9 min listen
Martín Espada — After the Goose that Rose Like the God of Geese
FromPoetry Unbound
ratings:
Length:
16 minutes
Released:
Jun 7, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Bereavement brings all kinds of pressures. This poem by Martín Espada starts off with a grief-to-do-list: a phone call, a flight, a blizzard, cremations, shipments of ashes, memorial services. After all of this — in a first stanza that builds in intensity — he needs to be reconnected with something tangible. He goes to feed birds at the park, and among the birds is a goose, like a god of the geese, who shrieks with all the emotion stored in him. This goose is like a priest of grief for Martín Espada, voicing the sounds of all that he’s feeling.Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His new book of poems from Norton is called Floaters. Other books of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, The Trouble Ball, and Alabanza. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
Released:
Jun 7, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Ali Cobby Eckermann — Kulila: Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poem “Kulila” insists on remembering as a moral act. Through the poem, the Aboriginal poet mourns the loss of Indigenous cultures in Australia and how they have been damaged and changed by colonization. Cobby Eckermann calls her readers to a place of listening and lament as a way to keep alive the memory of who we are and who we could’ve been. A question to reflect on after you listen: What in your culture or community needs to be lamented, honored, and told? by Poetry Unbound