Do we imagine the dead as content in their zone, or do they express anxieties about how the world of the living functions in their absence? Poems in this episode offer contrasting answers: Frederic Weatherly's "Danny Boy"; A.E. Housman's "Is My Team Ploughing?"; Thomas Hardy's "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?"; John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields"; Homer's depiction of Odysseus' dialogue with his dead mother in the Underworld (from The Odyssey, Book 11); Ted Kooser's "Old Cemetery" (from Delights and Shadows, Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2004), used with permission of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org.
“One Word”: The poems on today’s show implicitly urge us to consider how strange language is when we examine it up close. Each of...
"Unrequited Love," Part One: Poets respond in a variety of ways when their strong desires for another are not returned: from anger to bewilderment...
"Responding to Loss": All three poems in this episode reflect on the loss of a person, when loss is final. Perhaps one or more...