SHAMBLING OUT OF SILENCE (BRIAN DOYLE), SCATTERING JOY (EMERSON), O TO MAKE THE MOST JUBILANT POEM (WHITMAN)–THE SERIOUS RESPONSIBILITY TO TAKE JOY SERIOUSLY

As we celebrate Walt Whitman’s birthday, we consider how seriously as a poet he took joy (very). As it turns out, in fact, poets taking joy seriously is a thing. We’re slowing down today (you know you move too fast) to consider this phenomenon and ferret out the gloom in June that besets us on this journey of ours.

We’ll hear from bossy poets and obedient poets on taking joy seriously—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, W.B. Yeats, Charles Tripi, Mary Oliver, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Brian Doyle.

As our family says when we begin a trip: Hi ho! Let us go then, you and I, as T.S. Eliot said; let us arise and go then, as W.B. Yeats said; let’s go, says B.C. Mossberg, your joyful host today, with our Producer Zappa Johns, for the Poetry Slow Down—seriously joyful, considering us seriously and our remarkable and necessary capacity for joy!

© Barbara Mossberg 2019