In which we consider the relationship between gardening and poetry from earliest times, as poets wipe soil from their hands to pen their thoughts on the inextricable connections between the act of creating and co-creating Truth and Beauty out of earthly experience, between what is sown and grown and pruned and tended, between mortal and immortal beauty. We’ll hear from Horace, of course, Shakespeare, hear hear!, Thoreau, he’ll crow, Emily Dickinson, and her twin one, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and speaking of kin, W.S. Merwin, Theodore Roetkhe, not to mention Charles Tripi, James Wright, so right, Mary Oliver, we love her, Pablo Neruda, our own time’s Buddha, Gerard Stern, it’s his turn, Yeats’ one of the greats, Stanley Kunitz, his tune is my bliss, and more (think C.K. Williams, Andrew Hudgins, and!). We’ll hear how some poets become activists in plant restoration movements, and we’ll revisit the Restore Hetch Hetchy movement to restore what John Muir, a flower viewer, called one the grandest landscape gardens ever consecrated on earth, for an update of its progress in rescuing this original garden from its spell of being a drowned valley, and redeeming us all. I even wrote a poem for this occasion called Redemption Engineering, about garden restoration, and we’ll hear about a book called Defiant Gardens by Kenny Helphand, and we’ll think about Voltaire and what he meant when his foolish Pangloss, the hopeless optimist, said, “cultivate your own garden,” and what Joni Mitchell meant in Woodstock’s, we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden. Yes, I know, there’s a Garden of Eden, and lots of poetry on that topic. So don your floppy garden hat, you know it’s a good look, put down your trowel, and let’s begin the Poetry Slow Down, I’m your host Professor Barbara Mossberg, for KRXA 540AM, with Hal Ginsberg, and Producer Sara Hughes.

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Life, I Insist! It’s Autumn, and we’re in the mood. Change is in the air, and what does the universe portend? We hear from poet gardeners who see poetry and gardening inextricably connected, gardeners writing in their eighties and nineties, Stanley Kunitz (“he loved the earth so much he wanted to stay forever”), W.S. Merwin (Happy Birthday, and we’re coming to your inauguration as Poet Laureate!, with poems from the Poetry Slow Down community), and Gerard Sterns (including the tour de force “Grapefruit”); and from twenty-five poets taking it slow, facing and embracing all that autumn means for us, life and death, celebrating vividness, change and transformation. We hear from the Academy of American Poets Poem A Day Scott Hightower, and poems by Jennifer Boully, Richard Garcia, Edward Hirsch, James Hoch, Margaret Gibson, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Deborah Diggs, Kabir, Shakespeare, A.R. Ammons, Lucille Clifton, James Galvin, Li-Young Lee, Mark Strand, William Blake, Robert Frost, Amy King, Baudelaire, and your Dr. B on “The Improbability of Orange,” all October poems. Let’s end with this from Kunitz at 100, writing a poem, “I can scarcely wait til tomorrow, when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day.” Music by Gershwin, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and Van Morrison. Yours sincerely, Poetry Slow Down Host Professor Barbara Mossberg, and Producers Hal Ginsberg and Sara Hughes. c Barbara Mossberg 2010

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Two birthdays are considered in the life of a poet, mother, radio host, professor, and earth citizen: our newest Poet Laureate for the Library of Congress, W.S. Merwin, a Poetry Slow Down fav in multiple roles, as translator of Neruda’s love poems (and Poetry Slow Down loves Pablo Neruda–think lemon ode! no, tomato ode!), as author of moving poems that seem to come up no matter what the topic of the week, and to inspire the week’s topics in the first place (including The Blind Seer of Ambon), and as an environmentalist conscience and activist along with John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, and others in service of earth –and trees–who walk the talk—he’s one—his life work is so important to me in all I try to promote, so we celebrate his life; and the other is my own son, Nicolino Clarke Mossberg, who was born 30 years ago yesterday, he was bald then and is bald now, still precious, and so this is the anniversary of me as a mom, I went into delivery holding my journal thinking I was going to record this for a poetic moment, aware there is little poetry on giving birth!–now I know why . . . and I will share with you some poetry on this occasion of humility and some of what I have learned as a poet and human being. This is Professor Barbara Mossberg, at the Poetry Slow Down, Join me! Lyric cake and song and do we hear Lamaze breathing? Stay tuned! KRXA 540AM, Produced by Hal Ginsberg, podcast by Sara Hughes, BarbaraMossberg.com.

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