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.
"Inanimate Objects": Have you inherited an inanimate object that carries emotional weight? Have you bestowed a name on your bicycle or your car? The...
“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...
“Neighbors”: When you recall the places where you lived, do you inevitably reflect on who else was in close proximity? This episode presents three...