Speaking of thanks, in our series on life-saving wisdom thanks to poetry, we’ll consider the art of gratitude, the practice of thank you, the devotion of poetry which gives to us a way to see our world, our plights, our flights, our days and nights, in a grander light, noble, part of the human enduring struggle to do right by this gift of consciousness, and in this magic mirror . . . um, excuse me Professor Mossberg, hello! Um, I’d just like to point out that Thanksgiving has passed? And we are well into the next— Thank you, thank you for asking, that’s what I’m talking about: are we in a post-thanks time? Now that we’ve had Turkey and the ballet of football and crush of shopping, is thanks passé, wrapped until its next holi-day?. . . Let’s slow down today—we need a pause, yes? to think about thanking in everyday life. And thinking of you, our Poetry Slow Down listening community, our flight of listeners, we’ll gaze up into our skies and hear more bird-song, ways the poets fold poetic feet into wings, as we think about what birds mean to us in our journey of learning about being human, being alive on earth in this form, with these brains, our purpose here . . . what can we learn from our magic mirror of poetry, from how some poet somewhere—maybe in snow, maybe in rain, maybe in the leaves– looks up or out or in, sees something with eyes, two feet, who can walk and hop, like us, and then take wing, we say, soar, swoop? What hay, so to speak, does a poet make of the bird as a fellow creature? Let’s lift off with thanks and wings . . . it’s open season for thanksgiving! With your host Professor Barbara Mossberg, at the Poetry Slow Down. c Barbara Mossberg 2010

Standard Podcast [ 42:34 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download