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.
"Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass": Though Frederick Douglass grew up not knowing his exact birthdate and even uncertain just how old he was, historians...
“Why Serve?: First World War Poems of Internal Conflicts”: Young men in the 19 teens attempted to rationalize whether serving in the military during...
“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...