WHEN TERRORISM THREATENS OUR TRUST IN OUR WORLD—WE LOOK IN POETRY FOR A WORLD WE CAN TRUST, beginning with Spine Poetry. We’ll not only learn about spine poetry (you have your own right now) but how it can give us spine, have our back, hand it to us, nurture our hearts, and restore our sense of trust in our world. Our Poetry Slow Down is produced by Zappa Johns, out here on the West Coast, and I’m our host, in Eugene, Oregon, Track Capital of the World, by which we all know means the place of poetic feet, go Ducks!–with the news we need, the news we heed, the news without which men die miserably every day . . . in other words, news we can trust to be kind.

Continue reading →

Standard Podcast [ 1:01:26 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

ON WHICH SO MUCH DEPENDS: REALLY? THAT’S A POEM? THAT’S WHAT WITHOUT WHICH WE DIE MISERABLY EVERY DAY?

The case for poetry (life and death) at a time when such things are being questioned as unnecessary in our civic life. A show in which I say, all right, let’s see what this poetry is really about when it comes right down to it–my mother’s dying and death. And in the process we’ll hear what nourished me and us–e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Yeats, Eliot, Beckett, Mark Strand, Stanley Kunitz, Shakespeare, James Wright, Mary Oliver, and more.

Continue reading →

Standard Podcast [ 1:06:00 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Live from Berkeley, words on behalf of earth and your own favorite tree and poets!

Continue reading →

Standard Podcast [ 1:01:23 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dickinson and Eco poets Denshosha? Wetzeng? A talk with Kim Stafford . . .  Emily Dickinson serves as earthling terran hostess for the season and our show today on March 5, for, as she says, “We like March. His shoes are purple.” March, this Versace fashionista dude in a hat, comes panting to her door, and she opens it wide, so glad, takes him upstairs with her, ready for all he has to tell her, and she, because she’s Emerson’s Poet, air-lord, sea-lord, land-lord, to tell us.

Continue reading →

Standard Podcast [ 1:09:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hello my peoples, an iambic greeting to you this fair morning as we slow down—you know you move too fast—for our Poetry Slow Down, I’m Dr. B, your professor Barbara Mossberg, with our West Coast producer Zappa as in Frank Zappa Johns, on bass, alto, hitting all the notes for us, our music being old-school today and it tells you everything, especially when I tell you where I was yesterday—first, with 36 adults from the University of Oregon Extension Insight Seminar in our final class pondering the meaning of John Muir’s writings for our world today, we’re talking 70 year olds getting up for a two and a half hour class every Saturday morning, and then, a three hour hearing with the Oregon state legislature Ways and Means Committee, consisting of our elected House and Senate representatives from districts all over Oregon, and people had two minutes to state their case, everyone knowing there is a budget shortfall, not enough, not nearly enough, two minutes to describe the plight and fright and fight and might and sight and need of people for whom you care passionately. Continue reading →

Standard Podcast [ 55:55 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download