WRAPPING IT UP: POETRY AS PRESENT, A GIFT IN OUR LIVES "WITHOUT WHICH MEN DIE MISERABLY EVERY DAY"

PodcastPoetry Slowdown
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("To Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," William Carlos Williams)—a wrap and rap in which we consider the new core curriculum standards devised in 45 states that mandate poetry be restricted in schools in a nonfiction to literature and poetry ratio of 70 to 30, including the case for poetry in the achievements of Presidents Lincoln, Obama, et.al.), how we advertise (and buy) cars, how we end novels from On the Road to The Great Gatsby, how we present presents, and what this all says about what poetry is, why it matters in our lives as present and presence, and other ways to end our year with a flourish, to keep on keeping on: tune in for poetry by Billy Collins, W. B. Yeats, Shakespeare, Elizabeth Bishop, poetics by Abraham Lincoln, F. Scott Fitzgrald, James Joyce, Ralph Ellison, Ann Tyler, Eudora Welty, Jack Kerouac, original songs sung by B. Mossberg (keep your day job, Dr. B!), and more . . . . You'll be transported to a river . . . you'll catch and release a fish . . . your pulse rate will go down, you'll slow down, and let "peace come dropping slow"© Barbara Mossberg 2012

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STARTING WITH I AM: DE DAH! --YOUR NEXT LINE IS THE BEGINNING OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
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Hail, Denizens of the GROVE! I am delighted to join you on this TREE-mendous occasion of our getting together for a grand show, as John Muir would say, of the air, on the air, through the air, straight to your ears, on waves of sounds, on our Poetry Slow Down, and we're talking about Tree-mendous poetry, and its role in preservation of trees –how people who read and hear and write poetry about trees inspire moral imagination of how we think about and value trees, and all the life they contain, and all the life that sustains them!