Enlighten Radio Player

Our Player

Posts and playlists

Monday, September 5, 2016

The Poetry Show begins at 7:30 this morning on EPIC RADIO


Janet Harrison introduces Poet Louise Gluck

At 9:00 AM, Stewart Acuff joins us for some Labor Day Poems!

Here is Janet's introduction to Louise Gluck:

Born in New York City on April 22, 1943, poet Louise Glück has received almost every major award in American poetry, including the Bollingen Prize and the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. Early in her childhood on Long Island, she knew she wanted to write,  and she submitted her first book when she was only 13 or 14. It was promptly rejected. Later, at Columbia University, she studied poetry with Stanley Kunitz. Her first book of poetry, Firstborn (New American Library) was published in 1968. Since then she has published numerous books, including Triumph of Achilles (Ecco Press, 1985), winner of the National Book Critics Award; The Wild Iris (Ecco Press, 1992), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; and Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014), winner of the National Book Award. Her first eleven books of poetry were re-issued in one large volume, Poems 1962-2012 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012). Additionally, she has published a book of essays on poetry, Proofs and Theories (Ecco Press, 1994), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. She edited the 1993 volume of Best American Poetry, and from 2003-2010 she was the judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Teaching has  been another major vocation for her; she has taught at several colleges and universities, most recently at Yale. She also served as poet laureate of the United States in 2003. 

In an interview published by The Academy of Achievement, Glück stated, "I write to discover meaning. I want experience to mean something. It's less a matter of who I am than that idea that nothing should be wasted. Something must come of it. Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you've no longer been bested by these events." 

This week's featured poem is "Lullaby" from The Wild Iris (Ecco Press, 1992). 

LULLABY

Time to rest now; you have had
enough excitement for the time being.

Twilight, then early evening. Fireflies
in the room, flickering here and there, here and there, 
and summer's deep sweetness filling the open window.

Don't think of these things anymore. 
Listen to my breathing, your own breathing
like the fireflies, each small breath 
a flare in which the world appears. 

I've sung to you long enough in the summer night. 
I'll win you over in the end; the world can't give you
this sustained vision.

You must be taught to love me. Human beings must be taught to love 
silence and darkness. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for comment. We listen. Keep it clean.