Open Windows Podcast

In my program today, as a follow up to last week's podcast, I explore immigration more widely and read poems by poets who consider the framework of immigration and the destinies of those who find themselves crossing borders, legally or illegally, to find a new home.  I read poems by Woody Guthrie, Galway Kinnell, Blas Manuel de Luna, Tishani Doshi, Tracy K. Smith, Lory Bedikian, and Adrienne Su. I end the program with one of my own poems.

Today I read poems from my book Lithuanian Crossing. That book explores the immigrant experience in the United States as my wider family, and as I, have experienced its immediate and its long-term effects.  

I continue my consideration of new beginnings today, particularly the new beginnings made possible when trees are planted.  So today, in recognition of their many wondrous qualities, I read poems about trees, by Robert Frost, Joyce Kilmer, Federico Garcia Lorca, Rosanna Warren, W.S. Merwin, Jean Valentine, and Linda Pastan. I end the program with one of my own poems.

The idea of new beginnings, of initiation after conclusion -- and in this program linked to Easter -- guides my selection of poems today. I read poems by T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, William Butler Yeats, Claude McKay, Amy Clampitt, Charles Wright, Anne Sexton, and Elizabeth Raby. I end the program with one of my own poems.

On this last day of March, I have been thinking about time, particularly about endings and how they set the stage for beginnings. In that consideration, I read poems by T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, John Donne, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Strand, Howard Nemerov, and Mona van Duyn. I end the program with one of my own poems.

Today I read poems about the wind, some of them about March winds, to celebrate wind as a natural expression and as a symbolic representation of the actions of the world. In this view, nothing stays calm, but nothing, also, stays forever in motion. I read poems by Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Katharine Tynan, Sara Teasdale, Claude McKay, and Ted Hughes.  I end the program with one of my own poems.

In celebration of the Ides of March (which marks the full moon) and in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I read poems about the moon and about Ireland by Irish poets: William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Amergin as translated by Lady Gregory, and Derek Mahon. I end the program with poems from my book St. Brigid's Well, written on and about the West Coast of Ireland.

I continue my look today at poems about March and include additional poems about transition and change, as affirmation and as challenge. I read  poems by Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Lucille Clifton, May Swenson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Michael Jennings. I end the program with two of my own poems.

My program today considers transitions. Poems about the month of March often consider transitions from one state of being to another, from winter to spring on the outside and from various metaphoric and symbolic states on the inside. I read such poems today by William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Antonio Machado, Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, Philip Levine, and Kornelijus Platelis. I end the program with one of my own poems.

To follow up on my last program, I continue my look at opposites, of two things both operating at the same time, and consider how inherent contradiction leads to unity in duality, to an affirmation of the cosmology of the Yin-yang. I read poems by Walt Whitman, "Anonymous," Paul Laurence Dunbar, Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke, and Alice Walker. I end the program with two of my own poems.

My program today presents poems about February, about midwinter, as a time that stands as a kind of fulcrum for the season, as a point of transition between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. I read poems by Ezra Pound, Boris Pasternak, James Schuyler, Margaret Atwood, Ted Kooser,  Jayne Cortez, and Patricia Goodrich.  I end the program with one of my own poems.

My program today considers how poetry uses rhyme to reinforce theme and how rhyme can be an important part of the aesthetic experience of reading a poem.  I read poems by Chaucer, Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wilbur, Howard Nemerov, Mona van Duyn, and Rachel Hadas. I end the program with one of my own poems.

My program today continues my consideration of the two faces of poetry -- poem as memory and poem as anticipation -- and presents poems about things that are awaited, that are anticipated, even if their contours are not always clearly visible.  I read poems by Emily Dickinson, D.H. Lawrence, Amy Lowell, Lisel Mueller, Andrei Voznesensky, Wislawa Szymborska, and Bob Dylan. I end the program with one of my own poems.

My program today considers the two faces of poetry -- poem as memory and poem as anticipation -- and presents poems about January, the month named for Janus, the two-faced Roman god of beginnings and endings who presided over every entrance and every departure, with his two faces looking simultaneously in two directions.  I read poems by Jonathan Swift, Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams, John Updike, Denise Levertov, and W.S. Merwin.  I end the program with one of my own poems.

My program today considers the relationship between poetry and prophecy.  I read poems about prophecy, prophets, and poets as prophets by H.D., Louise Bogan, Robinson Jeffers, Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, Camille Rankine, and Bob Dylan.  I end the program with one of my own poems.

Today, in the second in a series of programs that illustrate my work over the years, I continue to present some of my translations of Lithuanian poetry and to read my own poems.  I begin with my translations of poems by Nijolė Miliauskaitė and end with two of my own poems. Both halves of this program include a focus on prophecy and on female figures from Greek mythology.

To mark my one hundredth program, and as the first of several programs to come that illustrate my work over the years, I read my translations of Lithuanian poetry and my own poems.  I begin with my translations of poems by Kornelijus Platelis and end with a few of my own poems. 

I end my consideration of December today, reading poems that are a bit more upbeat as we move next into a new year, poems about peace and harmony that may provide us with a different perspective on the many upheavals we faced in 2020. They include poems by John Lennon, Walt Whitman, Sara Teasdale, Anne Spencer, Wendell Berry, William Stafford, Denise Levertov, and James Simmons.  I end the program with one of my own poems.

I continue my consideration of December today and read poems about winter, about ice and snow. They include poems by Dante, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Patchen, Wallace Stevens, Mark Strand, and Kobayashi Issa. I end the program with one of my own poems.

To continue my consideration of December and to mark this month's affirmation of the end of the year and the inevitable progression of time, I read poems about aging and old age today. They include poems by Sappho, Lu You, William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Stanley Kunitz, Julie Chappell, and Tautvyda Marcinkevičiūtė.  I end the program with one of my own poems.