What is all this juice and all this joy?—Gerard Manley Hopkins
O to have my life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on
—Walt Whitman
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Poets Noticing the Overlooked, Succumbing to the Despised, Forsaken, and Frankly Hated
Yep, it’s everything you hate—well not YOU, of course, poetry listener, but—well, yes, you, at least me, or sometimes me: the things we sweep and kill, poison and trap, tred and stomp, dismiss, roast, don’t think twice about, or even once, use and throw away for scrap . . .
Emily Dickinson serves as earthling hostess for the season and our show today on March 1, for, as she says, “We like March. His shoes are purple.†Continue reading
BELLWETHERS: STUDENTS READ JAMES WRIGHT’S
“I HAVE WASTED MY LIFEâ€:
Good News for the Future Generations
THE POETRY SLOW DOWN with Professor Barbara Mossberg
February 22, 2015 Sunday Noon-1 pm radiomonterey.com
bell·weth·er
noun: bellwether; plural noun: bellwethers
1 the leading sheep of a flock, with a bell on its neck.
▪                    an indicator or predictor of something.”
| synonyms: | harbinger, herald, indicator, predictor “a bellwether of change” |
What does James Wright mean when he ends his lyric lazy swing idling away an afternoon, “I have wasted my life?†With student eco-literati from the Clark Honors College, University of Oregon Emma Fager, Brian Amdur, Jordan Weems, Selena Blick, Verneet Brar, Kate Ballard, Virginia LaGrow, Hannah Lewman, Jake Bailey, eco critics Thom Gunn, Crunk aka Robert Bly, Bruce Henricksen, Dave Smith, poets Billy Collins and Mark Doty, and notes of Albert Einstein, William Blake, W.B. Yeats, and the words of James Wright himself (“what I actually meantâ€) and why and how they matter as we confer on this great mystery: how the way we read poetry is a harbinger of what is to come in our society, and through the lens of the people in whose hands our future lies, it’s good news. A good news show of the news we need, the news we heed, the news “without which men die miserably every day†(William Carlos Williams).
Join me for our Poetry Slow Down, our own hammock of the mind, Produced by Sara Hughes for radiomonterey.com, I’m your professor Barbara Mossberg, bmossber@uoregon.edu
© Barbara Mossberg 2015
Things are heating up here in the state of Oregon where the governor just resigned—Valentine’s Day—coincidence? It’s all about love, it seems to me, and there’s a history of leaders brought down or giving up their power for love.
