*YOUR EFFULGENCE, THE BONES AND LIGHT OF IT--**LET THESE POEMS TURN YOU RED GOLD ORANGE AND YELLOW: YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEENA TREE AND YOU KNOW IT*The Poetry Slow Down with Professor Barbara Mossberg on KRXA 540AM, liveand streamed Sundays Noon-1 pm PST, podcast at BarbaraMossberg.com.Produced by Sara Hughes. "Today when persimmons ripen," as Jane Hirshfieldbegins us, we're slowing down—you know you move too fast—in this slowedtime of year, where trees are strutting their structural moxie, revealedwhen their leaves take flight, sing the song of gravity, and reveal thegold orange and red and yellow reality in them all along, a way that poetryslows us down to express the fall foliage colors, the way a poem can turnus into what we have been all along—as Rumi puts this idea, "lovers don'tfinally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along." And the Mayansaying, You are the other me--perhaps this YOU is the poem in which werecognize what's amazing, what's to love . . . as D.H. Lawrence says in apoem called Know Deeply, Know Thyself More Deeply. Slowing down with poetryreveals a beauty, a hope, a redeeming knowledge that's been there, Inthere, all along. So today, we're going savor how a poem changes it up,saves the day, revealing not only the changing leaves but the beautifultrunk and limbs in us, as our leaves leave and turn—shimmering, gleaming,luminous moving and heart-shaking poems by Wendell Berry in his book Given,Susan Laughter Meyers in her My Dear, Dear Staggergrass, Albert Goldbarth,in Saving Lives, Charles Wright, in Bye and Bye, and poems by our ownCharles Tripi, Pablo Neruda, Garcia Lorca, D.H. Lawrence, David Whyte, FranLandesman, Shakespeare, Robert Bly, Mary Oliver, and what words we give ourchildren, Maurice Sendak's newly re-issued 1956 book, Kenny's Window, andLeo Lionni's profile of the poet in his Frederick . . . So ears, hears thestory, and thank you for joining me, Professor Barbara Mossberg*© Barbara Mossberg 2013
