8 min listen
Major Jackson — Blunts
FromPoetry Unbound
ratings:
Length:
16 minutes
Released:
Nov 8, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Some friends gather and smoke at a doorway in a city. There’s Malik, and Johnny Cash, and Lefty, and Jësus. And the poet, Major Jackson. They’ve known each other their whole lives, and they wonder who they’ll turn out to be. In a moment of disclosure, Major tells his friends he wants to be a poet, astonishing them, and himself too it seems. In friendship and ribbing, in desire and teasing, this poem wonders who a person is, and what it means to hope.Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. Major Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
Released:
Nov 8, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Brad Aaron Modlin — What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade: Brad Aaron Modlin’s poem “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade” speaks of learning to grow up by yourself. The poet wonders what life lessons would look like if they could be taught by a teacher; a good teacher, a teacher like Mrs. Nelson. A question to reflect on after you listen: What life lessons did you have to learn by yourself? by Poetry Unbound