Episode 115: A.E. Stallings, Burned

Today Sophie Cabot Black opens a three-episode series of poems written in response to Anne Bradstreet, the first published poet from America. This poem inhabits Bradstreet's voice, opening questions about faith and doubt and what she hoped to leave behind. We get the experience of looking back across a life, and wondering. Sophie Cabot Black is a marvelous poet with four collections of poems, the winner of many prizes and fellowships. See her website for more details: https://sophiecabotblack.com/ This poem comes from a new book, Anne Bradstreet Now: Modern Poets Respond, that collects new poems and essays by a diverse range of extraordinary and prize-winning poets all responding to the world and work of Anne Bradstreet. Click here for more details on the book. Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan poet who came to what they called "New England" in 1630. Her book of poems, The Tenth Muse, became the first book of poems published in print by someone from North America. She has been read and taught for almost 400 years. We also invite you to listen to Episode 9 of this podcast, which covers one of her poems. Here is the poem: What I meant to say was (Anne Bradstreet, Andover Massachusetts, Autumn 1669) Let the house burn again; Already I outlive the New World, The last dog dead, one cow Remnant in the gleaning wind Of leaf-fall and each child left For elsewhere. To stay Past those I buried; I do not know What more to spend -- The government of man By man brings no one home. No longer do I want To be upon this hill, This place of so much wind Where I keep writing Past the end. I have broken Each sentence, halved Then half again, each word Simpled down like old oxen Kept as if to cover The whole field, turn By turn. Now the words Come less, the clouds so fast And now what I thought I thought. For what Have I survived: To save each house, A door sprung open, plain, Willing each hinge To work, verse By verse to outlast, Outlove whatever it is You bring forth. Photo of Sophie Cabot Black by Beowulf Sheehan Special thanks to Evan Rosa for help with today's episode.

This live episode looks at the power of poetry for defamiliarizing the familiar and increasing our attention to the world around us. We met with First United Methodist Church in Normal, Illinois to discuss Richard Wilbur's sonnet and Abram Van Engen's book "Word Made Fresh." Check out Abram Van Engen's book, "Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church," wherever you get books. For the text of the poem, see here. For more on Richard Wilbur, see The Poetry Foundation. Credit Line: "Praise in Summer" from Collected Poems 1943-2004 by Richard Wilbur Copyright (c) 2004 by Richard Wilbur. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

In this episode, we continue our series on the villanelle with Patricia Smith's "XXXL." In this poem, Smith uses the constraints of the villanelle form to create a powerful portrait of familial love. Patricia Smith is the author of numerous collections of poetry, a winner of the National Book Award for The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2025), and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.

In this episode, we continue our villanelle series with the incredible formalist poet A.E. Stallings. Every form begs for a bending of the rules, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big ways. We look here at how slight bends in the rules bring home the poem. For more on A.E. Stallings, see her biography at The Poetry Foundation. Thank you to Northwestern University Press for permission to read the poem. This poem comes from A.E. Stallings' remarkable collection of poems titled Olives. We encourage you to check it out. For another great villanelle of Stallings that is available online, see Daedal.

In this episode, we introduce the first villanelle in our three-part series on that poetic form. We begin with Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," a poem that attempts to stave off the inevitability of mortality. To learn more about Dylan Thomas, visit the Poetry Foundation.

In this episode, we read one of Langston Hughes's most famous poems. We discuss Hughes's conversational style, how he evokes the topography of Harlem, and the way the poetic speaker addresses the complexity of the power dynamics in the classroom. You can read the text of this poem here. To learn more about Langston Hughes, visit the Poetry Foundation website. Thanks to Harold Ober Associates for granting us permission to read and discuss this poem.

As we prepare for the new school year, we turn to Walt Whitman's poem "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer." We discuss Whitman's influence, the effects of war, the role of poetry as Whitman saw it, and the importance of experiencing the world both in and beyond the classroom. When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45479/when-i-heard-the-learnd-astronomer For a brief account of Whitman, see The Poetry Foundation. For all things Whitman, see The Whitman Archive. Image credit: "Walt Whitman by Mathew Brady, ca. 1865 - 1867." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 07 August 2026. http://www.whitmanarchive.org.

In this episode, Laura Evers (who has done so much work for this podcast), joins us to discuss the poem that drew her into poetry. We explore Katie Ford's haunting poem of longing, absence, and the desire to know, and we examine how her grammatical choices (including the absence of punctuation or breath marks) enhance the experience of reading and rereading the poem. "The Shroud of Turin" can be found in Katie Ford's first book of poems, Deposition. For more on Katie Ford, visit her website: https://www.fordkatie.com/ Thanks to Graywolf Press for permission to read the poem on this episode.

In this third installment of our series on the aubade, we feature a contrapuntal poem that explores various states of grief and loss. Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections: Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018) and Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014). She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. To learn more about her work, visit her website. Thanks to SIU Press for granting us permission to read this poem on the podcast. _ To read this poem, click on this link.

This episode continues our series on the aubade (a morning love song) with a dramatic turn. Larkin reinvents the tradition as waking to the fact that every new day brings a person one day closer to death. To see the tradition that Larkin reimagines, see our previous episode on John Donne, "The Sun Rising." For the text of Larkin's "Aubade" see the Poetry Foundation. For more on Larkin, see the Poetry Foundation. Thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, as well as Faber and Faber, for permission to read Larkin's "Aubade" for this episode. Photo by Barry Wilkinson/Radio Times via Getty Images