I and you have been thinking of a poetry superbowl, an all star-team, Emily Dickinson, wide receiver (“the spreading wide my narrow hands to gather paradiseâ€), QB, is it Emerson, calling the plays for The Poet? Yes, Walt, you’re the Center . . . You have been writing me suggestions at our facebook Barbara Mossberg’s
The Poetry Slow Down and we’ll hear them! You are such a radio community team of minds! Write me at drb@barbaramossberg.com, or at bmossberg@csumb.edu, and tell me your ideas for poet positions for our team because you know what, the season is never over in poetry, which stops the clock, as we “kiss the joy as it flies and . . . live in eternity’s sunrise†(William Blake). Our show is excellent pregaming for the NFL version 3:30 pm with the Seahawks and Patriots. For our Poetry Slow Down poet contenders, we need an offensive and defensive cohort for the “line-peoples,” and we may even bring in ringer football player/poets (“sting like a bee”). If we can see poetry through the lens of football, an activity that absorbs our national rapt attention, enlivened by color, commentary, play by play, what is the ball, and what is victory? Or is the game the poem itself, the poet both offense and defense, trying to create meaning against the forces of conventional thought and all the pressures trying to stop one’s flow of being? Is carrying the ball the metaphor, the velocity of meaning, the urgency of something to say to our world? And what do we eat, when we write or read a poem? For movies, we know: it’s popcorn and in my case, Junior Mints; for tailgate parties, is it clam chowder? Lobster rolls? Well, we’re going to have recipes for a poetry tailgate, poets on food to nourish our spirits . . . Burnsian gag of haggis if you like, or Pablo Nerudian fried potatoes, or Dickinson gingerbread, or dew or air, or Eliot toast and tea, or peach pie, or Ferglingetti penny candy, or recipe for happiness, or Baudelaurian wine, or Williams’ plums or Elizabeth Alexander butter . . .
We’ll talk about poets for Pre-Game and Post-Game, and of course a judgmental Referee (Dante?) and Coach (a certain poetically-named team’s NFL coach was heard quoting Shakespeare today).
Join me for Pre-Gaming with Beaudelaire and Li Po, Sunday PST Noon-1 pm radiomonterey.com, or we’ll meet back here at podcast BarbaraMossberg.com, for our Poetry Slow Down, and we’ll Monday Morning Quarterback the poet way.
Produced by Sara Hughes. © Barbara Mossberg 2015
