Ranked #1
Tracy K. Smith, "The Universe As Primal Scream"
Tracy K. Smith, "The Universe As Primal Scream"
Smith's intensely physical metaphysical poem (is it a lyric? an ode?) is an exploration of the noise we call the univers... Read more
25 Aug 2017
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18mins
Ranked #2
Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring and Fall"
Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring and Fall"
The old Victorian poet/priest wants to give a young child a lesson about life's transitory nature. All is decay! Except ... Read more
3 Nov 2015
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16mins
Ranked #3
Emily Dickinson, Poem #282 ("We play at paste")
Emily Dickinson, Poem #282 ("We play at paste")
Emily Dickinson's short poem, the third of the four she sent to Thomas Wentworth Higginson to begin their relationship, ... Read more
20 Dec 2019
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14mins
Ranked #4
Galway Kinnell, "The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students"
Galway Kinnell, "The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students"
What's left when the communication between a poet and his reader is finished? Understanding? Compassion? No, loneliness,... Read more
27 Mar 2019
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16mins
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Ranked #5
Sharon Olds, "Sex Without Love"
Sharon Olds, "Sex Without Love"
Olds' poetry can be rawly honest, brutally straightforward. But in this questioning poem, she comes at some age-old ques... Read more
20 Dec 2015
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14mins
Ranked #6
Galway Kinnell, "After Making Love, We Hear Footsteps"
Galway Kinnell, "After Making Love, We Hear Footsteps"
Kinnell's honest, quiet, private poem about sex--and its constant reminder in the physical world in the body of the chil... Read more
27 Dec 2015
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14mins
Ranked #7
Emily Dickinson, Poem #124 ("Safe in their Alabaster Chambers")
Emily Dickinson, Poem #124 ("Safe in their Alabaster Chambers")
Dickinson's meditation on the safety of the grave is a theological bombshell. The members of the resurrection sleep safe... Read more
24 Jan 2020
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14mins
Ranked #8
William Shakespeare, Sonnet #1
William Shakespeare, Sonnet #1
Shakespeare's first sonnet in his sequence sets the tone for all that follows--and begins the exploration of unfulfilled... Read more
3 Jan 2016
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13mins
Ranked #9
Ellen Bass, "Indigo"
Ellen Bass, "Indigo"
Ellen Bass's haunting poem "Indigo" is as raw and honest a poem as I've read in a long time. It twists and turns to end ... Read more
18 Oct 2019
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27mins
Ranked #10
Wallace Stevens, "The Snowman"
Wallace Stevens, "The Snowman"
An exploration of Stevens' metaphysical poem about snow and winter--and the misery therein. Or perhaps not. Because you ... Read more
10 Jan 2016
•
11mins
Ranked #11
Matthew Olzmann, "Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised As A Love Poem"
Matthew Olzmann, "Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised As A Love Poem"
Olzmann does a brilliant job of summing up the small things that make up love--and the tenuous nature of the truce that ... Read more
24 Jan 2016
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13mins
Ranked #12
Pablo Neruda, "Ode To The Present"
Pablo Neruda, "Ode To The Present"
I've been away but I'm coming back to this little podcast. I'm starting again with one of Neruda's odes, a wonderful, re... Read more
19 Jun 2017
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8mins
Ranked #13
Emily Dickinson, Poem #269 ("Wild nights, wild nights")
Emily Dickinson, Poem #269 ("Wild nights, wild nights")
Celebrate Valentine's Day with this short poem, Emily Dickinson's intense expression of passion, the hope of physical co... Read more
14 Feb 2016
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13mins
Ranked #14
Adam Zagajewski, "Try To Praise The Mutilated World"
Adam Zagajewski, "Try To Praise The Mutilated World"
Percy Bysshe Shelley was wrong. Poets are not the unacknowledged legislators of the world. They are the world's voice, s... Read more
31 Jan 2016
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10mins
Ranked #15
Sharon Olds, "Adolescence"
Sharon Olds, "Adolescence"
A sexy and raw poem about sex in adolescence--or if not sex, then getting ready for it, preparing for it, reaching and r... Read more
7 Feb 2016
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11mins
Ranked #16
John Keats, "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles"
John Keats, "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles"
I've always interpreted this old chestnut, a sonnet by Keats, as the poet's response to gorgeous things: they make me th... Read more
11 Oct 2019
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20mins
Ranked #17
Kay Ryan, "Things Shouldn't Be So Hard"
Kay Ryan, "Things Shouldn't Be So Hard"
This small lyric poem is a quiet yet ironic meditation on what's left after a life--specifically, the marks that should ... Read more
10 Jul 2017
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13mins
Ranked #18
Elizabeth Bishop, "Sandpiper"
Elizabeth Bishop, "Sandpiper"
Elizabeth Bishop's lyric poem "Sandpiper" is a metaphysical exploration of the search for "something" in a world where e... Read more
25 Jul 2017
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16mins
Ranked #19
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "England In 1819"
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "England In 1819"
Percy Bysshe Shelley is angry--angry at the disenfranchisement, political unrest, authoritarian rule, and top-down rot i... Read more
18 Aug 2017
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18mins
Ranked #20
Galway Kinnell, "Blackberry Eating"
Galway Kinnell, "Blackberry Eating"
Kinnell's much-anthologized poem about blackberries from his 1980 collection "Mortal Acts, Mortal Words" takes us out in... Read more
17 Jul 2017
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17mins
