Gay, Ross | "To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian" | 51 | Gratitude, single-scene poem, short line breaks, and figs in myth. |
Osherow, Jacqueline | "Autobiographical: Another Draft" | 50 | Terza rima, formalism, interruptive syntax, Willa Cather, and your present self admonishing your past self. |
Robison, Mary | "Yours" | 49 | Flash fiction, Halloween, fall, and May/December romances. |
Hicks, Faylita | "Photo of a Girl, 1988: Cyborg" | 48 | The mother figure in literature, enjambment, end-stopped lines, Afrofuturism, and the ampersand.
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Merritt, Dixon Lanier | "A Wonderful Bird is the Pelican" | 47 | Limericks, humorous poetry, "children's" literature, the pleasures of rhyme, and magic lanterns. |
Roripaugh, Lee Ann | "Things that Leave an Aching Feeling Inside" | 46 | List poem form, The Pillow Book, the importance of poetry during the Heian period, and breaking your own heart. |
McGlynn, Karyna | "Sensual Vocabulary" | 45 | Ars Poetica, Marianne Moore, modernists, September Women Poets, and George Washington school marm. |
Ball, Sally | “Who Would I Show It To?” | 44 | Elegies, the stages of grief, W.S. Merwin, and Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” |
Arroyo, Rane | “The Immigrants (Winter Wear)” | 43 | Tercets, Wallace Stevens, narrative perspective, and Santa tempting Jesus in the desert. |
Harjo, Joy | “Unmailed Letter” | 42 | Dialectical argument structure, irrational numbers, and frustrating relationships. |
Snider, Bruce | "Map" | 41 | Ghazal structure, Indiana, the color yellow, homoerotic Americana, and Walt Whitman. |
Bogen, Don | "A Citizen" and "Immediate Song" | 40 | Lyric sequences, persona poems, an empire's twilight, and phrenology. |
Smith, Carmen Giménez | “Something New” | 39 | Marxists interpretations of love, marriage as labor, and the etymology of mortgage. |
Soto, Gary | “Ambition” | 38 | Scene-making in poetry, Seneca, Friendship, Max’s time as a disgruntled shoe salesman, and zoomorphism. |
Molotkov, A. | “Lightening” | 37 | Prose poetry, Aloysius Bertrand, fig trees, eye surgery, and Duncan MacDougall's dead-weighing experiments. |
lonsinger, dawn | “[but the rain is full of ghosts tonight]” | 36 | "Maximalism," Edna St. Vincent Millay, ghosts of lovers past, and rain, rain, rain. |
O'Hara, Frank | “Animals” | 35 | Idioms, the New York School, personism, dune buggies, time, and square things vs. round things. |
Williams, Ian | “The Romantic Lead” | 34 | Contemporary sonnets, sextets and octaves, Swan Lake vs. Ladyhawk, reaction shots, and finding displeasure with Aquaman. |
Nezhukumatathil, Aimee | “The Soils I Have Eaten” | 33 | Strophes, memories of place, prospecting by taste, and the 1980s arcade game Dig Dug. |
Voisine, Connie | “Dangerous for Girls” | 32 | Dead girls in poetry, associative leaps, capitalist consumption, and watching infomercials while depressed. |
Sioux, Siouxsie | “Cities in Dust” | 31 | Lyrics as poetry, Tone/Voice, March Vladness, Pompeii, verse-chorus form, Pliny the Younger, and Goth! Goth! Goth! |
Hayes, Terrance | “The Same City” | 30 | Revision poems, cold and flu season, crappy weather, and mixing up biblical stepfathers. |
Ondaatje, Michael | “The Cinnamon Peeler” | 29 | Persona poems, encounters with wild bears, how specifics make life interesting, and Dune spice . |
Lindenberg, Rebecca | “Litany” | 28 | Gal-entine’s Day, the classical formula of god summoning, lethologica vs. aphasia, and sabotaging people’s efforts to break up with you. |
Phillips, Carl | “What Myth Is” | 27 | Myths we identify with, Sonnet 130, the blazon, objective correlatives, and languid fingering. |
Sánchez, Erika L. | “Letter from New York” | 26 | The Epistolary form, New York, our flooding basement, and poet Richard Hugo literally dropping bombs on five-year-old poet Charles Simic in Belgrade. |
Harvey, Yona | “Report from the Daughter of a Blue Planet” | 25 | Imagery, perfect line breaks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Audre Lorde. |
Powell, D.A. | “[ode]” | 24 | Odes, Pindar vs. Horace, hyacinths, trochees, and blue movies. |
Hass, Robert | “Meditation at Lagunitas” | 23 | Philosophical poetry, Platonic ideals, blackberries, the linguist Saussure, and mastodon steaks. |
Nye, Naomi Shihab | "Kindness" and "Burn the Old Year" | 22 | The new year, empathy, cruelty, and metaphorical landscapes. |
Doty, Mark | “Visitation” | 21 | Poetic narrative, holidays, the Christmas Whale, and complicated joy. |
Rekdal, Paisley | “Nightingale” | 20 | Handling a rude guest lecturer, John Keats, Odysseus/Ulysses, dwelling in doubt, and autolysis. |
Akbar, Kaveh | “Portrait of the Alcoholic Floating in Space with Severed Umbilicus” | 19 | The sublime in poetry, addiction, and why we love people in recovery. |
Lee, Li-Young | “Visions and Interpretations” | 18 | Elegies, miscommunications, and Mercury in retrograde. |
Dow, Hannah | “What is the Body?” | 17 | Spiritual poetry, René Descartes, nesting instincts, and tape worms. |
Diaz, Natalie | “I Watch Her Eat the Apple” | 16 | Lesbian love poems, Thanksgiving, Oedipus, and some ugly facts about the Pilgrims. |
Shaughnessy, Brenda | “Drift” | 15 | Metaphysical poets, paradox, and staying in bad relationships. |
Levin, Dana | “Door” | 14 | Poems of spiritual crisis, Danielle explains her personal connection to Dana Levin's "Door," working for a mean art dealer, and the dream that lead her to teaching. |
Lorca, Federico Garcia | “Ghazal of Dark Death” | 13 | Poetry in translation, the political underpinnings of surrealism, Halloween. |
Vuong, Ocean | “Departure” | 12 | Aubades, imagery, and Danielle’s penchant for wonderfully dark poems. |
Siken, Richard | “Wishbone” and “Planet of Love” | 11 | Dramatic monologues and bad romantic decisions. Guest host: Shaun. |
Bernal, Lindsay | “Rodin's Fallen Caryatid” | 10 | Ekphrastic poetry, Godzilla Studies, and Danielle’s connection to Lindsay. |
Rilke, Rainer Maria | “Be Ahead of all Parting” | 9 | The 2008 financial crisis, translation, winter in Vermont, Greek myth, and enduring hardship with grace. Guest hosts: Olivia and David. |
Bashir, Samiya | “Manistee Light” | 8 | The Pastoral, the Anti-pastoral, poor gardening, the criminal justice system. |
Chang, Jennifer | “Obedience, or the Lying Tale” | 7 | Fairy tale form, allusions, folklore in poetry. |
Lessley, Shara | “The Explosive Expert's Wife” | 6 | Consonance, assonance, the geopolitical complexities of love and where to meet in the afterlife. |
Johnson, Denis | “White, White Collars” | 5 | Work poems, Labor Day, synesthesia, Danielle turning down a job on Wall Street because of this poem. |
Coutley, Lisa Fay | “Researchers Find Mice Pass On Trauma to Subsequent Generations” | 4 | Beautiful/terrible imagery, the difficulty of trying to have a glib, upbeat conversation about inherited trauma. |
Hayden, Robert | “Those Winter Sundays” | 3 | Vivid descriptions, poetic declarations, African American poets, parental love and sacrifice. |
Smith, Tracy K. | “Thirst” | 2 | Coming-of-age poetry, Danielle and Max disagree in their interpretation of the poem. |
Kelly, Brigit Pegeen | “Closing Time; Iskandariya” | 1 | Prose poetry, learning to love something ugly, America’s relationship to the Middle East. |