Poetry For All

Today, joined by Professor Kirsten Lee, we read a poem about freedom written on the eve of the American Revolution by Phillis Wheatley, the first African American to publish a book of poetry. In praise to the new British Secretary of State, she guides him how to rule while tying an American love of Freedom to her own personal experience of enslavement.

To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth

By Phillis Wheatley

Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,

Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:

The northern clime beneath her genial ray,

Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:

Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,

Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,

While in thine hand with pleasure we behold

The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold.

Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies

She shines supreme, while hated faction dies:

Soon as appear'd the Goddess long desir'd,

Sick at the view, she languish'd and expir'd;

Thus from the splendors of the morning light

The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night.

No more, America, in mournful strain

Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain,

No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain,

Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand

Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land.

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,

Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,

Whence flow these wishes for the common good,

By feeling hearts alone best understood,

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate

Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:

What pangs excruciating must molest,

What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?

Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd

That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd:

Such, such my case. And can I then but pray

Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due,

And thee we ask thy favours to renew,

Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before,

To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore.

May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give

To all thy works, and thou for ever live

Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame,

Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name,

But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane,

May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain,

And bear thee upwards to that blest abode,

Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.

For more on Wheatley, see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/phillis-wheatley

For more on Professor Kirsten Lee, see her website: https://cla.auburn.edu/directory/kirsten-lee/

This episode brings together a collage of images to explore the meaning of time, the emergence of events from one to another, and the wonder of the unknown.

For the full text of the poem, see here:

https://mail.readwildness.com/25/zwart-rusting

For more on the poet Jane Zwart, see her personal website:

https://www.janezwart.com/

To see her new book and purchase a copy, see "Oddest & Oldest & Saddest & Best" at Orison Books:

https://www.orisonbooks.com/product-page/oddest-oldest-saddest-best-poems-by-jane-zwart

In a short, simple, well-loved poem, Dinah Maria Craik names one aspect of friendship that many have found true. A great way to start the new year and launch the season. Find a friend and listen in.

Friendship

Oh, the comfort—

the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—

having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,

but pouring them all right out,

just as they are,

chaff and grain together;

certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,

keep what is worth keeping,

and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

In this episode, Phillis Levin reads "An Anthology of Rain," the title poem of her newest poetry collection. She guides us through the philosophical underpinnings of her poem, how it informs the book as a whole, and how the surfaces of things can tell us so much about their substance.

Phillis Levin is the author of six poetry collections, including An Anthology of Rain. She is also the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. Levin’s honors include a Fulbright Scholar Award to Slovenia, an Ingram Merrill Grant, the Richard Hugo Prize from Poetry Northwest, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Trust of Amy Lowell.

To learn more about Phillis and her work, please visit her website. https://phillislevin.com

Photo credit: Sigrid Estrada

This episode opens "Someday I'll Love" poems through the vivid imagery of a young poet's connection with their grandmother, remembering in love as memory begins to slip.

Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake is an Indigenous poet from the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma. Winner of the 2024 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award for poetry and the recipient of the 2023 Indigenous Nations Poets fellowship, they live in St. Louis.

Portrait by Erin Lewis Photography

The poem was featured on Poem-a-Day and can be found at the Academy of American Poets.

See here for the poem online.

Someday I’ll Love—

Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake

—after Frank O’Hara

like I dreamt of the lamb—slaughtered,

forgotten,

lying on porcelain tile, on crimson-filled grout—

and woke up thinking of my grandmother,

of her Betty Boop hands that held

marbled stone, held dough-balled flour,

held the first strands of my hair floating atop the river—

like winter apples, the ones that hang outside

my living room window and survive first snowfall

to feed the neighborhood crows,

how they fall

beneath my boots, staining my rubber

soles with epigraphs of rot, epigraphs

of fors, of dears, of holding on till frost’s end.

Someday I will see long-forgotten fingerprints

on the inside of my eyelids as I go to sleep,

as I close my eyes for silence on a Wednesday,

mourning—seeking—creases and smile lines,

porch lights and swing sets,

summer nights of lightning bugs and Johnny Cash.

I think it will be a Tuesday, or maybe someday

is yesterday, is two months from now, is going

to be a day when I forget what I’m supposed

to be remembering.

For now, I will paint my nails cradle, adorn

my skin in cloth that doesn’t choke,

tell my bones that they are each

a lamb

remembered.

Copyright © 2024 by Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. Used by permission.