http://www.barbaramossberg.com Poet in Residence, Pacific Grove California Wed, 12 Jun 2013 02:22:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 Copyright © Barbara Mossberg 2010 http://Copyright©BarbaraMossberg2010 bmossberg@csumb.edu (Dr. Barbara Mossberg) bmossberg@csumb.edu (Dr. Barbara Mossberg) Poetry 1440 http://www.barbaramossberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/pslowdownlogo.jpg http://www.barbaramossberg.com 144 144 Dr. Barbara Mossberg is President Emerita Goddard College, Director and Professor, Integrated Studies at California State University Monterey Bay, Founder and Host, The Poetry Slow Down with Professor Barbara Mossberg on www.krxa540.com and KRXA 540 AM (Monterey/Santa Cruz/Salinas). She has recently been named the Poet in Residence in the city of Pacific Grove California. She is also an Affiliated Faculty member at the Union Institute and University Poetry Dr. Barbara Mossberg Dr. Barbara Mossberg bmossberg@csumb.edu no no http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=399&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=june-9th-2013 http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=399#comments Wed, 12 Jun 2013 02:20:26 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=399 Continue reading →]]> http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=399 0 0:51:58 “SURELY JOY IS THE CONDITION OF LIFE”—Henry David Thoreau Welcome to our Poetry Slow Down, KRXA 540AM, think for yourself radio with Producer and icon Hal Ginsberg, whose vision of poetry on this show was excited by a poem about John Muir, and HIS e[...] “SURELY JOY IS THE CONDITION OF LIFE”—Henry David Thoreau Welcome to our Poetry Slow Down, KRXA 540AM, think for yourself radio with Producer and icon Hal Ginsberg, whose vision of poetry on this show was excited by a poem about John Muir, and HIS excitement and joy in this June world, and I’m Professor Barbara Mossberg, “Dr. B,” your host and companion on this journey of ours, with the news we need, in William Carlos Williams’ words, yes, poetry is despised and difficult, he says, but “without which men die miserably every day” (“To Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”); for what we are about, slowing down together with poetry right now, is not dying miserably but living joyously, and celebrating what poetry has to do with our ability to do that. This is our annual show today that takes place as I am in Yosemite National Park, speaking at the Sierra Club Headquarters there with Curator Dr. Bonnie Gisel at the LeConte Memorial Lodge, named 100 years ago for Professor Joe, Joseph LeConte, one of the first natural sciences professors at the brand new University of California in the late 1860’s when John Muir had arrived in Yosemite and Professor Joe and his students hiked and rode up to Yosemite and met Muir and began a relationship of mutual enthusiasm and joy and rapture at being in such a glorious—as they called it—place. We’ll begin with our ritual reading of e.e. cummings poem “i thank You God for this amazing,” and as I read, imagine you and me (I do) around a campfire or sitting in this river-rock round building under the vaulted beamed ceiling of the Lodge, the fragrance of pine warmed by sun, woodsmoke, and slowing down to savor such a time. We’ll hear the official story of how Yosemite National Park came to me from the National Park website, which leaves out how “public pressure” and John Muir actually came to bear on resulting legislation and national leadership: the poetry! Fortunately, our Poetry Slow Down has the scoop, and we will hear the role of poetry in our National Parks, beginning with ideas about wilderness and wild nature prevalent in John Muir’s day. We will hear about John Muir’s day job as self-appointed and anointed PR guy for wilderness, interpreter, reader of nature’s “text,” “the only one” who can do justice to the case for preservation of wilderness when Western governors seek to erode embryonic legislation protecting forests. Talk about pressure! We’ll hear Muir rise to the occasion and strut his poetic moxie, looking at his work as a palimpsest of the writers in his backpack-mind: the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Thoreau (and Emerson, of course) (DON’T FORGET BOBBY BURNS, Dr. B). Thus when we come back after our break for our glorious sponsors who savor poetic language and moxie on behalf of civic joy, we’ll hear poetry that inspires our joy in creation, the world at hand, the possibilities of vision, keeping in mind what Wallace Stevens said about the greatest poverty being not to live in the physical world, and sometimes, perhaps, all we need is a walk around the lake, a concept developed by Sandra Simonds in “Poem with Lines from Pierre Reverdy,” a poem of the week selection from poets.org, the Academy of American Poets, and Reverdy’s poem on which her poem is based, “The Moment,” about saving the world by joy. We will continue to explore how John Muir, a botanist and geologist—that was the career written on his death certificate– learned a literary way of seeing joy—as well as seeing joyfully–through poetry. In our final section of this radio news campfire program, we will do an homage to rousing singing of You Are My Sunshine, because you know you are, as we beam across the airwaves today, reflecting with you on why and how it matters what poets say about our world, giving us a sense of the possibilities of joy in what we behold . . . so I will share with you some of the ways John Muir has inspired me to experience our world including the roaring hot poem I wrote coverin[...] Podcast Dr. Barbara Mossberg no no http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=397&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=june-2nd-2013 http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=397#comments Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:22:18 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=397 Continue reading →]]> http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=397 0 0:51:16 GALL AND NERVE, GUTS AND GLORY –THE POETRY OF INDIGESTION, PAIN, AND GLORIOUS PHYSICAL DESIRE TO RUN AND TO WIN (AND EVEN LOSE) IN LANES AND LINES, POETIC FEET . . . HOMAGE TO STEVE PREFONTAINE AND THE PREFONTAINE CLASSIC. . . a comparison of [...] GALL AND NERVE, GUTS AND GLORY –THE POETRY OF INDIGESTION, PAIN, AND GLORIOUS PHYSICAL DESIRE TO RUN AND TO WIN (AND EVEN LOSE) IN LANES AND LINES, POETIC FEET . . . HOMAGE TO STEVE PREFONTAINE AND THE PREFONTAINE CLASSIC. . . a comparison of twin hearts in the race of life, Steve Prefontaine and Emily Dickinson (yes!) . . . AS WE BRING TOGETHER NEWS OF THE HOUR, RUNNING NEWS FROM TRACK TOWN USA, TALKING ABOUT THE GUTS OF PERFORMANCE, AND MORE PERSONAL NEWS OF GUTS …POETIC SPRINTERS AND FAST TWITCHERS, THE POETS OF LONG DISTANCE AND SLOW TWITCHERS, POETS WITH KICK, FRONT-RUNNING POETS . . . YOU GET MY DRIFT . . . Poets discussed include Elizabeth Bishop, Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, with shouts out for Pablo Neruda, St. Paul, Yeats, Shakespeare and Olivia Shakespeare, Whitman, Basho, LiPo, Allen Ginsberg, Gerald Stern, William Carlos Williams, Ludwig Bemelmans, and more. The topic of poetry and running is to be continued! Stay tuned for rivers and poetry! And June 15—Bloomsday of course! Write me at bmossberg@csumb.edu or facebook at Barbara Mossberg’s Poetry Slow Down. As Emily Dickinson said, “my river runs to you.” © Barbara Mossberg 2013 Podcast Dr. Barbara Mossberg no no http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=395&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=poetry-slowdown http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=395#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 15:25:33 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=395 http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=395 0 http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=393&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=may-19th-2013 http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=393#comments Sun, 19 May 2013 23:19:33 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=393 Continue reading →]]> http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=393 0 0:52:40 For Scientist Jim Sedell CALLED, CREEKSIDE ANY TIME MORNING, ANY PLACE WALDEN, ANY MOMENT ALIVE, AWAKE: GOING TO THE WOODS TO LIVE DELIBERATELY . . . . WITH MOM’S PIE BERRY PIE AND PBR–THE HORSE LEAVES THE BARN, THE TRILLIUM TRUMPS CLEARCUT HI[...] For Scientist Jim Sedell CALLED, CREEKSIDE ANY TIME MORNING, ANY PLACE WALDEN, ANY MOMENT ALIVE, AWAKE: GOING TO THE WOODS TO LIVE DELIBERATELY . . . . WITH MOM’S PIE BERRY PIE AND PBR–THE HORSE LEAVES THE BARN, THE TRILLIUM TRUMPS CLEARCUT HILL, AND POETRY THEREOF INCLUDING THE LIKES AND LOVES OF ROBERT FROST, MARY OLIVER, E.E. CUMMINGS, WENDELL BERRY, JESSICA GREENBAUM, RUMI, WILLIAM STAFFORD, GALWAY KINNELL, WILLIAM BLAKE, RAYMOND CARVER, DONALD HALL, DONALD RAVELL, SHAKESPEARE, 23 PSALM, OH AND YES, THOREAU, AHEM! AND YOUR RADIO HOST’S ENGAGING ADVENTURES WITH WOODS AS AGENCY OF MORNING FOR OSU’S SPRING CREEK/TRILLIUM PROJECT (E.G., “WHAT I ATE AND WHAT I LIVED FOR”) What is it about morning, the best time of the day, coming out of darkness, this miracle of resurrection, “I who have died am alive again today,” that line from e.e. Cummings in us, morning our time and earth’s time of turning, returning to our star of which we are made, rising, to more and more light, shining world in rain or sun, what was dark dazzling and glistening, what was silent now bird song, rooster crow, we’re slow, we’re been asleep, half unconscious . . .but now awake—as in e.e. cummings of this same sonnet which sings “i thank You God for most this amazing,” “i who have died am alive again today,” ending his morning prayer of gratitude, “now the eyes of my eyes are open and/now the ears of my ears are awake”– a fresh start, for all that is possible in our day and life. This is how Mary Oliver captures morning essence, “I happened to be standing,” from A Thousand Mornings. Let’s begin! There is more day to dawn! The sun is a morning star! This show was a joy to do and I send you morning energy from immersion in these poets and scientists whose reverence for woods and words inspires conviction of resurrection. Know you are earth’s beloved. (Write me at bmossberg@csumb.edu) © Barbara Mossberg 2013 Podcast Dr. Barbara Mossberg no no http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=391&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=labor-of-love http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=391#comments Sun, 12 May 2013 20:00:42 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=391 Continue reading →]]> http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=391 0 0:52:38 OF COURSE WE’RE HEARING POETRY ABOUT MOTHERS! I WON’T LIE TO YOU, THERE IS NOT A WHOLE LOT IN OUR HUMAN HISTORY OF POETRY ABOUT MOTHERS. YOU WOULD THINK, AS A TERRAN ARCHEOLOGIST FROM THE SIRENS OF TITAN THAT IN FACT WE ARE BY AND LARGE A MOTHERLESS[...] OF COURSE WE’RE HEARING POETRY ABOUT MOTHERS! I WON’T LIE TO YOU, THERE IS NOT A WHOLE LOT IN OUR HUMAN HISTORY OF POETRY ABOUT MOTHERS. YOU WOULD THINK, AS A TERRAN ARCHEOLOGIST FROM THE SIRENS OF TITAN THAT IN FACT WE ARE BY AND LARGE A MOTHERLESS RACE, ATHENAS POPPED OUT OF ZEUS’ HEAD, BASED ON THE ABSENCE OF POETRY ABOUT MOTHERS (AND IT USED TO BE, BY MOTHERS) AND EVEN DENIAL OF MOTHERS (“I NEVER HAD A MOTHER . . .”—E. DICKINSON). WE CAN DO WAR AND PEACE AND LIFE AND DEATH AND DADS AND INFINITE AND THE MOST SUBTLE AND BRING TO SIGNIFICANCE THE SEEMINGLY INSUBSTANTIAL, BUT MOTHERS . . . THE PEN QUAILS. THE QUILL QUIVERS. HOWEVER POETRY SLOW DOWN, YES, THERE ARE GREAT POEMS BY GREAT POETS ON MOTHERS HERE AND THERE—REALLY GREAT POEMS–, SO WE ARE IN LUCK, AND WE’LL HEAR POEMS ABOUT MOTHERS, BY MOTHERS, FOR MOTHERS, AND I’LL CONFESS MY OWN SNARKY TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS WITHOUT A CLUE WORK AS A SCHOLAR AND POET ON MOTHERS PRE-MOTHERHOOD AND THEN DURING HUMBLED MOTHERHOOD, AND SO WE GO ON THIS LABOR OF LOVE! WHICH IS, IN HUMAN EVOLUTION, EMBRYONIC, IN ITS INFANCY OF JUSTICE WE DO TO CREATION, CONCEPTION, LABOR, DELIVERY, AND THE WHOLE SHEBANG OF CONNECTION AND RESONSIBILITY FOR ANOTHER’S BEING, HOPE AND WORRY AND FEAR AND COURAGE AND BRAVERY AND SORROW. LET US GO THEN YOU AND I ON THE SUBJECT OF MOTHERS AND POETRY. A DYNAMIC “YOU AND I” OF MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT. LISTEN FOR EMILY DICKINSON, WALT WHITMAN, CHRISTINA ROSETTI, ALICIA OSTRIKER, ALLEN GINSBERG, SANDRA GILBERT, MAY SARTON, PABLO NERUDA, TONY HOAGLAND, DAWN LUNDY MARTIN, ROBERT DUNCAN, RUDYARD KIPLING, ANNE TYLER, ANNE BRADSTREET, MARK STRAND, YEATS, R.L. STEVENSON, POE, NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, AND OTHERS INCLUDING TRULY YOURS, Professor Barbara Mossberg, The Poetry Slow Down, KRXA 540AM, SUNDAYS NOON-1 PM PST Thank you for joining me! Please write me at bmossberg@csumb.edu and slow down–you know you move too fast! Next week, going to the woods to live deliberately, in search of morning, round the clock . . . and more on the NASA Mars haiku send-off. For more poems about mothers and motherhood, consider the following: Sandra Gilbert’s book on motherhood poetry and her poems “After Thanksgiving” and “Belongings” “Sonnet to My Mother” by George Barker “Wedding Cake,” Naomi Shihab Nye “My Mother Would Be a Falconress” by Robert Duncan “Kaddish” by Allen Ginsberg
”Portrait” by Louise Glück “Clearances” by Seamus Heaney “A Poem for My Mother,” Pablo Neruda “Kaddish” by David Ignatow “In Memory of My Mother” by Patrick Kavanagh “Mother ‘o Mine” by Rudyard Kipling “Mother, Summer, I” by Phillip Larkin “The 90th Year” by Denise Levertov “Parents” by William Meredith “Medusa” by Sylvia Plath “To My Mother” by Edgar Allan Poe “From Childhood” by Rainer Maria Rilke “To My Mother” by Christina Rossetti
”[Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome]” by Christina Rossetti “For My Mother” by May Sarton “To My Mother” by Robert Louis Stevenson “You Just Go On and Wave That Dishrag, Honey,” Barbara Mossberg “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand “Mother Doesn’t Want a Dog” by Judith Viorst “Mama, Come Back” by Nellie Wong © Barbara Mossberg 2013 Podcast Dr. Barbara Mossberg no no http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=390&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-is-all-this-juice-and-all-this-joy http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=390#comments Sun, 05 May 2013 20:00:45 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=390 Continue reading →]]> http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=390 0 0:52:40 A JUICY SHOW: POETS DEFINE AND PRACTICE THE JUICE, PROVIDING ANSWERS FOR WHEN WE EACH ARE POSED THIS QUESTION IN THE HEADLINE NEWS—ASKED OF OUR PRESIDENT, NO LESS, DO YOU HAVE THE JUICE? Just what is meant by this metaphor? We’re going to hear how p[...] A JUICY SHOW: POETS DEFINE AND PRACTICE THE JUICE, PROVIDING ANSWERS FOR WHEN WE EACH ARE POSED THIS QUESTION IN THE HEADLINE NEWS—ASKED OF OUR PRESIDENT, NO LESS, DO YOU HAVE THE JUICE? Just what is meant by this metaphor? We’re going to hear how poets define the juice from Gerald Manley Hopkins to Shakespeare to Pablo Neruda to Gerald Stern to Winston Churchill, with mojo moxie displayed in poems from Emily Dickinson, Grace Paley, Walt Whitman, Robert Herrick, defiance energy from William Ernest Henley, Whitman, Albert Goldfarth, C.K. Williams, Timothy Seibles, the sense of fighting exuberant spirit of Rumi, Hafitz, Kabir, our most senior poets weighing in and showing us juice by the quart, Ruth Stone, Stanley Kunitz, Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton, W. B. Yeats; we’ll hear Mark Strand’s juice unnerving a librarian; we’ll see besieged and beleaguered leaders showing ways of juice including M. L. King, Jr., and we’ll hear Nikki Giovanni—the ultimate juice machine—and Thoreau message of the juice that may always be there no matter how dried up it looks, and even your own Professor B, showing some juice chops as gravity weighs her down. How indeed do we reply when we are asked, do you have the juice? Our show will show just what the juice is about and how poets are the Go To consultants when reporters come to our press conference.We begin with “Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, asking about all this juice and joy, which we thought of when ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked President Obama at the White House press conference, Mr. President–he asked a poetry question–100 days have gone by in the second term of your presidency, and do you still have the juice to influence Congress? The juice question is on the airwaves, and since this is a metaphor, what can our poets tell us about juice and juiciness, and if you, dear listener, wonder if YOU still have the juice, or if you are asked this by your wife or son or employee or board chair, and you want to know, where indeed can I find such juice in me, our Poetry Slow Down is on the case, we will look in our pantry of poems, our garden of glorious lyric fruits of juicy wisdom-and this poetry is gluten free! Reading these poems is a tonic for Spring, so slow down and enjoy the fruits of your listening. It was a joy to engage with these poets and I’d love to hear from you, at bmossberg@csumb.edu. © Barbara Mossberg 2013 Podcast Dr. Barbara Mossberg no no http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=388&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=finding-eden-snake-weeds-and-all-in-our-own-back-yards http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=388#comments Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:00:17 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=388 Continue reading →]]> http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=388 1 0:52:39 Finding Eden (snake, weeds, and all) in Our Own Back Yards: The Poetry of Community Garden: Earth Day, John Muir’s Birth Day, lots of robust Muir poetry with notes of Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, William Cullen Bryant, Gilgamesh, and our contemp[...] Finding Eden (snake, weeds, and all) in Our Own Back Yards: The Poetry of Community Garden: Earth Day, John Muir’s Birth Day, lots of robust Muir poetry with notes of Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, William Cullen Bryant, Gilgamesh, and our contemporary earth justice and love kin to Muir, Denise Levertov and Gary Snyder, and Mary Oliver’s Sunflowers, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Theodore Roethke, and –is there a better testimony for love of earth—Stanley Kunitz. Oh! And on this note—perhaps the wisest of all, A.A. Milne, on the power of humility in engaging earth, weeds as flowers we don’t know yet . . . Our music ranges from Straus waltzes from The Vienna Woods, to the Shins’ “O Inverted Earth,” the happy wanderer song (sing along with me), to “we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden”—and we do. Perhaps poetry is the garden of our mind, a way to figure out in this early journey of ours how and why we belong to each other and our earth.   What is at stake for earth in our ability to see something that grows as useful and good and nutritious, and not as the enemy? Across scale—whole wilderness forests and glaciers, a lithe blade? What is it about “garden” that makes evil of rabbits and squirrels, flowers and shrubs, ivies and vines that twine and twist, moths and flies, worms and every matter of crawling thing, attaching thing, and how can we make of a garden a sanctuary, a place of solace and hope and joy in the revelation of what is possible of earth; in what ways is a poem such a garden of our minds, a place of safety where yet the wild can happen and be welcomed, in the message of what we have to tell each other, about what it is and how it is and why it is to live on this earth, as part of what this earth does grow: our wild useful selves. We begin with a tribute to John Muir: Welcome to our Poetry Slow Down, KRXA 540AM, Think for yourself radio, produced by Sara Hughes, I’m your host Professor Barbara Mossberg, and it’s Earth Day and John Muir’s birthday. Coincidence? No way! Rambling and almost rambunctious, a wide-eyed wanderer, admiring adventurer, gazing and dazed and dazzled, serious to the point of rectitude, a holy seer of sacred place, an amateur of a writer, striving to do justice to the gift of consciousness. For him, earth a birthday present; for him, the present is presence.   What writer brings to consciousness earth in such an epic way that, in reading his lyric prose, we want to stand up for trees, sing their praises, go to bat for them. We can weep for their plight being skinned alive, or rejoice in their joy in a windstorm. Reading his lyric prose on the Sierras, we vote for preservation, restoration, ressurrection of earth itself. We think of earth differently, as happy, as happy-making, as, in e.e. cummings’ birth-day poem words, “the gay great happening illimitably earth.”   John Muir is one of the most exuberant, exhilarated, enthusiastic earth-lovers, earth-celebrators who ever lived. He was shamelessly a lover of earth. His love was romantic, loyal, heroic, utterly sensual. My children used to tease me, on my fear of heights, keeping me from climbing Half Dome: “I bet if John Muir were up there you would go.” I told them, even if Muir were my contemporary and I were not already enthralled with my own Swedish squeeze, Muir would never give me a second look even if I scaled Half Dome right up its face: “to get his attention, you’d have to wear bark.” If you had anything about you like moss, I told them, or lichen, or fur, or cone, or stamen, or petal, or root, or glacial polish, he would love you, passionately. He would caress you. He would serenade you. He would sketch you. He would squat and behold you for ten hours. He would leap up and shout for you: “the glory!” He would lie down on top of pine needles and just breathe your essence, totally in love. Away from you, he would pine. Away from you too long, his spirit would shrivel. He might die. (His wife once sent him away,[...] Podcast Dr. Barbara Mossberg no no http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=385&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=where-we-get-when-we-go-away-or-if-traveling-is-a-fools-paradise-emerson-book-me-on-the-soonest-flight-in-honor-of-senator-fulbrights-birthday-and-the-vision-of-the-fulbright-p http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=385#comments Sun, 07 Apr 2013 20:00:30 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=385 Continue reading →]]> http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=385 0 0:52:37 Welcome to our Poetry Slow Down, KRXA 504AM, Think for Yourself Radio, produced by Sara Hughes, I’m your host Professor Barbara Mossberg, all because of the life of Senator William Fulbright: How is it that in going away, from all we know, we learn [...] Welcome to our Poetry Slow Down, KRXA 504AM, Think for Yourself Radio, produced by Sara Hughes, I’m your host Professor Barbara Mossberg, all because of the life of Senator William Fulbright: How is it that in going away, from all we know, we learn what we really do know; how experiencing ourselves as strange and foreign, learning that we who are know it alls–that’s why we got to go, after all–, don’t know it all, at all, and become both worldly in our newfound humbling experience of awkwardness, of being alive, and new to ourselves, in Tennyson’s words, open to the world as a bringer of new things? The Fulbright program’s purpose is to give scholars and leaders the opportunity to go to another country and be ourselves there; in the process, of sharing our being, what we know and do, we change, we transform, or rather, perhaps, we become our truer selves, in Eliot’s words, returning home to know the place for the first time. When the familiar suddenly is unfamiliar, that is when we see what It is the transforming magic of going away, of being fish out of water—they say if you want to know about water don’t ask a fish, yet who better to ask—than the creature who lives its life, feeds and needs and breeds in water—but the fish doesn’t even know water exists, waterty, waterness, until we take it out of water, THEN, then, it can tell us all about water and what it means to be a fish, so we, in going away, experiencing ourselves as other, learning about one’s strange and perhaps more interesting self, humbler certainly, unsettled, out of water, our complacent assumptions about how things are, return from being away a changed person, aspects of ourselves revealed, and we have a new vision. What did Eliot say? In Four Quartets, we return only to know the place for the first time. It is our eyes that have changed, not the place. Now the purpose of the Fulbright program, in Senator Fulbright’s vision, had lofty and pragmatic goals: that for the cost of one third of one wing of one bomber, we could deploy foibled but well-meaning professors around the world in educational exchanges that would lead to a world peace that would eliminate the need for bombers in the first place. Well, for me, the chance to go abroad and be in Helsinki, Finland, for one year, and then ten years later, for another Fulbright, was momentous: it was a changed life, poetry terrain (Rilke: you must change your life)–poetry about Fulbright experiences, literally like Maya Angelou or metaphorically, such as T.S. Eliot—and yes this is his time of year, April, the cruelest month, why it’s National Poetry Month, and Thoreau, Gertrude Stein, and Robert Frost, the whole canon of American literature surely, and British literature, and we can think of Fulbright-type exchanges of e.e. cummings and Mark Twain and Einstein—yes, he is a poet, e=mc2, his elegant metaphor of the oneness of all things, besides, he spent more time advocating for poetry than physics—and Charles Wright, and fellow Finland Fulbrighter Robert Creeley, and Linda Gregg, Wendell Berry, and Emerson, and of course Emily Dickinson, but Dr. B—with all respect—duly noted—thank you—but Emily did not leave her room, right, she secluded herself in that upstairs bedroom, ah, yes, Poetry Slow Down, of course you are right, but did not she say, I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given. Now how could this be? Her poetry actually expresses insights about life that come from going away and seeing our world—through her books, her dictionaries, her atlases—that light up her world, illuminate it, as when she called their Main Street domestic scene, Vesuvius at home, Vesuvius erupting, so we’ll hear from her, and Emerson, and in fact, let’s start with him, because he said, traveling is a fool’s paradise, and so maybe he means if we travel w[...] Podcast Dr. Barbara Mossberg no no http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=382&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=practicing-resurrection-i-who-have-died-am-alive-again-today-e-e-cummings http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=382#comments Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:15:42 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=382 Continue reading →]]> http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=382 0 0:52:39 Ears of our ears are opened! Thank you mr. e. e. cummings, you ARE indeed alive again today and so are we,—slowing down for our Poetry Slow Down, I am your host Professor Barbara Mossberg, alive again today, on the theme of resurrection—life rising [...] Ears of our ears are opened! Thank you mr. e. e. cummings, you ARE indeed alive again today and so are we,—slowing down for our Poetry Slow Down, I am your host Professor Barbara Mossberg, alive again today, on the theme of resurrection—life rising again—when it was thought it was over—done with—gone for good—or bad—hopeless—and up springs against all the odds and expectations, life! The title of our show today Practicing Resurrection is from a line by a farmer poet, Wendell Berry, in his Manifesto: Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front poem, where he gives us advice, concluding with, “practice resurrection.” I’ve been writing at my parents’ 100 year old house with pond and trees and bushes and flowers that our son is trying to honor by keeping them alive, and what we thought truly was nevermore, I mean, that we were sure was really really dead, no signs of life at all, pathetic dried twigs, brown drowned leaves, are furled bright green leaves and fruit and blossom and lily pads, no, you were done for, how, how now? How has this miracle happened, what is the meaning for us in these ways of resurrection? We are going to hear about people who actually practice resurrection, stories that will bring back to springing life our own hopes and visions for our earth and all creation—and what poetry has to do with it! We’ll hear about Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” and other poems that are catalysts for resurrection, what has died and is alive again today, including David Milarch’s Archangel Ancient Trees project, and what the Williams (Blake, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Carlos Williams, Merwin, Stafford—so many Bills we have a flock of birds or we’re millionaires—“Williamaires”—have to do with it. We’ll hear resurrection attitude in selections from Robert Bly’s anthology The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, from Charles Wright’s Appalachia, and ways that resurrection occurs in daily life including at the hair salon for a sixty-four-year old, and a “wild thing” child (Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are), and the inextricable connection of poetry and science and angels in the capacity of our world to spring back to life and life again. Thoreau is called our greatest writer on resurrection, while Whitman objects, and your host almost is not alive again today until this dust-up is resolved. Yours truly, Professor Barbara Mossberg, Dr. B, and next up, speaking of genius science in service of goodness, the Fulbright program, where going away gets us, and what poets have to say about the role of journey and experiencing ourselves as “other” and others, in the Mayan saying, as our other me, “You are my other me” and how poetry illuminates the Fulbright legacy. Until then, remember that when you do go away, and “have died,” when you come back to us, where you are loved most of all, your dinner will still be hot. © Barbara Mossberg 2013 Podcast Dr. Barbara Mossberg no no http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=378&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=continual-cheerfulness-is-a-sign-of-wisdom-irish-proverb-the-luck-of-the-irish-cheshire-cat-magnetic-belts-persian-new-year-ides-of-march-and-other-news-in-poetry http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=378#comments Sun, 17 Mar 2013 20:51:21 +0000 Sara Hughes http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?p=378 Continue reading →]]> http://www.barbaramossberg.com/?feed=rss2&p=378 0 0:52:38 We will begin with news on the topic of wisdom and the struggle to make a life of meaning and purpose and solace AND cheer—enduring —which will take us to some great poems on what and how to make of our moments, so let’s slow down, get our cheery ga[...] We will begin with news on the topic of wisdom and the struggle to make a life of meaning and purpose and solace AND cheer—enduring —which will take us to some great poems on what and how to make of our moments, so let’s slow down, get our cheery game faces on for . . . “Continual cheerfulness is a sign of wisdom.” © Dr. Barbara Mossberg Podcast Dr. Barbara Mossberg no no