Lit from the Basement

With the boys old enough for school, Max went and got himself a job, and now we just do not have enough time to do the show proper. We hope to drop the occasional show in the future, but are uncertain if it will be back with the release frequency from before.This interview was conducted at KMUZ (who have been awesome and broadcasting our show across the Willamette Valley) on February 18, 2020, a few months before we moved to Atlanta. Thank you for spending time with us. -Danielle & Max 

We are back from our sickness hiatus with “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian” by Ross Gay. Topics include: gratitude, single-scene poem, short line breaks, and figs in myth.

For their 50th show, Danielle goes big with a long, long, powerful poem by Jacqueline Osherow. Topics include: terza rima, formalism, Willa Cather, interruptive syntax, and your present self admonishing your past self. 

Owing to a house-wide plague, we are forced to pull a show from our reject pile. Please join us as we deviate from poetry to flash fiction with Mary Robison's "Yours" and as we go on way too long about personal ghost stories. Topics include: Halloween, fall, mortality, May/December romances, and failing to keep your atheist cred while discussing the supernatural. 

We discuss the poem "Photo of a Girl, 1988: Cyborg" from Faylita Hicks's debut collection Hoodwitch. Topics include: the mother figure in literature, enjambment, end-stopped lines, Afrofuturism, and the ampersand.

We tackle the limerick form with poetry scholar Mike Chasar as he leads a deep dive into two versions of "A Wonderful Bird is the Pelican" by Dixon Lanier Merritt. Topics include: humorous poetry, "children's" literature, the pleasures of rhyme, and the 1913 Armory Show.

Danielle introduces Max to the list poem form with Lee Ann Roripaugh's "Things that Leave an Aching Feeling Inside." Topics include: list form, The Pillow Book, the importance of poetry during the Heian period, and breaking your own heart.

Danielle introduces Max to the concept of Ars Poetica with Karyna McGlynn's poem "Sensual Vocabulary." Topics include: Ars Poetica, Marianne Moore, September Women Poets, modernists, and George Washington as a school marm.

Addressing a recent loss in her own life, Danielle shares with Max an elegy by Sally Ball that helped with her grieving. Topics include: elegies, suicide, stages of grief, Virginia Woolf, W.S. Merwin, and Dancer pose. 

We have another guest in our creepy basement; the author Scott Nadelson! He shares Rane Arroyo's poem "The Immigrants (Winter Wear)" with us. Topics include: tercets, Wallace Stevens, and Santa tempting Jesus in the desert.