Have you ever gotten consumed by watching a couple argue in public and trying to decipher what’s really going on between them? Denise Duhamel’s deliciously entertaining “How It Will End” offers us that experience. Come for the voyeurism, stay for the awareness it stirs up. Why are we so captivated by other people’s disagreements? And how can what we notice about them teach us about ourselves? Denise Duhamel is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International Unive...
Mar 03, 2025•17 min•Season 9Ep. 14
Even though Palestinian-American Fady Joudah’s poem is sparingly titled “[...],” an ellipsis surrounded by brackets, this work itself is psychologically dense. Through crisp lines and language, it wrestles with the nature of human ambivalence — about things like fear, desire, disaster, liberty — and it finds certainty only in the shaky universal ground of that ambivalence. Fady Joudah is the author of […] . He has also published five other collections of poems, including Textu , a book-long sequ...
Feb 24, 2025•13 min•Season 9Ep. 13
Benjamin Zephaniah’s urgent, imperative “To Michael Menson” was written when he was a poet in residence at a human rights barrister in England. His poem resonates with his repeated calls for justice for a murdered Black musician — not a justice that is gullible, impotent, or hopeless but one that is clear-eyed, collaborative, and mighty. Benjamin Zephaniah was born and raised in Birmingham, England. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including City Psalms , Propa Propaganda , and...
Feb 17, 2025•13 min•Season 9Ep. 12
Carmen Giménez’s poem “Ars Poetica” is a stunning waterfall of words, a torrent of dozens of short statements that begin with “I” or “I’m.” As you listen to them, let an answering cascade of questions fill up your mind. What does this series of confessions reveal to you about poetry? The poet? And yourself? Carmen Giménez is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Milk and Filth , a finalist for the NBCC Award in Poetry, and Be Recorder (Graywolf Press, 2019), a finalist for the 201...
Feb 10, 2025•15 min•Season 9Ep. 11
Rick Barot’s poem “The Singing” takes place in the humdrum, relatable setting of the waiting room at a car dealership. But the unexpected occurs when one woman’s soft humming builds into strange, full-throated singing. Curiosity, wonder, anger, and dread spill over, forcing you to face the same dilemma as the narrator: What can you do when reality defies your control? Rick Barot was born in the Philippines, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and attended Wesleyan University and The Iowa Writ...
Feb 03, 2025•18 min•Season 9Ep. 10
“You would’ve made a lousy nun.” The narrator of Diannely Antigua’s “Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me” overhears these words, and they jolt her into contrasting her life experience with the limited archetypes offered by her church — good daughter, good sister, holy woman, whore. Which of these has she been? Where does her devotion lie? And what virtue can she claim? Diannely Antigua is a Dominican-American poet and educator who was born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut coll...
Jan 27, 2025•16 min•Season 9Ep. 9
Don McKay’s poem “Neanderthal Dig” begins with the discovery of an ancient, child-sized skeleton placed on the wing of a swan and then takes flight, showing us how love and death are riddled with paradoxes — mixing the earthbound and the sacred, the personal and the universal, the time-stamped and the never ending. Don McKay is the multi-award-winning author of multiple books of poetry, including Lurch , Paradoxides , Strike/Slip (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize), and Camber : Selected Poems ...
Jan 20, 2025•15 min•Season 9Ep. 8
When dictatorial leaders use talk of peace as a smokescreen to conceal their plans for war and destruction, what are the people to do? Believe in a vision of peace and freedom that is muscular, sturdy, and protective — and pray that it holds, as Ernesto Cardenal does in his poem “Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5),” translated by Jonathan Cohen. Ernesto Cardenal (1925–2020) was a Catholic priest and poet who was born in Nicaragua. From 1979 to 1988, he served as the Minister of Culture there. Carden...
Jan 13, 2025•17 min•Season 9Ep. 7
Many people say their experience of time changes after they have children, a phenomenon that Diego Báez captures in “Inheritance.” In this poem, a past, present, and future starring the same child shift ceaselessly in a parent’s mind, like photos flipped through in an album, dots placed on a timeline, moments that one wishes they could build monuments for. Diego Báez, is a writer and educator in Chicago, where he teaches at the City Colleges of Chicago. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from ...
Dec 20, 2024•20 min•Season 9Ep. 6
Wonder and strangeness commingle with the commonplace and universal in Danielle Chapman’s “Trespassing with Tweens.” In a not-quite mirroring, a human mother and her children stand and watch together in awe as a great blue heron flaps in and feeds its two offspring. The pleasures found here are profound and multiple – the joys in seeing, in sharing an experience of seeing, in seeing with fresh eyes, and in being seen. Danielle Chapman is a poet, essayist, and lecturer in English at Yale Universi...
Dec 16, 2024•16 min•Season 9Ep. 5
In Richard Langston’s poem “Hill walk,” he proffers a handful of things that move us over the course of a day — words said or read, notes played, the sight of halting steps taken by a sibling. We marvel at the sound of an unfamiliar bird call, but there’s a startling mystery to the human heart and what it responds to (or doesn’t) and one that we don’t always mark. Richard Langston is a veteran broadcast journalist and director. He comes from Dunedin, New Zealand, and was a driving force in the c...
Dec 13, 2024•12 min•Season 9Ep. 4
What sacrifices were made by your parents when you were a child? How did you think about them as they were happening? And how do you think about them now? In his poem “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden holds space for a weighted childhood memory and the regret, love, and pain it evokes. Robert Hayden (1913-1980) was the first Black American poet to be appointed the Consultant of Poetry to the Library of Congress (now known as the U.S. Poet Laureate); he held this role from 1976 to 1978. Hayde...
Dec 09, 2024•12 min•Season 9Ep. 3
When you look at people who are younger than you — particularly teenagers — does your mind ever take you back to yourself at their age? Taylor Johnson’s poem “Pennsylvania Ave. SE” performs this feat of time travel, going from a glimpse of two boys on bicycles to a haunting sense memory of what was once so yearned for: to be seen, to be wanted, to be free. Taylor Johnson is proud of being from Washington, D.C. He has received fellowships and scholarships from CALLALOO, Cave Canem, Lambda Literar...
Dec 06, 2024•13 min•Season 9Ep. 2
In Kinsale Drake’s poem “Put on that KTNN,” she writes about driving to a hometown as a familiar station crackles to life on the car radio. From this corner of America, she creates her own country music — of Navajo voices alongside Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, of drumbeats and guitar licks, of things wrought by nature and things made by humans, all of them rooted in the desert sand. Kinsale Drake (Diné) is a poet, playwright, and performer based out of the Southwest U.S. She is a winner of the ...
Dec 02, 2024•15 min•Season 9Ep. 1
Poetry Unbound with host Pádraig Ó Tuama is back on Monday, December 2. Featured poets in this season include Robert Hayden, Kinsale Drake, Danielle Chapman, Diannely Antigua, and many more. New episodes every week through March 3. Follow us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Pocket Casts , Overcast , or wherever you listen. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org....
Nov 25, 2024•1 min
In this concluding episode of "Poems as Teachers," our special miniseries on conflict and the human condition, host Pádraig Ó Tuama says the poems discussed in this offering are a different kind of teacher: “not as teachers that give us rules to follow — more so teachers that share something of their own intuition.” And for a final reflection, he offers Kai Cheng Thom’s “trauma is not sacred,” which speaks directly, fiercely, and lovingly to the pain, scars, and violence that we humans carry and...
May 17, 2024•13 min
Being right may feel good, but what human price do we pay for this feeling of rightness? Yehuda Amichai’s poem “The Place Where We Are Right,” translated by Stephen Mitchell, asks us to answer this question, consider how doubt and love might expand and enrich our perspective, and reflect upon the buried and not-so-buried ruins of past conflicts, arguments, and wounds that still call for our attention. Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet and novelist born in Würzburg, Germany, and he lived from 19...
May 17, 2024•14 min
In “Hebrews 13” by Jericho Brown, a narrator says: “my lover and my brother both knocked at my door.” The heat is turned on, scalding coffee is offered and hastily swallowed, and silence is the soundtrack. What an exquisitely awkward triangle it is, and what a human, beautiful, and loving shape that can be. Jericho Brown is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, where he also directs the university’s creative writing program. His books of poetry...
May 16, 2024•13 min
In Mosab Abu Toha’s “Ibrahim Abu Lughod and brother in Yaffa,” two barefoot siblings on a beach sketch out a map of their former home in the sand and argue about what went where. Their longing for return to a place of hospitality, family, memory, friends, and even strangers is alive and tender to the touch. Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language lib...
May 15, 2024•16 min
We ask questions to find out the facts, but what if you can’t trust the answers, the questions, or the person who's asking the questions? In Constantine P. Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians,” translated by Evan Jones, leaders exercise a sinister kind of violence — they’ve taken over people’s imaginations with showy displays of wealth and privilege, time-wasting ceremony, and fear coursing beneath it all. Constantine P. Cavafy was a Greek-language poet born in Alexandria, Egypt, and he lived f...
May 14, 2024•17 min
As appealing as it may sound, is it really possible to live in a world completely free of conflict? No. And since differences and disagreements are inevitable and natural, Joy Harjo gives ground rules in “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.” Her call to us echoes across time and space — a call to listen, to humility, to justice, and to recognizing the land, the living, the dead, the not-yet-living. Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United St...
May 13, 2024•18 min
Host Pádraig Ó Tuama gives an overview of this Poetry Unbound mini season that's devoted to poems with wisdom to offer about conflict and humanity. He also brings us Wisława Szymborska’s “A Word on Statistics,” translated by Joanna Trzeciak, which covers statistics of the most human kind — like the number of people in a group of 100 who think they know better, who can admire without envy, or who could do terrible things. Listen, and ask yourself: Which categories do I belong to? Which do I belie...
May 12, 2024•10 min
If your home were a museum — and they all are, in a way — what would the contents of your refrigerator say about you and those you live with? In his poem “Refrigerator, 1957,” Thomas Lux opens the door to his childhood appliance and oh, does a three-quarters full jar of maraschino cherries speak volumes. Thomas Lux was an American poet and professor. He was the author of several collections of poetry, including To the Left of Time (Ecco, 2016), Child Made of Sand (Houghton Mifflin, 2012), God Pa...
Feb 23, 2024•14 min•Season 8Ep. 16
The word “flush” is a verb, as in an activity that we do umpteen times a day. It’s also an adjective that conveys abundance. Fittingly, Rita Wong’s poem “flush” offers a praise song to water’s expansive and unceasing presence in our lives — from our toilets to our teacups, from inside our bodies to outside our buildings, and from our soil to our skies. Rita Wong is the author of several poetry collections, including monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998), forage (Nightwood Editions, 2007), and undercur...
Feb 19, 2024•16 min•Season 8Ep. 15
Bro — this is definitely not the “Beowulf” that you read back in school. Maria Dahvana Headley’s gutsy, swaggering translation brings the Old English epic poem roaring into this century, showing you why this tale of fraught family ties, power plays and posturing, and mighty, imperfect people is as relevant as ever. Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times -bestselling author of eight books, most recently Beowulf: A New Translation (MCD X FSG Originals, 2020). Her novel The Mere Wife (MCD X FS...
Feb 16, 2024•16 min•Season 8Ep. 14
A horse race from the 1980s may not seem like the obvious inspiration for a poem that celebrates so many of the things that make our lives worth living — good company (human and animal), good books, good food, and honest work — and that is just part of the surprise, delight, and surging joy of Michael Klein’s “Swale.” Michael Klein is a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for poetry and is the author of five books of poetry and two memoirs. His work has appeared in many places, includin...
Feb 12, 2024•14 min•Season 8Ep. 13
What holds our bodies together? Yes, there are the biological components, such as the cells, fluids, fibers, but what about the bone-deep stuff, the histories, myths, aches, resolves? In “Our Bird Aegis,” poet Ray Young Bear evokes an adolescent eagle to show how this blend of the visceral, the inherited, and the self-made abides in each of us, no matter our form, wherever we go. Ray Young Bear is a Meskwaki poet and fiction writer. He is the author of several books of poetry including, The Invi...
Feb 09, 2024•14 min•Season 8Ep. 12
While disputes over contested lands result in damage that can be seen and documented, they also create countless unseen ruptures in the hearts, minds and souls of the humans caught in the chaos. By giving voice to yearning, Suji Kwock Kim’s poem “Search Engine: Notes from the North Korean-Chinese-Russian Border” shows how bearing witness and asking the impossible are acts of profound courage, creativity, and defiance. Suji Kwock Kim is a poet and playwright. Her debut poetry collection, Notes fr...
Feb 05, 2024•16 min•Season 8Ep. 11
In “ROLL CALL: NEW TAROT NAMES FOR BLACK GIRLS,” Amber McBride treats us to a playful litany of language that twists and leaps and never stumbles. Flavored with old-time Christianity, old-time hoodoo, and a modern alchemy all her own, it talks back to prejudice, reclaims the words meant to take people down, and forges new identities that shimmer with strength and strangeness. Amber McBride is an English professor at the University of Virginia. She is the author of several books, including the fo...
Feb 02, 2024•17 min•Season 8Ep. 10
A fragile and wondrous technology that we all possess, the human breath powers any number of things in our lives — speeches, feats of music, athleticism, and more. Carl Dennis’s powerful and meditative poem “Breath” calls on us to take a moment, give our breath our full attention, and celebrate it. Carl Dennis is the author of 13 works of poetry, including Earthborn (Penguin Books/Penguin Random House, 2022), as well as a collection of essays called Poetry as Persuasion (University of Georgia Pr...
Jan 29, 2024•15 min•Season 8Ep. 9
