was jealous. So it turned into desert and gave no one wood for ships. And when ships became steel, Land turned into ice. And when everything melted, everything tasted like tea. Once upon a time there was a tea party in Boston. Tea, like history, is a non sequitur. I prefer it black. The Chinese drink it green. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss a poem by Andrés Cerpa whose book "The Vault" was recently long-listed for the 2021 National Book Award in Poetry. They dive into the short poem "The Nightmare Touched Its Forehead to My Lips" unpacking the ways it describes grief and loss, the meaning of vaults, and spend time on the title, which is also the title of a whole section of "The Vault." Read the poem here (or below): https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-nightmare-touched-its-forehead-to-my-lips/ Learn more about Andrés Cerpa, here: https://www.andrescerpa.com/ The Nightmare Touched Its Forehead to My Lips By: Andrés Cerpa For the living, water. And now, you’re all the wells mined for their depth. All of the silence & all of the alls I can conjure. You are not in the living room. You are not in your chair. I drove to the end of the world today. Snow in the forecast, so I left my bicycle & the other half of your ashes at home. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In this bonus episode Connor and Jack continue their discussion of Don Mee Choi's poem, Shitty KItty. This time they focus on (rant about?) the history of US foreign policy failures, the lack of consequences for the architects of those disasters, and connect the histories that Shitty Kitty surfaces to contemporary struggles. They also share a some from the "Report by the Special Subcommittee on Disciplinary Problems in the US Navy." Listen to the full episode on "Shitty Kitty" here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-141-shitty-kitty-don-mee-choi Read the poem, here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90212/shitty-kitty Get a copy of Hardly War, here: www.wavepoetry.com/products/hardly-war Learn more about Don Mee Choi, here: www.donmeechoi.com/ Shitty Kitty By: Don Mee Choi Here comes Shitty Kitty en route to the Gulf of Tonkin or en route to a race riot? That is the question and meanwhile discipline is the keystone and meanwhile did you see on TV helicopters being ditched into the sea? That is also my film and meanwhile all refugees must be treated as suspects. Looking for your husband? Looking for your son? That is the question and meanwhile she was the mother of the boy or that is what the translator said or Shitty Kitty or shall we adhere to traditional concepts of military discipline tempered with humanitarianism? That is the question and meanwhile South Korea exports military labor left over from the war. That is also my history or is that your history? That is the question and meanwhile (CHORUS: Dictator Park Chung Hee and his soldiers in Ray-Bans) How much? $7.5 million=per division or Binh Tai massacre=$7.5 million or Binh Hoa massacre=$7.5 million or Dien Nien—Phuoc Binh massacre=$7.5 million or Go Dai massacre=$7.5 milion or Ha My massacre=$7.5 million or Phong Nhi & Phong Nhat massacre=$15 million or Tay Vinh massacre=$7.5 million or Vinh Xuan massacre=$7.5 million or Mighty History? That is the question and meanwhile a riot began over a grilled cheese sandwich at Subic Bay. Discrimination or perception? That is the question and meanwhile the sailor refused to make a statement or translate? That is the question and meanwhile twenty-six men all black were charged with assault and rioting and meanwhile did you translate? That is my question and meanwhile lard or Crisco? Aye, aye, sir! (Anti-CHORUS: kittens in frilly white bonnets, bibs, and mittens) K I T T Y S O N G I, aye-aye-sir! I, crazy-daisy-sir! I, export-quality-sir! I, grill-grill-sir! I, meow-meow-sir! I, kitty-litter-sir! Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss Don Mee Choi's "Shitty Kitty" from her 2016 book "Hardly War." They enmesh themselves in the tangled histories the poem explores - racial violence on US Navy ships in the 1970s, massacres committed by South Korean troops in Vietnam - talk about how the poem fits into the wider project of the book, and explore how the poem engages with the theories of Roland Barthes. Read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90212/shitty-kitty Get a copy of Hardly War, here: https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/hardly-war Learn more about Don Mee Choi, here: http://www.donmeechoi.com/ Shitty Kitty By: Don Mee Choi Here comes Shitty Kitty en route to the Gulf of Tonkin or en route to a race riot? That is the question and meanwhile discipline is the keystone and meanwhile did you see on TV helicopters being ditched into the sea? That is also my film and meanwhile all refugees must be treated as suspects. Looking for your husband? Looking for your son? That is the question and meanwhile she was the mother of the boy or that is what the translator said or Shitty Kitty or shall we adhere to traditional concepts of military discipline tempered with humanitarianism? That is the question and meanwhile South Korea exports military labor left over from the war. That is also my history or is that your history? That is the question and meanwhile (CHORUS: Dictator Park Chung Hee and his soldiers in Ray-Bans) How much? $7.5 million=per division or Binh Tai massacre=$7.5 million or Binh Hoa massacre=$7.5 million or Dien Nien—Phuoc Binh massacre=$7.5 million or Go Dai massacre=$7.5 milion or Ha My massacre=$7.5 million or Phong Nhi & Phong Nhat massacre=$15 million or Tay Vinh massacre=$7.5 million or Vinh Xuan massacre=$7.5 million or Mighty History? That is the question and meanwhile a riot began over a grilled cheese sandwich at Subic Bay. Discrimination or perception? That is the question and meanwhile the sailor refused to make a statement or translate? That is the question and meanwhile twenty-six men all black were charged with assault and rioting and meanwhile did you translate? That is my question and meanwhile lard or Crisco? Aye, aye, sir! (Anti-CHORUS: kittens in frilly white bonnets, bibs, and mittens) K I T T Y S O N G I, aye-aye-sir! I, crazy-daisy-sir! I, export-quality-sir! I, grill-grill-sir! I, meow-meow-sir! I, kitty-litter-sir! Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss the poem "First Snow" by Aria Aber. They explore the poem's subtle and marvelous use of perspective, the representation of snow and frost, and the poem's resonances with the devastating impact US war and intervention has had on Afghanistan. Learn more about Aria Aber here: https://www.ariaaber.com/ Get a copy of her debut collection Hard Damage here: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496215703/ Find Aber's resources to support Afghans here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10-SLGJEb39jpN_vEw8ruvba3iS1BmeU5QoW1AdGEL7M/edit First Snow By: Aria Aber How easy for snow to turn to ice, for snow to disappear the light from the ragged frame of chestnut trees around the warehouse by what’s left of wild chicory, scraped sculptures, weeping dogbane. Hunger borders this land, while snow turns all to immigrants, snow salts the embankment, where turtles wash ashore, literally hundreds of them, frozen hard like grenades of tear gas thrown across a barbwire fence. But who of their free will would ever want to climb that fence to live here, who would pray each night for grace, hoping to pass through the darkened veil of shit, to bear witness to smokestacks, wild champion, knapweed? Who’d loiter around cricks glistening with oil, which, once gone, will, like death, at last, democratize us all? On potato sacks in the snowcapped, abandoned warehouse, there huddle and sit the soiled refugees, bereft, cow-eyed, picking dirt off their scalps, their shelled soles. Among them, wordless, is my mother, and nestled on her lap is I, in love with the light of the first snow of my life, so awed and doubtful still of what lengths the frost wills to go, and what shape it will then take— Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack dig into an excerpt from the epic, book-length poem "John Brown's Body" by Stephen Vincent Benet. In the late 1920s the book was a mega-best seller and won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. They discuss the implications of the poem's popularity, other literary and artistic works that re-tell history, and the durable cultural myths John Brown's story exemplifies. Learn more a out Benét, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stephen-vincent-benet Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss the poem "Why I Am Silent About The Lament" by Abdullah Al-Baradouni, translated by Threa Almontaser. Despite being one of the most prominent and influential poets in the Arab world, until recently only one of Baradouni's poems had been translated into English. Connor and Jack discuss Baradouni's legacy, the ways this poem - written decades ago - speaks to the contemporary human rights crisis in Yemen, and Yemen's deep history of art, culture, and music. Learn more about Abdullah Al-Baradouni, here: https://yemenusedtobe.org/abdullah-al-baradouni/ Learn more about Threa Almontaser, here: https://www.threawrites.com/ Get a copy of her new book The Wild Fox of Yemen, here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/wild-fox-yemen Why I Am Silent About The Lament By: Abdullah Al-Baradouni (trans. Threa Almontaser) They tell me my silence is about lamentation. I tell them the howling is ugly. يقولون لي مالي صمتّ عن الرّثاء فقلت لهم ان العويل قبي Poetry is only for life and I felt like singing, not howling. وما الشعر الاّ للحياة وانّي شعرتُ اغنّي ما شعرت انوح How do I call the dead now that between us are hushed dirt and grave? I am surrounded by mute soil and a mausoleum. وكيف انادي ميّتاً حال بينه وبيني ترابٌ صامت وضريح Howling is only for widows and I am not like a widow who wails on the silent casket. وما النّواحُ الاٍ للثٍكالى ولم أكن كثكلى على صمت النعوش تصيح Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Time travel stories are everywhere - Avengers: Endgame, Loki, Back to the Future, Outlander, the list is endless - but what happens when a poem takes on the question of time travel? Connor and Jack dive into Irish poet, Patrick Cotter's "Time Traveler." They discuss the challenges of thinking about the practicalities of time travel, the poem's use of sound, and the time-warping events of the last year and a half. You can read the whole poem, here (or below): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90658/time-traveler Get a copy of Sonic White Poise, here: https://www.dedaluspress.com/product/sonic-white-poise/ Time Traveler By: Patrick Cotter Now is before he was born. Days of air shaken by bees, crow song probing eaves and quays. Maker of the future a perfect terra-cotta tense, a tense which sings. The absence of push in his education was unpresaged by the door’s lack of wired Sesame. He waits and waits for egress. The door needs only his touch. Its only desire is to swing. He waits for it to open itself, as the cloud opens for the melting press of the sun. He is ready to rot where he leans, leaving a breeze-blown blemish long after he has arrived. Long before he has come into being. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss the Audre Lorde poem "Coping." They discuss Lorde's legacy as a writer and theorist, how poems and other pieces of culture can be palatable containers for unruly emotions, and the nature imagery the poem uses. They also take time to reflect on the ways the poem gets them thinking about climate change. More about Audre Lorde, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/audre-lorde Coping By: Audre Lorde It has rained for five days running the world is a round puddle of sunless water where small islands are only beginning to cope a young boy in my garden is bailing out water from his flower patch when I ask him why he tells me young seeds that have not seen sun forget and drown easily Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

The Pulitzer Prizes just announced the 2021 winners and in poetry, Natalie Diaz won for her collection "Postcolonial Love Poem." In this special episode, Connor and Jack discuss the title poem, the histories at play in the collection, Diaz's well-deserved Pulitzer win, and more! Find "Postcolonial Love Poem" here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/postcolonial-love-poem Hear Diaz read the title poem, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm6poGV9H_Q Hear Connor and Jack discuss Diaz's poem "My Brother at 3A.M." here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-040-my-brother-at-3-am-natalie-diaz Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack explore the poem "Into the Racism Workshop" by award-winning, Menominee, two-spirit poet, Chrystos. Along the way they discuss the long, complex histories held in the term two-spirit, the wry humor in Chrystos' poem, and the note of tempered hope on which it ends. Into the Racism Workshop By: Chrystos For Alma Banda Goddard my cynical feet ambled prepared for indigestion & blank faces of outrageous innocence knowing I'd have to walk over years of media declaring we're vanished or savage or pitiful or noble My toes twitched when I saw so few brown faces but really when one eats racism every time one goes out one’s door the appeal of talking about it is minuscule I sat with my back to the wall facing the door after I changed the chairs to a circle This doesn't really protect me but I con myself into believing it does One of the first speakers piped up I'm only here because my friend is Black & wanted me to do this with her I've already done 300 too many racism workshops Let it be entered into the Book of Stars that I did not kill her or shoot a scathing reply from the hip I let it pass because I could tell she was very interested in taking up all the space with herself & would do it if I said a word They all said something that I could turn into a poem but I got tired & went to sleep behind my interested eyes I've learned that the most important part of these tortures is for them to speak about racism at all Even showing up is heresy because as we all know racism is some vague thing that really doesn't exist or is only the skinheads on a bad day or isn't really a crucial problem not as important certainly as queers being able to marry or get insurance for each other When they turned to me as resident expert on the subject which quite honestly I can't for the life of me understand or make any sense out of I spoke from my feet things I didn't know I knew of our connections of the deadly poison that racism is for all of us Maybe some of them were touched but my bitch voice jumps in to say NOT MUCH! I heard back that someone thought I was brilliant Does that mean that I speak well Or that she was changed It's only her change I need Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

This episode revisits Connor and Jack's discussion of Emily Jungmin Yoon's poem "Say Grace." They explore how gender and religion intertwine in the poem, talk about the difficulties immigrant populations face in new oppressive states, and reflect on Emily Jungmin Yoon's particular kind of reclaiming. Check out the poem below or at this link: www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi…25/say-grace Read more about Yoon here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-jungmin-yoon Read more about Kelly Oliver's Witnessing here: www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/witnessing [italics from the original poem do not display below] Say Grace By: Emily Jungmin Yoon In my country our shamans were women and our gods multiple until white people brought an ecstasy of rosaries and our cities today glow with crosses like graveyards. As a child in Sunday school I was told I’d go to hell if I didn’t believe in God. Our teacher was a woman whose daughters wanted to be nuns and I asked What about babies and what about Buddha, and she said They’re in hell too and so I memorized prayers and recited them in front of women I did not believe in. Deliver us from evil. O sweet Virgin Mary, amen. O sweet. O sweet. In this country, which calls itself Christian, what is sweeter than hearing Have mercy on us. From those who serve different gods. O clement, O loving, O God, O God, amidst ruins, amidst waters, fleeing, fleeing. Deliver us from evil. O sweet, O sweet. In this country, point at the moon, at the stars, point at the way the lake lies, with a hand full of feathers, and they will look at the feathers. And kill you for it. If a word for religion they don’t believe in is magic so be it, let us have magic. Let us have our own mothers and scarves, our spirits, our shamans and our sacred books. Let us keep our stars to ourselves and we shall pray to no one. Let us eat what makes us holy. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack share poetry from Palestinian poets and reflect on the power of poetry as a form of resistance. Poems shared: "Resist, My People, Resist Them" by Dareen Tatour: https://arablit.org/2016/04/27/the-poem-for-which-dareen-tatours-under-house-arrest-resist-my-people-resist-them/ "The House Murdered" by Mahmoud Darwish: https://progressive.org/dispatches/the-house-murdered/ "Israelis Let Bulldozers Grind to Halt —American newspaper headline dropped in our village” by Naomi Shihab Nye: https://losangelesreview.org/review-tiny-journalist-naomi-shihab-nye/ Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. To finish off a full week of episodes, a look at some contemporary sonnets and ways that poets have added to (and moved beyond)the basic fourteen line form. Nicole Sealey's 29 line "candelabra with heads" Paisley Rekdal's anagrammatical sonnets, Jericho Brown's creation of The Duplex and more are discussed. candelabra with heads by Nicole Sealey Had I not brought with me my mind as it has been made, this thing, this brood of mannequins, cocooned and mounted on a wooden scaffold, might be eight infants swaddled and sleeping. Might be eight fleshy fingers on one hand. Might be a family tree with eight pictured frames. Such treaties occur in the brain. Can you see them hanging? Their shadow is a crowd stripping the tree of souvenirs. Skin shrinks and splits. The bodies weep fat the color of yolk. Can you smell them burning? Their perfume climbing as wisteria would a trellis. as wisteria would a trellis. burning? Their perfume climbing fat the color of yolk. Can you smell them Skin shrinks and splits. The bodies weep is a crowd stripping the tree of souvenirs. Can you see them hanging? Their shadow frames. Such treaties occur in the brain. Might be a family tree with eight pictured Might be eight fleshy fingers on one hand. might be eight infants swaddled and sleeping. and mounted on a wooden scaffold, this brood of mannequins, cocooned as it has been made, this thing, Had I not brought with me my mind Who can see this and not see lynchings? Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. In this episode, they explore sonnets from the United States and discuss how the sonnet traveled around the world. They dig into Claude McKay's "America" and Gwendolyn Brooks' "the rites for Cousin Vit." America By: Claude McKay Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. the rites for Cousin Vit By: Gwendolyn Brooks Carried her unprotesting out the door. Kicked back the casket-stand. But it can't hold her, That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her, The lid's contrition nor the bolts before. Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even now, surmise, She rises in the sunshine. There she goes, Back to the bars she knew and the repose In love-rooms and the things in people's eyes. Too vital and too squeaking. Must emerge. Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss, Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. In episode five they travel forward hundreds of years and explore sonnets that go beyond the bounds of love to describe war, internment, and much more. Poems featured include "The Road to Corbie" by American war poet John Allan Wyath and "Barracks Home" by Toyo Suyemoto. The Road to Corbie By: John Allan Wyath Our staff car flies and trails a long-spun haze over the looping road and the surge and fall of the heaving plains ~~ quick dusty tree trunks throw their flickering bars of shadow in our eyes. A wood ~~ men leading horses out to graze ~~ a misty bridge, and past the lumbering crawl of crowded lorries ~~ low hills all aglow with tufts of trees against the evening skies and long blond hill slopes catching level rays along their quilted flanks ~~ and under all, the deep earth breathing like a thing asleep. And there, Corbie ~~ her brittle walls brought low ~~ a brick-choked wreck, in which her ruins rise like gravestones planted in a rubbish heap. Barracks Home By: Toyo Suyemoto This is our barracks, squatting on the ground, Tar papered shacks, partitioned into rooms By sheetrock walls, transmitting every sound Of neighbor's gossip or the sweep of brooms The open door welcomes the refugees, And now at least there is no need to roam Afar: here space enlarges memories Beyond the bounds of camp and this new home. The floor is carpeted with dust, wind-borne Dry alkalai, patterned with insect feet, What peace can such a place as this impart? We can but sense, bewildered and forlorn, That time, disrupted by the war from neat Routines, must now adjust within the heart. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. In episode four they travel to 1500s England to discuss the next major development of the sonnet, the Shakespearean sonnet. They discuss its differences from the Petrarchan, carpe diem, as well as one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. Sonnet 73 By: William Shakespeare That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long. Holy Sonnets: [Batter my Heart] By: John Donne Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. In episode three they travel back to cusp-of-the-Renaissance-Italy to discuss Petrarch, one of the earliest and best known masters of the sonnet. They discuss his infatuation with a woman named Laura, dig into one of his works, and even bring the conversation around to the MCU. Sonnet 90 By: Petrarch (translated by Anthony Mortimer) Upon the breeze she spread her golden hair That in a thousand gentle knots was turned And the sweet light beyond all measure burned In eyes where now that radiance is rare; And in her face there seemed to come an air Of pity, true or false, that I discerned: I had love’s tinder in my breast unburned Was it a wonder if it kindled there? She moved not like a mortal, but as though She bore an angel’s form, her words had then A sound that simple human voices lack; A heavenly spirit, a living sun Was what I saw; now, if it is not so, The wound’s not healed because the bow grows slack Monica Youn on Petrarch and the sonnet: https://poetshouse.org/petrarchs-hangover-an-argument-in-five-sonnets/ Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. Episode 2 explores one of the most fundamental features of the sonnet: the volta. They discuss the voltas of a canonical if problematic sonnet, "Leda and the Swan" by W.B. Yeats, as well as the first sonnet in Eduardo Corral's "Border Triptych." Leda and the Swan By: W.B. Yeats A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? from "Border Triptych" By: Eduardo Corral For the past fifteen years, six days a week, at half past eight, Jorge has biked into my checkpoint station. He hawks over his papers, allows me to examine his lunch box, & then wheels off to his twelve hour shift at the pallet & crate factory. I’m close to madness. I suspect he’s been smuggling contraband, prescription or illegal. He sports new toupees under a cap depicting an eagle devouring a snake. He rides spit-shined bikes that I inspect by taking them apart, checking inside the hollow pipes, sometimes slicing open the tires, but so far, nothing. Jorge always remains calm, & doesn’t say a damn thing. Yesterday, a few days from my retirement, I swallowed my pride, & swore, if he told me the truth, to keep my lips tight. The bastard smiled, & casually replied, I smuggle bikes. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. To start off they travel back almost 800 years to the birth of the sonnet, discuss "Sonetto 26" by Giacomo da Lentini, and then zoom back to the present and dive into Terrance Hayes American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin." Sonetto 26 By: Giacomo da Lentini (Translation by Leo Zoutewelle) I’ve seen it rain on sunny days And seen the darkness flash with light And even lightning turn to haze, Yes, frozen snow turn warm and bright And sweet things taste of bitterness And what is bitter taste most sweet And enemies their love confess And good, close friends no longer meet. Yet stranger things I’ve seen of love Who healed my wounds by wounding me. The fire in me he quenched before; The life he gave was the end thereof, The fire that slew eluded me. Once saved from love, love now burns more. American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin By: Terrance Hayes I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame. I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone. I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold While your better selves watch from the bleachers. I make you both gym & crow here. As the crow You undergo a beautiful catharsis trapped one night In the shadows of the gym. As the gym, the feel of crow- Shit dropping to your floors is not unlike the stars Falling from the pep rally posters on your walls. I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart. Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. It is not enough To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Revisit our conversation about the poem "Could We Please Give the Police Departments to the Grandmothers?" by Junauda Petrus. This episode originally aired almost a year ago, but the events of the last few weeks had both Connor and Jack thinking about this poem's urgent message. More about Junauda Petrus here: junauda.com/ Could we please give the police departments to the grandmothers? By: Junauda Petrus Give them the salaries and the pensions and the city vehicles, but make them a fleet of vintage corvettes, jaguars and cadillacs, with white leather interior. Diamond in the back, sunroof top and digging the scene with the gangsta lean. Let the cars be badass! You would hear the old school jams like Patti Labelle, Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker and Al Green. You would hear Sweet Honey in the Rock harmonizing on “We who believe in freedom will not rest” bumping out the speakers. And they got the booming system. If you up to mischief, they will pick you up swiftly in their sweet ride and look at you until you catch shame and look down at your lap. She asks you if you are hungry and you say “yes” and of course you are. She got a crown of dreadlocks and on the dashboard you see brown faces like yours, shea buttered and loved up. And there are no precincts. Just love temples, that got spaces to meditate and eat delicious food. mangoes, blueberries, nectarines, cornbread, peas and rice, fried plantain, fufu, yams, greens, okra, pecan pie, salad and lemonade. Things that make your mouth water and soul arrive. All the hungry bellies know warmth, all the children expect love. The grandmas help you with homework, practice yoga with you and teach you how to make jambalaya and coconut cake. From scratch. When you're sleepy she will start humming and rub your back while you drift off. A song that she used to have the record of when she was your age. She remembers how it felt like to be you and be young and not know the world that good. Grandma is a sacred child herself, who just circled the sun enough times into the ripeness of her cronehood. She wants your life to be sweeter. When you are wildin’ out because your heart is broke or you don’t have what you need the grandmas take your hand and lead you to their gardens. You can lay down amongst the flowers. Her grasses, roses, dahlias, irises, lilies, collards, kale, eggplants, blackberries. She wants you know that you are safe and protected, universal limitless, sacred, sensual, divine and free. Grandma is the original warrior, wild since birth, comfortable in loving fiercely. She has fought so that you don’t have to, not in the same ways at least. So give the police departments to the grandmas, they are fearless, classy and actualized. Blossomed from love. They wear what they want and say what they please. Believe that. There wouldn’t be noise citations when the grandmas ride through our streets, blasting Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Alice Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, KRS-One. All that good music. The kids gonna hula hoop to it and sell her lemonade made from heirloom pink lemons and maple syrup. The car is solar powered and carbon footprint-less, the grandmas designed the technology themselves. At night they park the cars in a circle so all can sit in them with the sun roofs down, and look at the stars, talk about astrological signs, what to plant tomorrow based on the moon's mood and help you memorize Audre Lorde and James Baldwin quotes. She always looks you in the eye and acknowledges the light in you with no hesitation or fear. And grandma loves you fiercely forever. She sees the pain in our bravado, the confusion in our anger, the depth behind our coldness. Grandma know what oppression has done to our souls and is gonna change it one love temple at a time. She has no fear. Website: www.closetalking.com/ Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry E-mail: closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss the newly resonant poem "[By the road to the contagious hospital]" by the great William Carlos Williams, which is the first poem in Williams' iconic Spring and All. They explore the now-emergent "pandemic in spring" sub-genre, which this poem is surely canon. They also talk about the poem's modernist context, its grounded attention to detail and nature, and its striking first line. [By the road to the contagious hospital] By: William Carlos Williams By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the waste of broad, muddy fields brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen patches of standing water the scattering of tall trees All along the road the reddish purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy stuff of bushes and small trees with dead, brown leaves under them leafless vines— Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches— They enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all save that they enter. All about them the cold, familiar wind— Now the grass, tomorrow the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf One by one objects are defined— It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of entrance—Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack are joined by special guest (and Close Talking social media manager) Corey China for this discussion of Marilyn Chin's devastating poem "Blues on Yellow." In the conversation they discuss the history of anti-Asian hatred and violence in the United States, the struggles for cross-community solidarity, and the resonances of the poem's use of the blues form. Blues on Yellow By: Marilyn Chin The canary died in the gold mine, her dreams got lost in the sieve. The canary died in the gold mine, her dreams got lost in the sieve. Her husband the crow killed under the railroad, the spokes hath shorn his wings. Something’s cookin’ in Chin’s kitchen, ten thousand yellow-bellied sapsuckers baked in a pie. Something’s cookin’ in Chin’s kitchen, ten thousand yellow-bellied sapsuckers baked in a pie. Something’s cookin’ in Chin’s kitchen, die die yellow bird, die die. O crack an egg on the griddle, yellow will ooze into white. O crack an egg on the griddle, yellow will ooze into white. Run, run, sweet little Puritan, yellow will ooze into white. If you cut my yellow wrists, I’ll teach my yellow toes to write. If you cut my yellow wrists, I’ll teach my yellow toes to write. If you cut my yellow fists, I’ll teach my yellow toes to fight. Do not be afraid to perish, my mother, Buddha’s compassion is nigh. Do not be afraid to perish, my mother, our boat will sail tonight. Your babies will reach the promised land, the stars will be their guide. I am so mellow yellow, mellow yellow, Buddha sings in my veins. I am so mellow yellow, mellow yellow, Buddha sings in my veins. O take me to the land of the unreborn, there’s no life on earth without pain. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss Zaffar Kunial's elegant sonnet, "The Word." They marvel at the poem's seemingly effortless meditation on being between two cultures—particularly in a postcolonial context—and how it evokes so much through one simple word: "the." Check out Kunial's latest collection, here: https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571337651-us.html. You can hear Kunial read "The Word", here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P87bOpCzn6o The Word By: Zaffar Kunial I couldn’t tell you now what possessed me to shut summer out and stay in my room. Or at least attempt to. In bed mostly. It’s my dad, standing in the door frame not entering – but pausing to shape advice that keeps coming back. “Whatever is matter, must enjoy the life.” He pronounced this twice. And me, I heard wrongness in putting a the before life. In two minds. Ashamed. Aware. That I knew better, though was stuck inside while the sun was out. That I’m native here. In a halfway house. Like that sticking word. That definite article, half right, half wrong, still present between enjoy and life. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack explore the poem "In Youngsville" by Tyree Daye. They discuss the way the poem creates a sense of place, its connections to the blues form, and even dive deep into how it plays with using stressed and unstressed syllables. You can buy Daye's latest book, Cardinal, here: https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/cardinal-by-tyree-daye/ You can find the poem, here: http://www.boaatpress.com/in-youngsville In Youngsville By: Tyree Daye I learned what a bullet does to a back, to a mother. After every funeral it rains, I was told that’s God crying in Youngsville. My uncle walked our holed streets until he died sun soaked, broken in, left me young boy and bitter in Youngsville. Hallelujahs knocked on screen doors, let the lord in. We stood on porches and watched the saved stitch wings in Youngsville. Black berries hung in my aunt's back yard where we cut the asshole off a trout, guts laid on a cutting board in Youngsville. We were told a storm was a sermon, lightning horse whips the sky, milks rain in Youngsville. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Content Warning: Suicidality Connor and Jack think through Diana Khoi Nguyen's remarkable poem "Family Ties," part of her haunting debut collection Ghost Of. They discuss the complex emotional textures Nguyen evokes in the poem, the challenges of representations of suicide, and ideas of family, self, and metaphorical webs. More on Nguyen here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/diana-khoi-nguyen Family Ties By: Diana Khoi Nguyen Gradually a girl’s innocence itself becomes her major crime A doe and her two fawns bent low in the sumac along the bank of a highway, the pinched peach of their ears twitching in the heat Into the disordered evening my brother cut out only his face from every photograph in the hall, carefully slipping each frame back into position What good does it do? Decades of no faces other than our own chipping faces What good does it do, this resemblance to nothing we know of the dollhouse New parents watch their newborn resting in a sunny patch of an empty room, the newborn making sense of its container— And from the road a deer ripened in death and a tuft of fur—or dandelion— tumbled along, gently circled, driftwood, shaking loose, gathered, dissolving into the mouths of jewelweed nearby Earth is rife with iron and blood is rich in stardust Immediately I spotted one hoof print, then nothing, as if this was where she dragged herself out of the body Strips of tire torn from their orbit Is it right then, that we are left to hurtle alone Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss a deceptively simple poem full of interwoven contradictions - Humberto Ak'abal's "The Altar." They discuss the multiple layers of linguistic conquest implicit in a poem that has moved from K'iche' to Spanish to English, the history of Guatemala and US involvement in the country's political affairs, and ponder the big questions posed by the poems little candles. More on Ak'abal, here: https://www.akabal.com/ Read the poem in K'iche', Spanish, and English, here: https://www.akabal.com/poems/thealtar.html The Altar By: Humberto Ak’abal The shadows light their candles. The night is the altar, the silence is the prayer. And just moments before dawn, with one little breath the wind puts them out. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Recorded before the attempted coup at the US Capitol, Jack and Connor discuss the poem "Fuck Your Lecture On Craft, My People Are Dying" by Noor Hindi. They discuss the history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the way the poem engages with the tensions of being both Palestinian and American, and how to do craft without talking about craft. Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying By: Noor Hindi Colonizers write about flowers. I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks seconds before becoming daisies. I want to be like those poets who care about the moon. Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons. It’s so beautiful, the moon. They’re so beautiful, the flowers. I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad. He watches Al Jazeera all day. I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan. I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies. Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound. When I die, I promise to haunt you forever. One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

The first ever Close Talking episode to drop on Christmas day is a fittingly wintery pick - Connor and Jack contemplate the many layers of meaning in the classic poem "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. They cover everything from the five love languages, to the lifelong impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences, and the limits of the sonnet. More on Robert Hayden, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-hayden Those Winter Sundays By: Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices? Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack get meta and lose both the forest and the trees while dancing with Robert Hass' poem, "The Problem of Describing Trees." They discuss the poem's use of self-reflexivity, scientific language, and tango with a Yeats allusion. More on Robert Hass here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-hass The Problem of Describing Trees By: Robert Hass The aspen glitters in the wind. And that delights us. The leaf flutters, turning, Because that motion in the heat of summer Protects its cells from drying out. Likewise the leaf Of the cottonwood. The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem And the tree danced. No. The tree capitalized. No. There are limits to saying, In language, what the tree did. It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us. Dance with me, dancer. Oh, I will. Aspens doing something in the wind. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack amble through the enchantingly twisting Richard Siken poem "Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors." They discuss the responsibility of artists, the ways that culture both creates and is created, and how the poem flows to the logical extremes of its subject. Get "War of the Foxes" here: https://bookshop.org/books/war-of-the-foxes/9781556594779 Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors By: Richard Siken To have a thought, there must be an object— the field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick with sunshine. There must be an object so land a man there, solid on his feet, on solid ground, in a field fully flooded, enough light to see him clearly, the light on his skin and bouncing off his skin. He’s easy to desire since there’s not much to him, vague and smeary in his ochers, in his umbers, burning in the open field. Forget about his insides, his plumbing and his furnaces, put a thing in his hand and be done with it. No one wants to know what’s in his head. It should be enough. To make something beautiful should be enough. It isn’t. It should be. The smear of his head—I paint it out, I paint it in again. I ask it what it wants. I want to be a cornerstone, says the head. Let’s kill something. Land a man in a landscape and he’ll try to conquer it. Make him handsome and you’re a fascist, make him ugly and you’re saying nothing new. The conqueror suits up and takes the field, his horse already painted in beneath him. What do you do with a man like that? While you are deciding, more men ride in. The hand sings weapon. The mind says tool. The body swerves in the service of the mind, which is evidence of the mind but not actual proof. More conquerors. They swarm the field and their painted flags unfurl. Crown yourself with leaves and stake your claim before something smears up the paint. I turned away from darkness to see daylight, to see what would happen. What happened? What does a man want? Power. The men spread, the thought extends. I paint them out, I paint them in again. A blur of forces. Why take more than we need? Because we can. Deep footprint, it leaves a hole. You’d break your heart to make it bigger, so why not crack your skull when the mind swells. A thought bigger than your own head. Try it. Seriously. Cover more ground. I thought of myself as a city and I licked my lips. I thought of myself as a nation and I wrung my hands, I put a thing in your hand. Will you defend yourself? From me, I mean. Let’s kill something. The mind moves forward, the paint layers up: glop glop and shellac. I shovel the color into our faces, I shovel our faces into our faces. They look like me. I move them around. I prefer to blame others, it’s easier. King me. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack go back to the roots of Close Talking for a literary reflection on a consequential election. The first episode of Close Talking, which came out just over four years ago, was a reckoning with the 2016 election. Now, with references to Adrienne Rich, James Baldwin, Shakira and more, Connor and Jack offer a significantly more uplifting look at American elections. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack revisit Louise Glück after she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, discussing Part 2 of the poem "October." They explore the poem's haunting and brilliant use of repetition, its idea of "balm after violence," and the poem's connection with the myth of Persephone, 9/11, and the current American moment. October By: Louise Glück 2. Summer after summer has ended, balm after violence: it does me no good to be good to me now; violence has changed me. Daybreak. The low hills shine ochre and fire, even the fields shine. I know what I see; sun that could be the August sun, returning everything that was taken away— You hear this voice? This is my mind’s voice; you can’t touch my body now. It has changed once, it has hardened, don’t ask it to respond again. A day like a day in summer. Exceptionally still. The long shadows of the maples nearly mauve on the gravel paths. And in the evening, warmth. Night like a night in summer. It does me no good; violence has changed me. My body has grown cold like the stripped fields; now there is only my mind, cautious and wary, with the sense it is being tested. Once more, the sun rises as it rose in summer; bounty, balm after violence. Balm after the leaves have changed, after the fields have been harvested and turned. Tell me this is the future, I won’t believe you. Tell me I’m living, I won’t believe you. Read the whole poem here: https://poems.com/poem/october-section-i/ Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack dive into the briny depths of one of Herman Melville's non-aquatic poetic works, "The Apparition." They talk about its contemporary applicability, their love of Brian Jacques' Redwall books, and share some thoughts on how many avenues there are into the poem. It's a spooky episode for the Halloween season! The Apparition (A Retrospect) By: Herman Melville Convulsions came; and, where the field Long slept in pastoral green, A goblin-mountain was upheaved (Sure the scared sense was all deceived), Marl-glen and slag-ravine. The unreserve of Ill was there, The clinkers in her last retreat; But, ere the eye could take it in, Or mind could comprehension win, It sunk!—and at our feet. So, then, Solidity’s a crust— The core of fire below; all may go well for many a year, But who can think without a fear Of horrors that happen so? Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In this episode, Connor and Jack dive into the beautiful and challenging poem "Snake White, Owl White" by Tacey Atsitty. They discuss finding poem's powerful sound and rhythm, its complex and contradictory expression of self, and finding other anchors as readers in the absence of clear narrative. Snake White, Owl White By: Tacey M. Atsitty When I say that my cheek fell, I mean the bone, the gliding pell sunken. I mean how it hides in rain, in a sky-lit cell, swelling. This is me fallen together, separated from her, that mistelling of Female Warrior Who Split in Two, who pulled from her gut-well a lumpy snake, pale with a scaling tongue; word-slit. I’ve heaved her pang, her yell at the snap of his tail. They drop like words at the end, a quell to the flood-line of an uvula, a face, a cheek pouch—high like shell veins. Birds swim silver in the sky. An owl drops to dwell with me. Gapes. It’s death. I step back. I can’t tell how he rises and dives at me, then turns flight just before my head. When I tell you this is where bone rises to white, I mean tomorrow, a minute later, dive well. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In the third part of a three-part series on poetic responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Connor and Jack look at the ways that 9/11 has continued to reverberate through political and cultural life in the United States and globally. Listen to Part 1 of the Poetry and 9/11 mini-series, here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-107-poetry-and-911-part-1-responding-to-trauma Listen to Part 2 of the Poetry and 9/11 mini-series, here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-108-poetry-and-911-part-2-international-perspectives-and-the-rush-to-war Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In the second episode of a three-part series on poetic responses to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Connor and Jack explore international perspectives on the attacks. They discuss how de-centering can be a powerful and important act when contemplating the impact of 9/11 and the wars started in its aftermath. Listen to Part 1 of the Poetry and 9/11 mini-series, here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-107-poetry-and-911-part-1-responding-to-trauma Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In the first of a three-part series on poetic responses to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Connor and Jack dig into how poetry responded to the trauma of the September 11 attacks. They also discuss how, after 19 years, the attacks are passing from memory into history. They also talk about how the United States' response to the attacks can be contextualized and how efforts at contextualizing 9/11 have been resisted in the past. Along the way, they bring up poems by David Lehman, Billy Collins, Claudia Rankine, and more. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In this all-new episode, Connor and Jack explore the incredible poem "A Stranger" by Saeed Jones. They discuss the poem's grappling with the loss of a mother, the use of distance and restraint, and the many strangers populating this short lyric. A Stranger By: Saeed Jones I wonder if my dead mother still thinks of me. I know I don’t know her new name. I don’t know her, not now. I don’t know if “her” is the word burning in a stranger’s mind when he sees my dead mother walking down the street in her bright black dress. I wonder if he inhales the cigarette smoke that will eventually kill him and thinks “I wish I knew a woman who was both the light and every shadow the light pierces.” I wonder if a passing glance at my dead mother is enough to make a poet out of anyone. I wonder if I’m the song she hums as she waits for the light to change or if I’m just the traffic signal holding her up. Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In this episode Connor and Jack take on "Be Nobody's Darling" by Alice Walker. They discuss what it means to be an outsider, different types of outsider, and how Walker's history of activism as well as her uncomfortable affinity for antisemitic conspiracy theories influence their readings of the poem. Be Nobody’s Darling By: Alice Walker Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm. Watch the people succumb To madness With ample cheer; Let them look askance at you And you askance reply. Be an outcast; Be pleased to walk alone (Uncool) Or line the crowded River beds With other impetuous Fools. Make a merry gathering On the bank Where thousands perished For brave hurt words They said. But be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Qualified to live Among your dead. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In this special bonus episode, hear more of Connor and Jack's conversation with Dr. Hollis Robbins, Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at Sonoma State University and author of "Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition." They discuss how themes of bondage were handled metaphorically by white poets, while they represented a dangerous reality for Black poets, Dr. Robbins shares a story from her time teaching at John's Hopkins, and together they tackle the question of AI generated poetry. For their full discussion of "Freedom Rider: Washout" by James Emanuel, check out Episode 104: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-104-freedom-rider-washout-james-emanuel-wdr-hollis-robbins Go here to get your own copy of Forms of Contention: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820357645/forms-of-contention/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack are joined by Dr. Hollis Robbins, Dean of the School of Arts & Humanities at Sonoma State University and author of the newly published "Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition from University of Georgia Press. They discuss the poem "Freedom Rider: Washout" by James Emanuel, touching on the memory of Rep. John Lewis, one of the original freedom riders, the reasons the sonnet has such a rich history of use by Black poets, and much more. Find out more about Forms of Contention, here: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820357645/forms-of-contention/ Freedom Rider: Washout By: James Emanuel The first blow hurt. (God is love, is love.) My blood spit into the dirt. (Sustain my love, oh, Lord above!) Curses circled one another. (They were angry with their brother.) I was too weak For this holy game. A single freckled fist Knocked out the memory of His name. Bloody, I heard a long, black moan, Like waves from slave ships long ago. With Gabriel Prosser’s dogged knuckles I struck an ancient blow. Published in Stephen Henderson, Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic References (NY: Morrow, 1973), 237. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In this episode, Connor and Jack explore an excerpt from Claudia Rankine's book Don't Let Me Be Lonely. They discuss how the poem conveys the toll of anti-Blackness on the psyche of Black Americans, "hope" and electoral politics, the brilliant use of "flat prose," and listen to the voices and sounds of The Staples, Cornel West, George W. Bush, and Kanye West. More on Rankine here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/claudia-rankine Read the poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57804/dont-let-me-be-lonely-cornel-west-makes-the-point from Don't Let Me Be Lonely By: Claudia Rankine Cornel West makes the point that hope is different from American optimism. After the initial presidential election results come in, I stop watching the news. I want to continue watching, charting, and discussing the counts, the recounts, the hand counts, but I can­not. I lose hope. However Bush came to have won, he would still be winning ten days later and we would still be in the throes of our American optimism. All the non-reporting is a distraction from Bush himself, the same Bush who can't remember if two or three people were convicted for dragging a black man to his death in his home state of Texas. / You don't remember because you don't care. Some­times my mother's voice swells and fills my forehead. Mostly I resist the flooding, but in Bush's case I find myself talking to the television screen: You don't know because you don't care. / Then, like all things impassioned, this voice takes on a life of its own: You don't know because you don't bloody care. Do you? / I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recog­nition that a life can not matter. Or, as there are billions of lives, my sadness is alive alongside the recognition that billions of lives never mattered. I write this with­out breaking my heart, without bursting into anything. Perhaps this is the real source of my sadness. Or, per­haps, Emily Dickinson, my love, hope was never a thing with feathers. I don't know, I just find when the news comes on I switch the channel. This new ten­dency might be indicative of a deepening personality flaw: IMH, The Inability to Maintain Hope, which trans­lates into no innate trust in the supreme laws that gov­ern us. Cornel West says this is what is wrong with black people today—too nihilistic. Too scarred by hope to hope, too experienced to experience, too close to dead is what I think. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

In this episode Connor and Jack discuss the powerful anti-lynching poem "The Lynching" by Claude McKay. They discuss the history of anti-lynching literature, the ways that white terror was enacted for decades, the horror of lynchings as public acts, how lynchings have continued to the present day, and much more. More on Claude McKay, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/claude-mckay Find the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56983/the-lynching The Lynching By: Claude McKay His spirit is smoke ascended to high heaven. His father, by the cruelest way of pain, Had bidden him to his bosom once again; The awful sin remained still unforgiven. All night a bright and solitary star (Perchance the one that ever guided him, Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim) Hung pitifully o'er the swinging char. Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view The ghastly body swaying in the sun: The women thronged to look, but never a one Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue; And little lads, lynchers that were to be, Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack examine the poem "Could We Please Give the Police Departments to the Grandmothers?" by Junauda Petrus. They discuss police abolition, the poem’s imaginative power, and how poetry can help achieve political liberation. As these struggles continue, many groups are doing great work. One is the Young People's Action Coalition, which got Minneapolis public schools to cut ties with the police. Support them: https://bit.ly/2Ao2cxI. More about Junauda Petrus here: https://junauda.com/ Could we please give the police departments to the grandmothers? By: Junauda Petrus Give them the salaries and the pensions and the city vehicles, but make them a fleet of vintage corvettes, jaguars and cadillacs, with white leather interior. Diamond in the back, sunroof top and digging the scene with the gangsta lean. Let the cars be badass! You would hear the old school jams like Patti Labelle, Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker and Al Green. You would hear Sweet Honey in the Rock harmonizing on “We who believe in freedom will not rest” bumping out the speakers. And they got the booming system. If you up to mischief, they will pick you up swiftly in their sweet ride and look at you until you catch shame and look down at your lap. She asks you if you are hungry and you say “yes” and of course you are. She got a crown of dreadlocks and on the dashboard you see brown faces like yours, shea buttered and loved up. And there are no precincts. Just love temples, that got spaces to meditate and eat delicious food. mangoes, blueberries, nectarines, cornbread, peas and rice, fried plantain, fufu, yams, greens, okra, pecan pie, salad and lemonade. Things that make your mouth water and soul arrive. All the hungry bellies know warmth, all the children expect love. The grandmas help you with homework, practice yoga with you and teach you how to make jambalaya and coconut cake. From scratch. When you're sleepy she will start humming and rub your back while you drift off. A song that she used to have the record of when she was your age. She remembers how it felt like to be you and be young and not know the world that good. Grandma is a sacred child herself, who just circled the sun enough times into the ripeness of her cronehood. She wants your life to be sweeter. When you are wildin’ out because your heart is broke or you don’t have what you need the grandmas take your hand and lead you to their gardens. You can lay down amongst the flowers. Her grasses, roses, dahlias, irises, lilies, collards, kale, eggplants, blackberries. She wants you know that you are safe and protected, universal limitless, sacred, sensual, divine and free. Grandma is the original warrior, wild since birth, comfortable in loving fiercely. She has fought so that you don’t have to, not in the same ways at least. So give the police departments to the grandmas, they are fearless, classy and actualized. Blossomed from love. They wear what they want and say what they please. Believe that. There wouldn’t be noise citations when the grandmas ride through our streets, blasting Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Alice Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, KRS-One. All that good music. The kids gonna hula hoop to it and sell her lemonade made from heirloom pink lemons and maple syrup. The car is solar powered and carbon footprint-less, the grandmas designed the technology themselves. At night they park the cars in a circle so all can sit in them with the sun roofs down, and look at the stars, talk about astrological signs, what to plant tomorrow based on the moon's mood and help you memorize Audre Lorde and James Baldwin quotes. She always looks you in the eye and acknowledges the light in you with no hesitation or fear. And grandma loves you fiercely forever. She sees the pain in our bravado, the confusion in our anger, the depth behind our coldness. Grandma know what oppression has done to our souls and is gonna change it one love temple at a time. She has no fear.

It's a landmark episode - NUMBER 100!!! Connor and Jack dive into Cathy Song's "The Man Moves Earth." They discuss the elegance of the poem's language, the four classical elements and, for the first time in the history of the pod, reference former Poet Laureate Billy Collins! Learn more about Cathy Song, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/cathy-song The Man Moves Earth By: Cathy Song The man moves earth to dispel grief. He digs holes the size of cars. In proportion to what is taken what is given multiplies— rain-swollen ponds and dirt mounds rooted with flame-tipped flowers. He carries trees like children struggling to be set down. Trees that have lived out their lives, he cuts and stacks like loaves of bread which he will feed the fire. The green smoke sweetens his house. The woman sweeps air to banish sadness. She dusts floors, polishes objects made of clay and wood. In proportion to what is taken what is given multiplies— the task of something else to clean. Gleaming appliances beg to be smudged, breathed upon by small children and large animals flicking out hope as she whirls by, flap of tongue, scratch of paw, sweetly reminding her. The man moves earth, the woman sweeps air. Together they pull water out of the other, pull with the muscular ache of the living, hauling from the deep well of the body the rain-swollen, the flame-tipped, the milk-fed— all that cycles through lives moving, lives sweeping, water circulating between them like breath, drawn out of leaves by light. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Jack and Connor go way back to the 1600s for the George Herbert poem, "Prayer (I)". They discuss the sonnet's beautiful meditation on prayer, its incredible contemporary feel, the profane and divine, and The Doors' Jim Morrison makes a shocking cameo. Learn more about Herbert here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/george-herbert Prayer (I) By: George Herbert Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, God's breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-days world transposing in an hour, A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear; Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss, Exalted manna, gladness of the best, Heaven in ordinary, man well drest, The milky way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, The land of spices; something understood. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out Poetry Month 2020 with a series of shorter episodes about short poems that can be comforting springboards to reflection and contemplation. In this episode, they discuss Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Vocabulary of Dearness." They explore the way the poem captures the power of language and go down the rabbit hole of some of their favorite words. Vocabulary of Dearness By: Naomi Shihab Nye How a single word may shimmer and rise off the page, a wafer of syllabic light, a bulb of glowing meaning, whatever the word, try “tempestuous” or “suffer,” any word you have held or traded so it lives a new life the size of two worlds. Say you carried it up a hill and it helped you move. Without this the days would be thin sticks thrown down in a clutter of leaves, and where is the rake? Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Conor and Jack spend some wild time talking about Wild Nights by Emily Dickinson. They talk about the 2019 movie Wild Nights with Emily, Shakespeare's tragedies as death farces, and all the ways Emily Dickinson managed to be an intellectually engaged person of her time while remaining primarily at home. Wild Nights - Wild Nights (269) By: Emily Dickinson Wild nights - Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury! Futile - the winds - To a Heart in port - Done with the Compass - Done with the Chart! Rowing in Eden - Ah - the Sea! Might I but moor - tonight - In thee! Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out Poetry Month 2020 with a series of shorter episodes about short poems that can be comforting springboards to reflection and contemplation. In this (not short) episode, they discuss William Butler Yeats's poem "The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water." The pair geeks out on Yeats, exploring the relationships between sound, death, and colonialism, and they listen to recordings of a classic hit, a funky drum master, and Yeats the bard himself. The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water By: William Butler Yeats I heard the old, old men say ‘Everything alters, And one by one we drop away.’ They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men say ‘All that’s beautiful drifts away Like the waters.’ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out Poetry Month 2020 with a series of shorter episodes about short poems that can be comforting springboards to reflection and contemplation. In this episode, they discuss Joy Harjo's prose poem "Invisible Fish," reflecting on the poem's incredible sense of time and place and the new resonances of "going to the store." Invisible Fish By: Joy Harjo Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sand, by water-worn rock. Soon the fish will learn to walk. Then humans will come ashore and paint dreams on the dying stone. Then later, much later, the ocean floor will be punctuated by Chevy trucks, carrying the dreamers’ descendants, who are going to the store. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out Poetry Month 2020 with a series of shorter episodes about short poems that can be comforting springboards to reflection and contemplation. In this episode they discuss Gwendolyn Brooks' meditation on love and draw connections between the poem's references to - and comments on - confinement and the present. A Lovely Love By: Gwendolyn Brooks Let it be alleys. Let it be a hall Whose janitor javelins epithet and thought To cheapen hyacinth darkness that we sought And played we found, rot, make the petals fall. Let it be stairways, and a splintery box Where you have thrown me, scraped me with your kiss, Have honed me, have released me after this Cavern kindness, smiled away our shocks. That is the birthright of our lovely love In swaddling clothes. Not like that Other one. Not lit by any fondling star above. Not found by any wise men, either. Run. People are coming. They must not catch us here Definitionless in this strict atmosphere. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out Poetry Month 2020 with a series of shorter episodes about short poems that can be comforting springboards to reflection and contemplation. To begin with, a simple, untitled piece by Ezra Pound. The conversation encompasses quinces, John Mulaney, Galway Kinnell's poem "Blackberry Eating," and much more. Mediterranean March Black cat on the quince branch mousing blossoms Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack close out poetry month with a week of daily episodes featuring short poems that can be springboards for reflection and meditation. Watermelons By: Charles Simic Green Buddhas On the fruit stand. We eat the smile And spit out the teeth. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack dive into the poem that opens Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony. Along the way they discuss Plato's Symposium, Walter Ong's writings on orality and literacy, and the historical significance of World War Two on the civil rights movement along with much more. You can learn more about Leslie Marmon Silko, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/leslie-marmon-silko Excerpt from Ceremony By: Leslie Marmon Silko Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought-Woman, is sitting in her room and whatever she thinks about appears. She thought of her sisters Nau’ts’ity’i and I’tcts’ity’i and together they created the Universe this world and the four worlds below. Thought-Woman, the spider, named things and as she named them they appeared. She is sitting in her room Thinking of a story now I’m telling you the story she is thinking. Ceremony I will tell you something about stories, [he said] They aren’t just for entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories. Their evil is mighty but it can’t stand up to our stories. So they try to destroy the stories let the stories be confused or forgotten They would like that They would be happy Because we would be defenseless then. He rubbed his belly. I keep it in here [he said] Here, put your hand on it. See, it is moving. There is life here for the people. And in the belly of this story the rituals and the ceremony are still growing. What She Said: The only cure I know is a good ceremony, That’s what she said. Sunrise. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss a poem that may resonate during this intense, isolated time: "Dedications" by Adrienne Rich, an excerpt from her sequence An Atlas of the Difficult World. They talk about Rich's radical politics, ethical loneliness, Mavis Staples, and how poems can be their own virtual medium of connection. You can read more of and about Adrienne Rich here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/adrienne-rich Dedications [excerpt from “An Atlas of the Difficult World”] By: Adrienne Rich I know you are reading this poem late, before leaving your office of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean on a gray day of early spring, faint flakes driven across the plain’s enormous spaces around you. I know you are reading this poem in a room where too much has happened for you to bear where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed and the open valise speaks of flight but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem as the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairs toward a new kind of love your life has never allowed. I know you are reading this poem by the light of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide while you wait for the newscast from the intifada. I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers. I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out, count themselves out, at too early an age. I know you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on because even the alphabet is precious. I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand because life is short and you too are thirsty. I know you are reading this poem which is not your language guessing at some words while others keep you reading and I want to know which words they are. I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn between bitterness and hope turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse. I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to read there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

This week, we revisit an oldie but goodie: Connor and Jack's discussion of Emily Dickinson's short, beautiful poem, "To Make a Prairie." To find the poem, go here: www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/make-prairie-1755 For more on Emily Dickinson, go here: www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/emily-dickinson Find us on facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack discuss Fady Joudah's, "Additional Notes on Tea" exploring the ways the poem moves around the globe, interrogates history, and deploys the figure of God. You can find out more about Fady Joudah, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/fady-joudah Additional Notes On Tea By: Fady Joudah In Cairo a boy’s balcony higher than a man’s deathbed. The boy is sipping tea, The view is angular like a fracture. Surrounding the bed, women in wooden chairs. They signal mourning with a scream. Family men on the street run up the stairs and drink raven tea. On the operating table in Solwezi a doctor watches a woman die. Tea while the anesthetic wears off, While the blade is waiting, tea. The doctor says the woman knows god is sleeping Outside heaven in a tent. God is a refugee dreaming of tea. Once upon a time an ocean married a sea to carry tea around. Land was jealous. So it turned into desert and gave no one wood for ships. And when ships became steel, Land turned into ice. And when everything melted, everything tasted like tea. Once upon a time there was a tea party in Boston. Tea, like history, is a non sequitur. I prefer it black. The Chinese drink it green. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

REBROADCAST! In honor of Black History Month and because it's primary season and this incredible poem touches on presidential themes, we are rebroadcasting our episode about "How to Keep It Down / Throw It Off / Defer Until Asleep" by National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed. Content Warning: Suicidality Connor and Jack discuss a poem by this year's National Book Award winner for Poetry: Justin Phillip Reed. The poem, "How to Keep it Down / Throw It off / Defer Until Asleep," is from that award-winning collection, Indecency, published by Coffee House Press. We talk about the effects of the poem's shifting POV, the intersection of mental illness and white supremacy, and get to maybe two or three of the poem's nearly infinite layers on layers. Plus, Al Pacino makes a surprise cameo! Read the poem below. More on Justin Phillip Reed: www.justinphillipreed.com/ Check out his collection, Indecency, where this poem comes from: coffeehousepress.org/collections/po…ucts/indecency Find us on facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com. How to Keep it Down / Throw It off / Defer Until Asleep by Justin Phillip Reed My stomach imagines itself as an injury. I steep ginger-mint tea in the inauguration memorabilia mug from Momma, monument-white but for Obama. Between self-harm and my hand, I’ve rigged a list of reliable illusions. This is the first gesture. I am a gentle fist. My body has been deboned of its irony. My life wants to be proven to. I didn’t check the list of Black church dead in Charleston for friend or cousin because this morning it was Thursday. Work was quiet after I asked a white girl if she could quit whispering—the hissing hit his reddest venous notes until a droning rain applauded. His ears ring full of answers to his own knocking when he’s home alone—i.e., almost always. Pacing the apartment for a nest in which to knuckle shut and wax unknown, he statues and envisions both spread hands rooting a brown expanse into the kitchen floor’s glaucous linoleum, and after, the image on Instagram with heightened contrast, hashtagged emblem etc, and producing this proof would require one of his hands, and what if— Nearby in the drying rack, a knife shines. Impetuous. And it occurs to you that this occurring to you is a thinner ice than most other Thurs- days, is skin quickly shucked off a winter’s lip. The hour itself murmurs open better yet back like a hang nail, as in persistent rawness and in the wrong direction. You hunker the mug sternumwise— it’s hot as a kind of heart meat but a blanched blues —and mother your torso around it like a matryoshka mold, chest sickled over the steaming vent that is the President’s head, though you pretend it isn’t.

Connor and Jack discuss the Sharon Olds poem "Armor" about an experience she had with her son. Connor mentions the discussion Jo and Amy have about art and power in "Little Women" and Olds' penchant for four beat lines and heavy enjambment. Jack brings up flatworms and both marvel at the way Olds goes so many places from an everyday experience. Armor By: Sharon Olds Just about at the triple-barreled pistol I can’t go on. I sink down as if shot, beside the ball of its butt loaded with mother-of-pearl. My son leaves me on the bench, and goes on. Hand on hip, he gazes at a suit of armor, blue eyes running over the silver, looking for a slit. He shakes his head, hair greenish as the gold velvet cod-shirt hanging before him in volutes at the metal groin. Next, I see him facing a case of shields, fingering the sweater over his heart, and then for a long time I don’t see him, as a mother will lose her son in war. I sit and think about men. Finally Gabriel comes back, sated, so fattened with gore his eyelids bulge. We exit under the huge tumescent jousting irons, their pennants a faded rose, like the mist before his eyes. He slips his hand lightly in mine, and says Not one of those suits is really safe. But when we get to the wide museum steps railed with gold like the descent from heaven, he can’t resist, and before my eyes, down the stairs, over and over, clutching his delicate unprotected chest, Gabriel dies, and dies. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Ringing in the new year with a poem about capitalism and climate change—"Romance #1" by Eunsong Kim. Connor and Jack discuss how the poem makes late capitalism and climate change visceral, its brilliant opening and chilling ending, crown-of-thorns starfish, and of course their own 14 year old crushes. More about Eunsong Kim here: https://cssh.northeastern.edu/people/faculty/eunsong-kim/ & https://eun-song.org/ Check out Kim's collection here: http://www.noemipress.org/catalog/poetry/eunsong-kim/ Romance #1 By: Eunsong Kim like some 14 year old girl waiting for her crush to glance back i keep waiting for capitalism to end but it won’t end my adult life lover states on what will end: Libraries Birds Retirement Recess Sprinting during recess Hispid Hares Starfish shaped like stars Inconvenience Wrinkles Sunken cheeks Living corals Protests Anti-Nuclear Proliferation Non-Aggression Pacts Dragonflies Mangosteen DMZs Trade Embargos Leopards, all kinds Sawfins Rewilding Infiltration Plot/Dreams Oak, Trees. Partulina Variabilis Partulina Splendida (-------) Violence Prevention Programs News. News: Might a few jellyfish survive— counting till revelations becomes part of—

To wrap up 2019, Connor and Jack take on a poem as exquisite in its craft as it is emotionally forceful in its effect on the reader. They discuss the history of the United States' colonial expansion, the danger of using oblique language when writing history, and the way the poem's tone bridges the gap between the past and present. More about Luis J. Rodriguez, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/luis-j-rodriguez Cinco de Mayo By: Luis J. Rodriguez Cinco de Mayo celebrates a burning people, those whose land is starved of blood, civilizations which are no longer holders of the night. We reconquer with our feet, with our tongues, that dangerous language, saying more of this world than the volumes of textured and controlled words on a page. We are the gentle rage; our hands hold the stream of the earth, the flowers of dead cities, the green of butterfly wings. Cinco de Mayo is about the barefoot, the untooled, the warriors of want who took on the greatest army Europe ever mustered—and won. I once saw a Mexican man stretched across an upturned sidewalk near Chicago's 18th and Bishop one fifth of May day. He brought up a near-empty bottle to the withering sky and yelled out a grito with the words: ¡Que viva Cinco de Mayo! And I knew then what it meant— what it meant for barefoot Zapoteca indigenas in the Battle of Puebla and what it meant for me there on 18th Street among los ancianos, the moon-faced children and futureless youth dodging the gunfire and careening battered cars, and it brought me to that war that never ends, the war Cinco de Mayo was a battle of, that I keep fighting, that we keep bleeding for, that war against a servitude that a compa on 18th Street knew all about as he crawled inside a bottle of the meanest Mexican spirits. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack explore the poem "Warming" by dg nanouk okpik. They discuss the poem's interplay between intense specificity and figurative language, climate change as context, and the fact that ice worms are really actually real. More about okpik here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/dg-okpik Warming By: dg nanouk okpik She and I make a bladder bag to draw water from the ice trench. She/I chain stitch/es a skin dressed in oil to make a new pot of soup. She/I sew/s a badger hair rough around the top of her/my kamiks to make the steps windward, toward the limits of woman. She/I eat/s club root and white clover to strengthen her/my silver body to bear a child. She/I map/s, following 1 degree from the North Star and 60 degrees from the end of the earth’s axis on rotation for Ukpeagvik she/I use/s a small arc of ice, cleaving into parts, reduced to simple curves fitted with serrated edges of white flesh. She/I mold/s to the fretted neck of frozen water into a deep urn, made like a rock shelter or a cavern. She/I construct/s a hole on the surface of a glacier formed by melting particles of roe and pan reservoir dust from a shelter for the ice worms. Because the earth is molding, burning, laughing, and purging its crust. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Connor and Jack dive into a funny poem with serious depths, Kathy Fagan's Ontology and the Platypus. They discuss the evolutionary wonder that is the platypus, taking humor seriously, Yeats' wild theories about history, and much more! You can find Kathy Fagan's latest book, Sycamore, here: https://milkweed.org/book/sycamore Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com. Ontology and the Platypus By: Kathy Fagan So which mammalian fuck-up list produced the platypus, produced the bird-billed, flat-foot, erstwhile beavers dressed like ducks for Halloween? Crepuscular and nipple-less, they suckle hatchlings in the changeling dusk— Diaphanously the god-swan boned a married chick and she begot two eggs, neither good. The launching of a thousand ships ensued. Homer never saw a platypus, though in his dreams he may have heard them growl, a noise between a gurgle and a hiss. The males are venomous. A plural form of platypus does not exist.