Poetry For All
Episodes
Episode 108: Joanne Diaz, The Face
15 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In a special episode, we celebrate the release of Joanne Diaz's latest book, Electric Dress, by reading "The Face," a poem of double ekp...
Episode 107: John Donne, The Sun Rising
10 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode begins a three-part series on the "aubade," a poem to greet the morning (often by wishing the morning away). We discuss Donne&#...
Episode 106: Jane Mead, I wonder if I will miss the moss
12 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This poem offers a humble love of the world and a leave-taking of it. It was found in the papers of Jane Mead (1958-2019), which were left to her grea...
Episode 105: Phillis Wheatley Peters, "To the Earl of Dartmouth"
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today, joined by Professor Kirsten Lee, we read a poem about freedom written on the eve of the American Revolution by Phillis Wheatley, the first Afri...
Episode 104: Jane Zwart, I read that the moon is rusting
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode brings together a collage of images to explore the meaning of time, the emergence of events from one to another, and the wonder of the un...
Episode 103: Dinah Maria Craik, Friendship
16 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In a short, simple, well-loved poem, Dinah Maria Craik names one aspect of friendship that many have found true. A great way to start the new year and...
Episode 102: Phillis Levin, An Anthology of Rain
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Phillis Levin reads "An Anthology of Rain," the title poem of her newest poetry collection. She guides us through the philosophical u...
Episode 101: Emerald GoingSnake, Someday I'll Love--
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode opens "Someday I'll Love" poems through the vivid imagery of a young poet's connection with their grandmother, remembering in love as mem...
Episode 100: Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode takes us to a graveyard for Halloween and explores one of the most canonical poems in the English language, poised between two huge eras ...
Episode 99: Oliver de la Paz, Pantoum Beginning and Ending with Thorns
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this third episode in our series on the pantoum, we read and discuss Oliver de la Paz's "Pantoum Beginning and Ending with Thorns," a poem that dra...
Episode 98: Arthur Sze, Papyrus Pantoum
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we continue our three-part series on the pantoum, this time focusing on Arthur Sze's "Papyrus Pantoum." We consider the poem's collag...
Episode 97: Donald Justice, Pantoum of the Great Depression
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode begins a three-part series on the pantoum and looks at how the repetitions work especially well for a poem that dwells incessantly in mem...
Episode 96: Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we look at a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins that dwells equally in the grandeur of God and the wreck made of earth. Hopkins wonders how these t...
Episode 95: Ted Kooser, Student
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's back to school time, and we're back at Poetry For All, heavy with hope for another season. Today we look at a poem unified by an extended metapho...
Episode 94: Sumer is icumen in
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we offer a close reading of "Sumer is icumen in," a Middle English song that anticipates the abundant joys of summer. Thanks to the ...
Episode 92: Dorianne Laux, Singer
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we read and discuss "Singer," a narrative poem that celebrates the poetic speaker's mother in all of her complexity. Dorianne Laux i...
Episode 91: Joanne Diaz, Two Emergencies
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Katy Didden and Abram Van Engen discuss the extraordinary leaps, narrative disjunctions, and temporal frames that fill Diaz's extraor...
Episode 90: N. Scott Momaday, The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode explores the incantation and mystic union of Momaday's famous delight poem, ending with a recorded recitation in his own rich voice. We e...
Episode 89: Pádraig Ó Tuama, excerpts from Kitchen Hymns
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode was recorded on March 2, 2025 at the Phillis Wheatley Heritage Center in St. Louis., Missouri. In this conversation, Pádraig Ó Tuama re...
Episode 88: Oksana Maksymchuk, Tempo
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Oksana Maksymchuk joins us for a reading and discussion of "Tempo," a poem that explores the how war causes us to "whirl with / planets and stars that...
Episode 87: Monica Ong, Her Gaze
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Monica Ong joins us to discuss "Her Gaze," a visual poem that celebrates the achievements of astronomer Caroline Herschel. "Her Gaze"...
Episode 86: Gwendolyn Bennett, I Build America
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gwendolyn Bennett was a poet, journalist, editor, and activist whose contributions helped to fuel the Harlem Renaissance. In this episode, we read "I ...
Episode 85: Jacob Stratman, To Momento Mori
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we read and discuss a poem that takes its inspiration from a painting by Andrew Wyeth. The poem provides a meditation on what we perc...
Episode 84: Ted Kooser, excerpts from Winter Morning Walks
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we offer close readings of poems from Ted Kooser's_ Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison_. Kooser's poems allow us to ...
Episode 83: Emily Dickinson, "I went to thank Her–"
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we read and discuss Emily Dickinson's poem about the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We discuss Dickinson's innovative syntax, h...
Episode 82: Sidney, Translation of Psalm 52
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Psalm 52 concerns a lying tyrant and God's impending judgment. Mary Sidney, who lived 1561-1621, was an extraordinary writer, editor, and literary pat...
Episode 81: Niki Herd, The Stuff of Hollywood
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Niki Herd joins us to read and discuss an excerpt from The Stuff of Hollywood, a collection in which Herd experiments with a range of...
Episode 80: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we closely read Shelley's "Ozymandias," a poem written in a time of revolution and social protest. We focus on the poem's sonnet stru...
Episode 79: W.H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Shankar Vendantam joins us to read and discuss "Musee des Beaux Arts," a poem that explores the ways in which humans become indiffere...
Episode 78: Jericho Brown, Duplex
20 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we read and discuss Jericho Brown's "Duplex," a poetic form that he created in order to explore the complexities of family, violence,...
Episode 77: Jennifer Grotz, The Conversion of Paul
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Poetry engages in conversation. Today, we explore a long, beautiful, narrative poem weaving together the work of fellow poets while looking carefully ...
Episode 76: Philip Levine, What Work Is
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we read and discuss Philip Levine's most famous poem, "What Work Is." We consider his deft use of the second-person perspective, the ...
Episode 75: Du Fu, Passing the Night by White Sands Post Station
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is a good life, and how do we make sense of the world when it seems like society is collapsing? In this episode, Lucas Bender joins us once again...
Episode 74: Diane Seuss, [The sonnet, like poverty]
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This remarkable sonnet dives into issues of poverty, poetry, and grief. We talk about the pedagogy of constraint, while exploring the achievements, in...
Episode 73: Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, Sonnet 189
08 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Professor Stephanie Kirk guides our reading of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz’s “Sonnet 189.” Her scholarly insights help us to appr...
Word Made Fresh (and Exciting Updates)
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We're interrupting your summer this week with a few exciting updates about Poetry For All and an excerpt from Abram Van Engen's newly released book, W...
Episode 72: Victoria Chang, My Mother--died unpeacefully...
22 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we read one of Victoria Chang’s moving poems from her collection OBIT, and discuss how the poem explores the interplay between life...
Episode 71: Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode dives into the wonderful world of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the musicality of his language, and the vision he has of becoming what we alread...
Episode 70: Lauren Camp, Inner Planets
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Lauren Camp joins us to read and discuss "Inner Planets," a poem that she wrote during her time as the astronomer in residence at Gra...
Episode 69: Live with Marilyn Nelson!
11 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our first live performance of the podcast, featuring Marilyn Nelson and a discussion or her amazing poem "How I Discovered Poetry." On January 31, we ...
Announcement
24 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We share some news about a new website at poetryforallpod.com and a live event next week! https://poetryforallpod.com/
Episode 68: W.S. Merwin, To the New Year
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the first episode of 2024, we read one of the great poets of the past century, W.S. Merwin, and his address to the new year, considering his attent...
Episode 67: Alex Dimitrov, Winter Solstice
19 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we read and discuss a poem that provides a powerful meditation on the longest night of the year. To learn more about Alex Dimitrov, ...
Episode 66: Katy Didden, The Priest Questions the Lava
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In our discussion of "The Priest Questions the Lava," Katy describes the sentience of the natural world, her erasure of documentary texts, her interes...
Episode 65: Du Fu, Facing Snow
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Lucas Bender guides us through his translation of Du Fu's "Facing Snow," one of the most famous poems in the Chinese language. To le...
Episode 64: Shakespeare, Sonnet 29
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In episode 64, we talk about Shakespeare's sonnet 29, a poem about comparison and competition, leading the poet almost to despise himself before, by c...
Episode 63: Rumi, Colorless, Nameless, Free
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Poet and translator Haleh Liza Gafori joins us to closely read and discuss a poem by Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (1207-1273 CE), one of the grea...
Episode 62: Kobayashi Issa, Haiku
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What makes haiku "the perfect poetic form"? This episode reads three wonderful haiku by Kobayashi Issa and explores what makes them so moving and fun....
Episode 61: Ada Limón, "The Raincoat"
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With her quality of attention and focus on vivid, specific images, Ada Limón brings us to a moment of surprising insight in "The Raincoat." "The Rain...
Episode 60: Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms
02 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we explore the poetry of joy in a world of shade and death, looking to sounds and repetitions while examining how "From Blossoms" spe...
Episode 59: Tichborne's Elegy
07 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we read the elegy of Chidiock Tichborne, written the night before his execution, and contemplate the power of repetitions, the balanc...
Episode 58: Richie Hofmann, Things That Are Rare
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we are delighted to have Richie Hofmann as our guest. Richie Hofmann is the author of two collections: Second Empire (https://www.ali...
Episode 57: Edna St. Vincent Millay, She had forgotten how the August night
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
She called herself Vincent, she smoked cigarettes, and she wore shimmery golden evening gowns when she read her poetry to sold-out crowds. Edna St. Vi...
Episode 56: Queen Elizabeth, On Monsieur's Departure
31 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was one of the longest-reigning monarchs in all of British history, but she was also a gifted poet. In this episode, we ...
Episode 55: Kay Ryan, Crib
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss Kay Ryan's "Crib," a brief poem that begins with an interest in the deep archaeology of language and shifts to a powerful ...
Grant Writing Break
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Joanne and Abram take a break to write a grant for the podcast. We very much hope you enjoy Poetry For All. And if you do, please leave us ...
Episode 54: Carl Phillips, To Autumn
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we talk with David Baker about "To Autumn" by Carl Phillips, exploring the way Phillips masterfully achieves a sense of intimacy and ...
Episode 53: Carter Revard, What the Eagle Fan Says
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we focus on the life and work of Carter Revard, an Osage poet whose medieval scholarship informs the structure of "What the Eagle Fan...
Episode 52: Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This sonnet reflects on the autumn of life and an intimate love, and it turns on that love growing stronger in and through its age, even as the body d...
Episode 51: Martín Espada, Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
To learn more about Martín Espada, click here (http://www.martinespada.net/). To read the poem, click here (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetryma...
Episode 50: Rafael Campo, Primary Care
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss how Rafael Campo, a practicing physician, uses blank verse to explore the experience of illness and suffering. Thanks to t...
Episode 49: Lisel Mueller, When I am Asked
12 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we closely read Lisel Mueller's "When I am Asked" in order to better understand grief as a deep source of artistic expression. We loo...
Episode 48: Joy Harjo, An American Sunrise
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we examine The Golden Shovel form and discuss the idea of "survivance" through the work of Muscogee (Creek) poet Joy Harjo, the 23rd ...
Episode 47: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
22 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Christopher Hanlon joins us to discuss an excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. We discuss the poem's prophetic voice, its pat...
Episode 46: Lucille Clifton, spring song
13 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) was one of the most powerful poets of the twentieth century. This joyful poem caps a sequence of sixteen poems called "som...
From Talk Easy: Claudia Rankine’s Just Us: An American Conversation
03 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’re sharing a special preview of a podcast we’ve been enjoying, Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, from Pushkin Industries. Talk Easy is a weekly inter...
Episode 45: Ben Jonson, On My First Son
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we look at Ben Jonson's elegy for his son who died of the plague at the age of 7. This poem is so brief, and yet, it manages to cross...
Episode 44: Ann Hudson, Soap
16 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Ann Hudson joins us to read her poem “Soap” and discuss how its narrative structure allows her to explore the history of science,...
Episode 43: Margaret Noodin, What the Peepers Say
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Margaret Noodin joins us to discuss her poem "What the Peepers Say." In our conversation, we talk about Margaret's writing in both An...
Episode 42: Robert Hayden, Frederick Douglass
23 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
To read Hayden's poem, click here (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46460/frederick-douglass). Thanks to W.W. Norton & Company for granting us p...
Episode 41: F.E.W. Harper, Learning to Read
16 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a prolific writer and activist of the nineteenth century. In this episode, Professor Janaka Bowman Lewis joins us to ...
Episode 40: William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we provide a close reading of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, which allows us to consider the poem's definition of a love that is e...
Episode 39: Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear The Mask
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Rafia Zafar joins us to discuss "We Wear the Mask" by the great poet and writer Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906). Rafia leads us in a discu...
Episode 38: Laura Van Prooyen, Elegy for My Mother's Mind
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, our guest Laura Van Prooyen reads "Elegy for My Mother's Mind," a poem that navigates the complexities of memory, loss, and familial ...
Episode 37: Why Poetry For All
19 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Joanne and Abram launch the fourth season of Poetry For All with a short discussion about what this podcast is all about and how it relates to all the...
Episode 36: Denise Levertov, On the Mystery of the Incarnation
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss Denise Levertov's powerful meditation on the horrors of the twentieth century, and how the mystery of the incarnation migh...
Episode 35: Matthew Zapruder, Poem for Wisconsin
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss the way in which Matthew Zapruder attends to vivid, specific details to create a sense of wonder, connection, and surprise...
Episode 34: Tracy K. Smith, Declaration
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss erasure poetry and its power to reveal hidden histories and redacted stories through Tracy K. Smith's erasure of the Decla...
Episode 33: Adrienne Rich, Power
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the poet and scholar Stephanie Burt joins us to discuss the extraordinary power of Adrienne Rich. We think through how the spacing and stan...
Episode 32: Rick Barot, Cascades 501
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, poet Rick Barot guides us in our reading of his poem "Cascades 501" from The Galleons, his most recent collection. Rick's insights in...
Episode 31: Jane Kenyon, Twilight: After Haying
27 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we take a closer look at another autumn poem, this one by Jane Kenyon from her wonderful book Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Kenyon buil...
Episode 30: John Keats, To Autumn
20 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
To Autumn by John Keats Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless ...
Episode 29: Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
06 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Bishop was one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, and "One Art" is certainly one of the greatest villanelles. In this episode, ...
Episode 28: Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Countee Cullen was a major voice of the Harlem Renaissance. Joined by the renowned cultural critic Gerald Early, we here examine together story of Cou...
Episode 27: Marianne Moore, Poetry
22 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we read and discuss the influential modernist poet Marianne Moore and her witty, wonderful poem called "Poetry," a classic ars poetic...
Episode 26: Brenda Cárdenas, "Our Lady of Sorrows"
15 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Brenda Cárdenas guides us through a reading of "Our Lady of Sorrows," an ekphrastic poem that is inspired by the work of Ana Mendiet...
Episode 25: William Carlos Williams, "This is Just to Say"
08 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss a simple, iconic, "sorry-not sorry" poem from the early age of American modernism, which has taken on new life in the age ...
Episode 24: Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
14 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Hayden was one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. His poems are known for their formal grace and his deep and broad explo...
Episode 23: Langston Hughes, "Johannesburg Mines"
21 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss social poetics, the poetry of witness, and the way poets can speak of the failure of language and the need for silence in ...
Episode 22: Two Poems of World War I
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we talk with Vince Sherry about two poems of WWI: Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" and Ivor Gurney's "To His Love." The first poem, a st...
Episode 21: Christian Wiman, I Don't Want to Be a Spice Store
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we talk with Christian Wiman about the arc of a book of poetry, the structure of an individual poem, the desire for openness and acces...
Episode 20: Hester Pulter, View But This Tulip
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Wendy Wall joins us to discuss an extraordinary poet whose works went unknown for over three hundred years. Hester Pulter brought together science, re...
Episode 19: Naomi Shihab Nye, Gate A-4
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet born in St. Louis and raised in Jerusalem and San Antonio, focuses on the ordinary to observe the extrao...
Episode 18: Jenny Johnson, Dappled Things
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017). Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton Universit...
Episode 17: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Pied Beauty Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that...
Episode 16: John Milton, When I Consider How My Light is Spent
15 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The episode explores Milton's great sonnet spun from the difficulties of middle age and new disappointments. We consider how he pulls consolation from...
Episode 15: Amanda Gorman, Chorus of the Captains
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda Gorman became the first poet ever to perform at the Super Bowl on February 7, 2021. In this episode we talk about poetry for the masses, mass m...
Episode 14: George Herbert, The Collar
01 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we look at "The Collar"--a famous single-stanza poem, playing with meter, rhythm, and rhyme by the seventeenth-century priest and poe...
Episode 13: Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb," the poem that she recited at the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice Preside...
Episode 12: James Merrill, Christmas Tree
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Spencer Reece guides us through a reading of "Christmas Tree," one of the last poems that James Merrill wrote before his death. We le...