Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. To start off they travel back almost 800 years to the birth of the sonnet, discuss "Sonetto 26" by Giacomo da Lentini, and then zoom back to the present and dive into Terrance Hayes American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin."

Sonetto 26
By: Giacomo da Lentini (Translation by Leo Zoutewelle)

I’ve seen it rain on sunny days
And seen the darkness flash with light
And even lightning turn to haze,
Yes, frozen snow turn warm and bright

And sweet things taste of bitterness
And what is bitter taste most sweet
And enemies their love confess
And good, close friends no longer meet.

Yet stranger things I’ve seen of love
Who healed my wounds by wounding me.
The fire in me he quenched before;
The life he gave was the end thereof,
The fire that slew eluded me.
Once saved from love, love now burns more.

American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin
By: Terrance Hayes

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,
Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.
I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat
Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone.
I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold
While your better selves watch from the bleachers.
I make you both gym & crow here. As the crow
You undergo a beautiful catharsis trapped one night
In the shadows of the gym. As the gym, the feel of crow-
Shit dropping to your floors is not unlike the stars
Falling from the pep rally posters on your walls.
I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart.
Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. It is not enough
To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.

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Episode #125 The Birth of an Enduring Form - Sonnet Week Ep. 1

Connor and Jack discuss the Audre Lorde poem "Coping." They discuss Lorde's legacy as a writer and theorist, how poems and other pieces of culture can be palatable containers for unruly emotions, and the nature imagery the poem uses. They also take time to reflect on the ways the poem gets them thinking about climate change.

More about Audre Lorde, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/audre-lorde

Coping
By: Audre Lorde

It has rained for five days
running 
the world is
a round puddle
of sunless water
where small islands
are only beginning 
to cope
a young boy
in my garden 
is bailing out water
from his flower patch
when I ask him why
he tells me
young seeds that have not seen sun
forget 
and drown easily

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Episode #136 Coping - Audre Lorde

Time travel stories are everywhere - Avengers: Endgame, Loki, Back to the Future, Outlander, the list is endless - but what happens when a poem takes on the question of time travel? Connor and Jack dive into Irish poet, Patrick Cotter's "Time Traveler." They discuss the challenges of thinking about the practicalities of time travel, the poem's use of sound, and the time-warping events of the last year and a half.

You can read the whole poem, here (or below): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90658/time-traveler

Get a copy of Sonic White Poise, here: https://www.dedaluspress.com/product/sonic-white-poise/

Time Traveler
By: Patrick Cotter

Now is before he was born. Days of air
shaken by bees, crow song probing eaves
and quays. Maker of the future a perfect
terra-cotta tense, a tense which sings.
The absence of push in his education
was unpresaged by the door’s lack of wired
Sesame. He waits and waits for egress.
The door needs only his touch.
Its only desire is to swing. He waits
for it to open itself, as the cloud
opens for the melting press of the sun.
He is ready to rot where he leans, leaving
a breeze-blown blemish long after he has arrived.
Long before he has come into being.

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Episode #137 Time Traveler - Patrick Cotter

Connor and Jack discuss the poem "First Snow" by Aria Aber. They explore the poem's subtle and marvelous use of perspective, the representation of snow and frost, and the poem's resonances with the devastating impact US war and intervention has had on Afghanistan.

Learn more about Aria Aber here: https://www.ariaaber.com/

Get a copy of her debut collection Hard Damage here: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496215703/

Find Aber's resources to support Afghans here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10-SLGJEb39jpN_vEw8ruvba3iS1BmeU5QoW1AdGEL7M/edit

First Snow
By: Aria Aber

How easy for snow to turn to ice, for snow
   to disappear the light from the ragged

frame of chestnut trees around the warehouse
      by what’s left of wild chicory, scraped

sculptures, weeping dogbane. Hunger borders
      this land, while snow turns all to immigrants,

snow salts the embankment, where turtles wash ashore,
      literally hundreds of them, frozen hard

like grenades of tear gas thrown across
      a barbwire fence. But who of their free

will would ever want to climb that fence
      to live here, who would pray each night

for grace, hoping to pass through the darkened veil
      of shit, to bear witness to smokestacks,

wild champion, knapweed? Who’d loiter around cricks
      glistening with oil, which, once gone,

will, like death, at last, democratize
      us all? On potato sacks in the snowcapped,

abandoned warehouse, there huddle and sit
      the soiled refugees, bereft, cow-eyed,

picking dirt off their scalps, their shelled soles.
      Among them, wordless, is my mother,

and nestled on her lap is I, in love with the light
      of the first snow of my life, so awed

and doubtful still of what lengths the frost wills
      to go, and what shape it will then take—



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Episode #140 First Snow - Aria Aber

Connor and Jack discuss Don Mee Choi's "Shitty Kitty" from her 2016 book "Hardly War." They enmesh themselves in the tangled histories the poem explores - racial violence on US Navy ships in the 1970s, massacres committed by South Korean troops in Vietnam - talk about how the poem fits into the wider project of the book, and explore how the poem engages with the theories of Roland Barthes.

Read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90212/shitty-kitty

Get a copy of Hardly War, here: https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/hardly-war

Learn more about Don Mee Choi, here: http://www.donmeechoi.com/

Shitty Kitty
By: Don Mee Choi

Here comes Shitty Kitty en route to the Gulf of Tonkin or en route to a race riot? That
is the question and meanwhile discipline is the keystone and meanwhile did you
see on TV helicopters being ditched into the sea? That is also my film and meanwhile
all refugees must be treated as suspects. Looking for your husband? Looking for
your son? That is the question and meanwhile she was the mother of the boy or that
is what the translator said or Shitty Kitty or shall we adhere to traditional concepts
of military discipline tempered with humanitarianism? That is the question and
meanwhile South Korea exports military labor left over from the war. That is also my
history or is that your history? That is the question and meanwhile
 
          (CHORUS: Dictator Park Chung Hee and his soldiers in Ray-Bans)
 
          How much?
          $7.5 million=per division
          or Binh Tai massacre=$7.5 million
          or Binh Hoa massacre=$7.5 million
          or Dien Nien—Phuoc Binh massacre=$7.5 million
          or Go Dai massacre=$7.5 milion
          or Ha My massacre=$7.5 million
          or Phong Nhi & Phong Nhat massacre=$15 million
          or Tay Vinh massacre=$7.5 million
          or Vinh Xuan massacre=$7.5 million
          or Mighty History?

That is the question and meanwhile a riot began over a grilled cheese sandwich at
Subic Bay. Discrimination or perception? That is the question and meanwhile the
sailor refused to make a statement or translate? That is the question and meanwhile
twenty-six men all black were charged with assault and rioting and meanwhile did
you translate? That is my question and meanwhile lard or Crisco? Aye, aye, sir!
 
          (Anti-CHORUS: kittens in frilly white bonnets, bibs, and mittens)
 
                                                       K I T T Y  S O N G
 
                                                     I, aye-aye-sir!
                                                  I, crazy-daisy-sir!
                                                I, export-quality-sir!
                                                   I, grill-grill-sir!
                                                I, meow-meow-sir!
                                                  I, kitty-litter-sir!

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Episode #141 Shitty Kitty - Don Mee Choi

Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Dr. Len Lawson, co-editor of the new collection "The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry." just released from Blair Publishing. Together they discuss Lawson's poem "Amanda Waller Suite Episode 3: Amanda Waller Has a Woman-to-Woman with Harley Quinn." They discuss finding the complex human side of characters like Waller, the poem's resonance with Nikky Finney's Condoleezza suite, and how the collection "The Future of Black" came together.

Get a copy of "The Future of Black" here: https://www.blairpub.com/shop/the-future-of-black

Connor and Jack discuss a poem from Finney's Condoleezza Suite on Episode 73 of Close Talking: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-073-concerto-no-7-condoleezza-working-out-at-the-watergate-nikky-finney

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Episode #145 Episode 3: Amanda Waller Has a Woman-to-Woman with Harley Quinn w/Dr. Len Lawson

In this special episode, Connor and Jack discuss the 2021 National Book Awards - the long list, the finalists, and the winner "Floaters: Poems" by Martín Espada. They dig into an excerpt from the title poem "Floaters" and discuss how it brings urgent attention to issues of immigration and uses narrative to fight against the dehumanizing language often used to describe those seeking a better life in the United States.

Listen to the National Book Awards Finalist Reading, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts4YxshQK10

Learn more about Espada, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/martin-espada

Get a copy of "Floaters: Poems" here: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393541038

Read all of "Floaters" here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151158/floaters-5d8d0d07466b9

Excerpt from Floaters
By: Martín Espada

"Ok, I’m gonna go ahead and ask ... have ya’ll ever seen floaters this clean. I’m
not trying to be an a$$ but I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS,
could this be another edited photo. We’ve all seen the dems and liberal parties
do some pretty sick things."
—Anonymous post, “I’m 10-15” Border Patrol Facebook group

Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry,
like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river,
like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol,
keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say
the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body,
to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks.

And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere
in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves.

Say what we know of them now they are dead: Óscar slapped dough
for pizza with oven-blistered fingers. Daughter Valeria sang, banging
a toy guitar. He slipped free of the apron he wore in the blast of the oven,
sold the motorcycle he would kick till it sputtered to life, counted off
pesos for the journey across the river, and the last of his twenty-five
years, and the last of her twenty-three months. There is another name
that beats its wings in the heart of the trees: Say Tania Vanessa Ávalos,
Óscar’s wife and Valeria’s mother, the witness stumbling along the river.

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Episode #146 National Book Award Winner Martín Espada and Floaters - SPECIAL EPISODE

Connor and Jack discuss the poem I.R.L. by New Zealand poet Chris Tse. They talk about how media representations and creations can cross into reality, the meaning of "gritty," and why S.O.S is so evocative.

In the second part of the show they answer a listener question about how to know where to submit poetry. Connor recommends a study that examines race- and state-specific vaccination rates, and Jack recommends "Reacher" on Amazon Prime, and "Man Like Mobeen" on Netflix.

I.R.L.
By: Chris Tse

In real life
you are aging at the rate of a short-lived sitcom

and the only kind of loneliness worth laughing about
is throwing out half a frozen meal for two

because leftovers
are never funnier the next day.

In real life
there is no such thing as a gritty reboot — it’s just

fucking gritty all the time, mate,
because your best-laid plans are always someone else’s

chance to crash a car into the crowd at a
men’s rights charity concert.

In real life
the nice guys pull out of the race

when their tires are slashed or they turn back
because they think they left the iron on

and no one adheres to sports film clichés anyway — 
we’re all selfish and we want that trophy.

In real life
you’ll never make it out of your homophobic small town

alive, so your left hand begs for water
while your right hand swings an ax

your left foot drags a church bell
while your right foot taps — S.O.S., S.O.S., S.O.S.

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Episode #152 I.R.L. - Chris Tse

Starting a little later than planned, but it's time for the fourth annual last-week-of-poetry-month Close Talking extravaganza! In past years Connor and Jack have talked about haiku, shared comforting poems, and investigated the sonnet. Now, they take on their grandest subject yet - the line break. They dig into why poets break lines, what makes line breaks so special, and even give examples ranging from Cynthia Cruz and Patrick Cotter to Gwendolyn Brooks.

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Episode #157 Why Break a Line? - Line Break Week Ep. 1

Connor and Jack explore Aracelis Girmay's poem "Elegy" from her 2011 collection Kingdom Animalia. They talk through the opening line's call to community and the ways it resonates with Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese," they get scientific while discussing the nature imagery in the poem, and they delve into the poem's pandemic-era relevance.

Elegy
By: Aracelis Girmay
 
What to do with this knowledge that our living is not guaranteed?

Perhaps one day you touch the young branch
of something beautiful. & it grows & grows
despite your birthdays & the death certificate,
& it one day shades the heads of something beautiful
or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out
of your house, then, believing in this.
Nothing else matters.

All above us is the touching
of strangers & parrots,
some of them human,
some of them not human.

Listen to me. I am telling you
a true thing. This is the only kingdom.
The kingdom of touching;
the touches of the disappearing, things.

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Episode #164 Elegy - Aracelis Girmay

A dive into the Close Talking archives - one of the first episodes we ever recorded in which we discuss the poem "The Lynching Postcard, Duluth, Minnesota" by Ray Gonzalez. Poetry can seem a little insignificant in the face of an onslaught of historically awful news, like the one we've all been experience the last few weeks. But poems like this one have a special kind of power - cutting to deep truths and insisting on action in the face of the horrors of history. And reminding us that history walks along side us every day.

The Lynching Postcard, Duluth, Minnesota
By: Ray Gonzalez

There is a postcard in an antique shop in Duluth
with a photograph of the infamous lynching of
a black man carried out in the town in the 1930s.

The owner was turned down by eBay when
he wanted to sell it there. Tourists walk into
his shop and stare at the lone card in the glass case.

The owner says it is better to sell it
than donate it to a museum where
it would be locked away in a drawer.

Some people want it removed.
Others snicker and stare, shake their heads
and accept the fact this is "only Minnesota."

Each morning, the shop owner glances
at the case to make sure the postcard is there.
Thousands have bowed over the glass.

At night, when the shop is closed,
the postcard lies in the case, the body hanging
in the cold moonlight from Lake Superior,

the shadow from the swinging body
forming a shape that rises through
the glass to darken the shop.

Over a dozen people have come across it.
They don't know the act of bending over the glass
to study the dead body on the pole is forming

an invisible arc of light over time,
a shadow where those who bow to look
imitate the shape of a hanging tree.

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Episode #167 REBROADCAST: The Lynching Postcard, Duluth, Minnesota - Ray Gonzalez

Connor and Jack discuss the poem "First Snow" by Arthur Sze. They discuss life, death, being, nothingness, and all the hidden meaning waiting to leap out of the every day. They also talk about how some poems can urge us towards presence and mindfulness and the necessity of taking the occasional pause in life.

First Snow
By: Arthur Sze

A rabbit has stopped on the gravel driveway:

           imbibing the silence,
           you stare at spruce needles:

                                          there's no sound of a leaf blower, 
                                          no sign of a black bear;

a few weeks ago, a buck scraped his rack
           against an aspen trunk;
           a carpenter scribed a plank along a curved stone wall.

                        You only spot the rabbit's ears and tail:

when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel,
but when it stops, it blends in again;

           the world of being is like this gravel:

                        you think you own a car, a house,
                        this blue-zigzagged shirt, but you just borrow these things. 

Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams
                        and stood at Gibraltar,
                                                but you possess nothing.

Snow melts into a pool of clear water;
     and, in this stillness,

                        starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze. 

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Episode #168 First Snow - Arthur Sze

Connor and Jack discuss Sasha Banks' poem, america, MINE from her collection of the same name. They start by examining some of the poem's formal elements like its lack of traditional punctuation, and quickly jump to big themes like how the idea of vengeance is transformed in the poem and the contested symbol of the American flag is used.

Read the full poem below, or here: http://thecollagist.com/the-collagist/2016/8/27/america-mine.html

america, MINE
By: Sasha Banks

the spit upon this/country's flag is mine and/I do/not weep at it/consider the
twisted shape of grief about/the mouth upon learning the beast/under the bed
has always been your country/careful, citizen/this nation will name
you/daughter/while its tongue/sucks the muscle from every dark body/you
have loved to the edge of this/vanished second/I let the rage be/like
water/this time/drinking and drinking until/my darkness marries/my eyes to
blindness/and I am/led by the ghosts still/awake/in the soil/still/thirsty
from/below/the fear/is under my heal/now/there are multitudes/in my third
rib and/we are not/asking anymore/do you see us now/this is the last
kindness/we will have your sweat/and dress you in your own/curses/oh
country/what I mean to say/is/all the living after/this/will be the vengeance.

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Episode #170 america, MINE - Sasha Banks

Connor and Jack dig into the list/poem/prose piece/literary mystery Not Writing by Anne Boyer. Along the way they discuss what they are and are not writing themselves, Jack asks about why the poem never becomes monotonous, and Connor offers his thoughts about how writing, time, and capitalism intersect both in the poem and in life.

Read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58316/not-writing

[I know, I know. This is usually where we put the poem. But this one's too long! It exceeds the 4000 character limit.]

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Episode #171 Not Writing - Anne Boyer

Connor and Jack have a time talking about the poem "A Time" by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. She is a multi-award winning poet whose latest book-length poem "Look at This Blue" is on the short list for the 2022 National Book Award. Come for the poetry analysis, stay for the discussion of red wolves, climate crisis, Tolkein, impermanence, and diectic words.

You can read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89060/a-time-570d716c13a77

A Time
By: Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
The problem—
it’s not been written yet, the omens:
the headless owl, the bobcat struck,
the red wolf where she could not be.
 
None of it done and yet it’s over.
 
Nothing yet
of night     when she called me closer
asked me to bring her crow painting
to stay straight across from her feet
so she could waken into it,
         remember her friend.
 
Of Old Chief alongside her shoulder
                           still watching over her
just as the mountain had done
throughout her Alberta childhood.
 
The Pendleton shroud bearing our braids,
her figure in flaming pyre.
 
The cards, the notes, the tasks
the things undone,     not done
and she with us        faraway
as this has always been    and ever
will continue.
 
                                    We meet we leave
we meld and vaporize from whatever
it was that held us human
 
in this life.
 
And all the beautiful things
that lead our thoughts and give us reason
remain despite the leaving and
all I know         is what you know
 
when it is over said and done
it was a time
                  and there was never enough of it.

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Episode #172 A Time - Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

Connor and Jack discuss a classic poem from a classic poet: The Dancing by the recently departed Gerald Stern. They marvel at how the poem is constructed, get deep into a discussion of encroaching fascism, and even have time to rage at the "evil Mellons," bring in Bruce Springsteen and Michael Bay, and pause to reflect on how lyric poetry can address structural inequalities.

You can read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57177/the-dancing

The Dancing
By: Gerald Stern

In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a postwar Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did
in 1945 in that tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
my mother red with laughter, my father cupping
his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance
of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum,
half fart, the world at last a meadow,
the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us
screaming and falling, as if we were dying,
as if we could never stop—in 1945 —
in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home
of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away
from the other dancing—in Poland and Germany—
oh God of mercy, oh wild God.

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Episode #173 The Dancing - Gerald Stern

In this special episode, Connor and Jack discuss the 2022 National Book Awards — the long list, the finalists, and the winner "Punks: New and Selected Poems" by John Keene. They read and explore a marvelous poem from the collection, "Folks Are Right, My Nose Was Wide Open," which also appeared in BOMB Magazine.



Listen to the National Book Awards Award Ceremony, here: 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hNtsKasx5U&ab_channel=NationalBookFoundation

Get Punks here: https://the-song-cave.com/products/punks-by-john-keene




Folks Are Right, My Nose Was Wide Open
By: John Keene



Folks are right: my nose is wide open. I left one man and fell for this one, he’s not the one, so what am I to do? I don’t. Instead, I stand in the doorway of the New Age café on Newbury Street waiting for Kevin, because we’re going to talk about poems. All the poems I haven’t written, because I spend my waking hours talking about them, reading the work of others, trying to remake myself as Essex Hemphill or Neruda or Celan. For example, I can’t write poems about this crazy dude I’m seeing, how he writhes in bed like a loose hose when he comes, how he stands for hours in front of the mirror admiring and caressing his muscles, saying nothing but “Looking good,” the yelps he serves up when I enter him. I don’t write poems about how he silences me with certain looks, his lies about being from “Black money,” how he laughs at the serious things I say. How often when I’m with him I feel more alone than the hardest years of high school. Rather, I write down lines towards poems, abstract pronouncements about unhappiness and being scared and unknown and misunderstood and death, which makes me think I’m addressing the problem. Love is a dream where both of us are trying, at the same speed, without quitting. Then Kevin shows up, and I’m not so sure, because before I can get a word in about my plight, before I can pass today’s halfstarts and failures across the table, he starts telling me about last night’s fight with his girlfriend.



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Episode #174 National Book Award Winner John Keene and Punks - SPECIAL EPISODE

After a busy couple weeks at Close Talking headquarters, a slightly different show. This episode is from our sister-podcast, Poetry Spoken Here. The episode first aired in the summer of 2020 and was simply called "Black Lives Matter." The poems and voices featured are all from the Poetry Spoken Here archives and address race, policing, and more. Readers include Pulitzer Prize-winner Jericho Brown, the youngest ever Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate, Maren (Lovey) Wright Kerr, Chicago-area slam legend Maria "Mama" McCray, Sillerman First Book Prize winner Ladan Osman, and SlamFind creator and Bowery Arts and Science Executive Director Mason Granger.

You can listen to full readings, and interviews with the poets featured in this episode, here:
Jericho Brown, Episode #100: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-100-jericho-brown-reading-at-the-unamuno-author-festival
Maren (Lovey) Wright Kerr, Episode #085: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-085-maren-lovey-wright-kerr-and-lynne-sharon-schwartz-reviewed
Maria "Mama" McCray, Episode #058: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-058-tribute-to-maria-mama-mccray
Ladan Osman, Episode #023: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-023-ladan-osman-and-the-book-thing
Mason Granger, Episode #034: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-034-mason-granger-and-billy-collins

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Episode #175 - Poetry Spoken Here Ep. 132: Black Lives Matter

Connor and Jack discuss the sonically and thematically dense poem "Topsoil, in Repentance" by Sherry Shenoda. Shenoda's book MUMMY EATERS was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2022. The conversation moves from an exploration of internal rhymes and alliteration, to the climate crisis, to the religious implications of the word "repentance," to soil strata, and to the relative weight of humanity.

You can find out more about Sherry Shenoda, here: https://www.sherryshenoda.com/

Read the poem, here: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2022/march/topsoil-repentance-sherry-shenoda

Topsoil, in Repentance
By: Sherry Shenoda

On my mind daily with the insistence of a metronome
is that thin granular layer, rich humus, spare humility,
black earth daily lifted and blown into the Gulf of Mexico.

Thinnest of salvations with a margin of error
wide as the pink, gelatinous body of the earthworm
Which my spade barely misses, and every time

my tines enter the ground, my wrist twists the damp loam,
I breathe easier to see them wriggling, unburied
fleeing the light, burrowing back down, aerating

this earth we have packed down with our culpability
this immense density of earth, only the topmost of which
can support the unimaginable numbers of us, our great warm swarm

Squinting up in immense sunlight I hear the silent swish and tick
the back-and-forth rhythm, the last few seconds before midnight
the enormity of the loan, which has been called in full

The hazy buzzing of the furry bees, busy in the branches
above my exposed neck, on any given day a stay
for a little while longer, of execution

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Episode #176 Topsoil, In Repentance - Sherry Shenoda

Connor and Jack bid farewell to the year they've taken to calling "Twenty Twenty Poo" and contemplate the complexities of language in a wide-ranging conversation about a spectacular untitled poem by Diné poet Sherwin Bitsui, from his 2009 collection Flood Song. They discuss movement, the natural world, an extremely informative dissertation and more.

Learn more about Bitsui, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sherwin-bitsui

[Flicking off the light switch.]
By: Sherwin Bitsui

Flicking off the light switch.
Lichen buds the curved creases of a mind
pondering the mesquite tree’s dull ache
            as it gathers its leaves around clouds of spotted doves—
                        calling them in rows of twelve back from their winter sleep.

Doves’ eyes black as nightfall
shiver on the foam coast of an arctic dream
           where whale ribs
                      clasp and fasten you to a language of shifting ice.

Seeing into those eyes
you uncoil their telephone wires,
gather their inaudible lions with plastic forks,
tongue their salty ribbons,
            and untie their weedy stems from your prickly fingers.

You stop to wonder what like sounds like
when held under glacier water,
how Ná ho kos feels
under the weight of all that loss.



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Episode #177 [Flicking off the light switch.] - Sherwin Bitsui

A slight departure from our regular format. On today's show, Connor and Jack remember the recently departed poet Charles Simic. They read some of his poems, reflect on them, discuss his life and legacy, and even give a shoutout to the Oak Park Public Library.

Poems Connor and Jack read in this episode include: "Summer Morning" "Hotel Insomnia" "Watermelons" and "Back at the Chicken Shack."

At the end of the episode, hear Simic read his poem "December 21."

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Episode #178 Remembering Charles Simic

Connor pops in to announce incredibly belatedly what has already been apparent for months: Close Talking is on a hiatus! We've had some big life and career changes that have unexpectedly cut into our capacity for the podcast, but it's not a permanent hiatus! Okay, a poem:

Tune
By: Kay Ryan

Imagine a sea
of ultramarine
suspending a
million jellyfish
as soft as moons.
Imagine the
interlocking uninsistent
tunes of drifting things.
This is the deep machine
that powers the lamps
of dreams and accounts
for their bluish tint.
How can something
so grand and serene
vanish again and again
without a hint?

Episode #179 [Hiatus!] Tune - Kay Ryan

Connor and Jack discuss "Anaphora as Coping Mechanism" by Ocean Vuong.

Anaphora as Coping Mechanism
By: Ocean Vuong

Can't sleep
so you put on his grey boots -- nothing else -- & step
inside the rain. Even though he's gone, you think, I still want
to be clean. If only the rain were gasoline, your tongue
a lit match, & you can change without disappearing. If only
he dies the second his name becomes a tooth
in your mouth. But he doesn't. He dies when they wheel him
away & the priest ushers you out the room, your palms two puddles of rain. He dies as your heart beats faster,
as another war coppers the sky. He dies each night
you close your eyes & hear his slow exhale. Your fist choking
the dark. Your fist through the bathroom mirror. He dies
at the party where everyone laughs & all you want is to go
into the kitchen & make seven omelets before burning
down the house. All you want is to run into the woods & beg
the wolf to fuck you up. He dies when you wake
& it's November forever. A Hendrix record melted
on a rusted needle. He dies the morning he kisses you
for two minutes too long, when he says Wait followed by
I have something to say & you quickly grab your favorite pink pillow & smother him as he cries into the soft
& darkening fabric. You hold still until he's very quiet,
until the walls dissolve & you're both standing in the crowded train
again. Look how it rocks you back & forth like a slow dance
seen from the distance of years. You're still a freshman. You're still
but he smiles anyway. His teeth reflected in the window
reflecting your lips as you mouth Hello -- your tongue
a lit match.

For more on Ocean Vuong, go here: http://www.oceanvuong.com/poems, or here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/ocean-vuong

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You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Episode #012 Anaphora As Coping Mechanism - Ocean Vuong

Connor and Jack discuss Eduardo C. Corral's poem Sentence. Connor provides several excellent readings, Jack discusses why the poem has him remembering Tom Petty, and both marvel at the brilliant sounds and images contained within the work.

More on Eduardo C. Corral here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/eduardo-c-corral
To read Sentence, to go: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/90284/sentence-57a379509f4b0

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Episode #024 Sentence - Eduardo C. Corral

Connor and Jack discuss Natalie Diaz's poem "My Brother At 3 A.M." They discuss the form of the pantoum and explore how the pantoum's repetitive structure works with a poem about addiction. 

Check out the poem below or at this link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56355/my-brother-at-3-am
Read more about Diaz here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/natalie-diaz
Read more about pantoums here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/pantoum-poetic-form
Watch the PBS special on Diaz's work with the Mojave language here: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/poet-natalie-diaz-returns-to-her-roots

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My Brother at 3 A.M.

He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.
        O God, he said. O God.
                He wants to kill me, Mom.

When Mom unlocked and opened the front door
at 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown, Dad was asleep.
        He wants to kill me, he told her,
                looking over his shoulder.

3 a.m. and in her nightgown, Dad asleep,
What's going on? she asked. Who wants to kill you? 
        He looked over his shoulder.
                The devil does. Look at him, over there.

She asked, What are you on? Who wants to kill you? 
The sky wasn’t black or blue but the green of a dying night.
        The devil, look at him, over there. 
                He pointed to the corner house.

The sky wasn’t black or blue but the dying green of night.
Stars had closed their eyes or sheathed their knives.
        My brother pointed to the corner house.
                His lips flickered with sores.

Stars had closed their eyes or sheathed their knives.
O God, I can see the tail, he said. O God, look. 
        Mom winced at the sores on his lips.
                It’s sticking out from behind the house.

O God, see the tail, he said. Look at the goddamned tail. 
He sat cross-legged, weeping on the front steps.
        Mom finally saw it, a hellish vision, my brother.
                O God, O God, she said.

Episode #040 My Brother At 3 A.M. - Natalie Diaz

Connor and Jack take a detour into American gothic territory with Ted Kooser's eerie "Abandoned Farmhouse." They hone in on what makes the poem so creepy, how the specific and the unnamed work together to heighten its unsettling atmosphere, and end up reflecting on how it almost sounds like a horrific children's book.

Read the poem below. 
More on Ted Kooser, here: http://www.tedkooser.net/about.shtml
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Abandoned Farmhouse
By: Ted Kooser

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm—a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

Episode #057 Abandoned Farmhouse - Ted Kooser

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2019 in style with a special week-long series on haiku! To start off, a look at the history of the form. They discuss renga, the linked verse game from which the contemporary haiku evolved, and even try their hands at writing one.

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Episode #062 Renga - Haiku Week Ep. 1

If you've heard of haiku, you've probably heard about the rule of 5-7-5: the numbers of syllables that are "supposed" to be in each line of the poem. Connor and Jack go after the 5-7-5 rule the way Tormund Giantsbane went after the knighting conventions of Westeros in Game of Thrones. For more on haiku, syllables, and Ser Brienne of Tarth, check this episode out!

You can find episode 1 of our haiku series, here: https://soundcloud.com/close-talking/episode-062-renga-haiku-week-ep-1

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Episode #063 Syllables - Haiku Week Ep. 2

This last week, the world mourned the passing of literary titan Toni Morrison. Morrison famously said, "I don't like to have someone call my books 'poetic' because it has the connotation of luxuriating richness. I wanted to restore the language black people spoke to its original power." Morrison did, however, write 5 poems. Connor and Jack Discuss one of them, "Someone Leans Near."

Read all five of Morrison's poems, here: https://believermag.com/five-poems-by-toni-morrison/?fbclid=IwAR1-x9OjSe__E_TJKDAIoI_C2kZrzwMFWvh_fkyWcflIoj0k6YSSYmj378Y

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Someone Leans Near
By: Toni Morrison

Someone leans near
And sees the salt your eyes have shed.

You wait, longing to hear
Words of reason, love or play
To lash or lull you toward the hollow day.

Silence kneads your fear
Of crumbled star-ash sifting down
Clouding the rooms here, here.

You shore up your heart to run. To stay.
But no sign or design marks the narrow way.

Then on your skin a breath caresses
The salt your eyes have shed.

And you remember a call clear, so clear
“You will never die again.”

Once more you know
You will never die again.

Episode #075 Someone Leans Near - Toni Morrison

Connor and Jack discuss the ekphrastic poem, Decoy Gang War Victim by Carmen Gimenez Smith. They discuss the nature of acting and direction, the history of the photo from which the poem grew, the hard-to-pin-down voice of the poem's speaker, and much more.

EDIT: This episode was originally posted with an inaccurate title for the poem, "Decoy War Gang Victim." This has been corrected. We apologize for the mistake.

You can find the poem (along with the photograph) here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58875/decoy-gang-war-victim
You can buy Carmen Gimenez Smith's latest book "Be Recorder" here: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/be-recorder

Decoy Gang War Victim
By: Carmen Gimenez Smith

For Harry Gamboa,   Jr.

Just a tick ago, the actor was a Roman candle
shot to the sky, smudged by rain’s helter-
skelter. His motivation was: he’s a stooge
on L.A.’s sodden turnpike, so we have “to make” art. Got
to rezone and react. The world the bare wall to
his bullet. Got to rile up the populace, to fortify
the arsenal. Once in a while, repopulate and penetrate,
paint a list of incitement onto the walls.
An elder told him that to overturn the city, one must
surrender body/belongings to the one explosive
spectacle of truth, making it ongoing. Pay attention.
To overturn the city, not just the scraps but fervor itself.
Not just the wan broadcast of indignation but
IRL incursions into the workhouses and
poorhouses to inflame the thousand points of  light.
A lean surge, departure pinks both ends of  him.
He’s the nth layer folded into the stand’s nerve.

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Episode #082 Decoy Gang War Victim - Carmen Gimenez Smith

Connor and Jack dive into the poem that opens Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony. Along the way they discuss Plato's Symposium, Walter Ong's writings on orality and literacy, and the historical significance of World War Two on the civil rights movement along with much more.

You can learn more about Leslie Marmon Silko, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/leslie-marmon-silko

Excerpt from Ceremony
By: Leslie Marmon Silko

Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought-Woman,
is sitting in her room
and whatever she thinks about
appears.

She thought of her sisters
Nau’ts’ity’i and I’tcts’ity’i
and together they created the Universe
this world
and the four worlds below.

Thought-Woman, the spider,
named things and
as she named them
they appeared.

She is sitting in her room
Thinking of a story now

I’m telling you the story
she is thinking.

Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren’t just for entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death.

You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories.

Their evil is mighty
but it can’t stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories
let the stories be confused or forgotten
They would like that
They would be happy
Because we would be defenseless then.

He rubbed his belly.
I keep it in here
[he said]
Here, put your hand on it.
See, it is moving.
There is life here
for the people.

And in the belly of this story
the rituals and the ceremony
are still growing.

What She Said:
The only cure
I know
is a good ceremony,
That’s what she said.
Sunrise.

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Episode #091 Excerpt from Ceremony - Leslie Marmon Silko

Connor and Jack close out Poetry Month 2020 with a series of shorter episodes about short poems that can be comforting springboards to reflection and contemplation. In this episode they discuss Gwendolyn Brooks' meditation on love and draw connections between the poem's references to - and comments on - confinement and the present.

A Lovely Love
By: Gwendolyn Brooks
 
Let it be alleys. Let it be a hall
Whose janitor javelins epithet and thought
To cheapen hyacinth darkness that we sought
And played we found, rot, make the petals fall.
Let it be stairways, and a splintery box
Where you have thrown me, scraped me with your kiss,
Have honed me, have released me after this
Cavern kindness, smiled away our shocks.
That is the birthright of our lovely love
In swaddling clothes. Not like that Other one.
Not lit by any fondling star above.
Not found by any wise men, either. Run.
People are coming. They must not catch us here
Definitionless in this strict atmosphere.

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Episode #094 A Lovely Love - Gwendolyn Brooks - Reflections Week Ep. 2

Connor and Jack close out Poetry Month 2020 with a series of shorter episodes about short poems that can be comforting springboards to reflection and contemplation. In this (not short) episode, they discuss William Butler Yeats's poem "The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water." The pair geeks out on Yeats, exploring the relationships between sound, death, and colonialism, and they listen to recordings of a classic hit, a funky drum master, and Yeats the bard himself.

The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water
By: William Butler Yeats

I heard the old, old men say
‘Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.’
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say
‘All that’s beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.’

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Episode #096 The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water - W. B. Yeats - Reflections Week Ep. 4

Connor and Jack are joined by Dr. Hollis Robbins, Dean of the School of Arts & Humanities at Sonoma State University and author of the newly published "Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition from University of Georgia Press.

They discuss the poem "Freedom Rider: Washout" by James Emanuel, touching on the memory of Rep. John Lewis, one of the original freedom riders, the reasons the sonnet has such a rich history of use by Black poets, and much more.

Find out more about Forms of Contention, here: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820357645/forms-of-contention/

Freedom Rider: Washout 
By: James Emanuel
 
The first blow hurt.
(God is love, is love.)
My blood spit into the dirt.
(Sustain my love, oh, Lord above!)
Curses circled one another.
(They were angry with their brother.)
 
I was too weak
For this holy game.
A single freckled fist
Knocked out the memory of His name. 
Bloody, I heard a long, black moan,
Like waves from slave ships long ago.
With Gabriel Prosser’s dogged knuckles
I struck an ancient blow. 
 
Published in Stephen Henderson, Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic References (NY: Morrow, 1973), 237.

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Episode #104 Freedom Rider: Washout - James Emanuel w/Dr. Hollis Robbins

Connor and Jack amble through the enchantingly twisting Richard Siken poem "Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors." They discuss the responsibility of artists, the ways that culture both creates and is created, and how the poem flows to the logical extremes of its subject.

Get "War of the Foxes" here: https://bookshop.org/books/war-of-the-foxes/9781556594779

Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors
By: Richard Siken

To have a thought, there must be an object—
the field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick
with sunshine. There must be an object so land
a man there, solid on his feet, on solid ground, in
a field fully flooded, enough light to see him clearly,

the light on his skin and bouncing off his skin.
He’s easy to desire since there’s not much to him,
vague and smeary in his ochers, in his umbers,
burning in the open field. Forget about his insides,
his plumbing and his furnaces, put a thing in his hand

and be done with it. No one wants to know what’s
in his head. It should be enough. To make something
beautiful should be enough. It isn’t. It should be.
The smear of his head—I paint it out, I paint it in
again. I ask it what it wants. I want to be a cornerstone,

says the head. Let’s kill something. Land a man in a
landscape and he’ll try to conquer it. Make him
handsome and you’re a fascist, make him ugly and
you’re saying nothing new. The conqueror suits up
and takes the field, his horse already painted in

beneath him. What do you do with a man like that?
While you are deciding, more men ride in. The hand
sings weapon. The mind says tool. The body swerves
in the service of the mind, which is evidence of
the mind but not actual proof. More conquerors.

They swarm the field and their painted flags unfurl.
Crown yourself with leaves and stake your claim
before something smears up the paint. I turned away
from darkness to see daylight, to see what would
happen. What happened? What does a man want?

Power. The men spread, the thought extends. I paint
them out, I paint them in again. A blur of forces.
Why take more than we need? Because we can.
Deep footprint, it leaves a hole. You’d break your
heart to make it bigger, so why not crack your skull

when the mind swells. A thought bigger than your
own head. Try it. Seriously. Cover more ground.
I thought of myself as a city and I licked my lips.
I thought of myself as a nation and I wrung my hands,
I put a thing in your hand. Will you defend yourself?

From me, I mean. Let’s kill something. The mind
moves forward, the paint layers up: glop glop and
shellac. I shovel the color into our faces, I shovel our
faces into our faces. They look like me. I move them
around. I prefer to blame others, it’s easier. King me.


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You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Episode #114 Landscape With a Blur of Conquerors - Richard Siken

Recorded before the attempted coup at the US Capitol, Jack and Connor discuss the poem "Fuck Your Lecture On Craft, My People Are Dying" by Noor Hindi. They discuss the history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the way the poem engages with the tensions of being both Palestinian and American, and how to do craft without talking about craft.

Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying
By: Noor Hindi
 
Colonizers write about flowers.
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks
seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.
Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.
It’s so beautiful, the moon.
They’re so beautiful, the flowers.
I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad.
He watches Al Jazeera all day.
I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.
I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies.
Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.

Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/
Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking
 Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking 
Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry
You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Episode #117 Fuck Your Lecture On Craft, My People Are Dying  - Noor Hindi

Close Talking is a poetry podcast hosted by good friends Connor Stratton and Jack Rossiter-Munley. In each episode the two read a poem and discuss at length. The pop culture references fly as freely as the literary theories. Close Talking is a poetry podcast anyone can enjoy.

Close Talking: A Poetry Podcast

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