9 min listen
Lucille Clifton — song at midnight
FromPoetry Unbound
ratings:
Length:
13 minutes
Released:
Oct 23, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
In strength and defiance, Lucille Clifton celebrates her Black body and her survival. When have you said or heard words like this? Calling herself “both nonwhite and woman,” Lucille Clifton glories in her shape and fact of her life in these two poems. She invites the reader to witness everything she's lived through, and to celebrate the flourishing life that she has created in spite of everything that has tried to kill her.Lucille Clifton was the author of several books of poetry including Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000, which won the National Book Award, The Book of Light, and Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980. She served as poet laureate for the state of Maryland from 1979-1985 and was a distinguished professor of humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She died in 2010.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
Released:
Oct 23, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Ross Gay — Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt: Ross Gay’s poem “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt” uses an everyday task to examine what is made and unmade in small moments. He imagines his fingers opening and closing things, like buttons, the eyes of a dead person, relationships. In doing so, the poem asks us to simply pay attention, today, to what we’re doing with our hands — to understand them as intimate pathways into the stories of our bodies and the stories of our lives. A question to reflect on after you listen: What have you done with your hands today? What are you opening? What are you closing? by Poetry Unbound