Poetry Unbound

Even though Palestinian-American Fady Joudah’s poem is sparingly titled “[...],” an ellipsis surrounded by brackets, this work itself is psychologically dense. Through crisp lines and language, it wrestles with the nature of human ambivalence — about things like fear, desire, disaster, liberty — and it finds certainty only in the shaky universal ground of that ambivalence. Fady Joudah is the autho...

Benjamin Zephaniah’s urgent, imperative “To Michael Menson” was written when he was a poet in residence at a human rights barrister in England. His poem resonates with his repeated calls for justice for a murdered Black musician — not a justice that is gullible, impotent, or hopeless but one that is clear-eyed, collaborative, and mighty. Benjamin Zephaniah was born and raised in Birmingham, Englan...

Carmen Giménez’s poem “Ars Poetica” is a stunning waterfall of words, a torrent of dozens of short statements that begin with “I” or “I’m.” As you listen to them, let an answering cascade of questions fill up your mind. What does this series of confessions reveal to you about poetry? The poet? And yourself? Carmen Giménez is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Milk and Filth , a f...

Rick Barot’s poem “The Singing” takes place in the humdrum, relatable setting of the waiting room at a car dealership. But the unexpected occurs when one woman’s soft humming builds into strange, full-throated singing. Curiosity, wonder, anger, and dread spill over, forcing you to face the same dilemma as the narrator: What can you do when reality defies your control? Rick Barot was born in the Ph...

“You would’ve made a lousy nun.” The narrator of Diannely Antigua’s “Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me” overhears these words, and they jolt her into contrasting her life experience with the limited archetypes offered by her church — good daughter, good sister, holy woman, whore. Which of these has she been? Where does her devotion lie? And what virtue can she claim? Diannely Antigu...

Don McKay’s poem “Neanderthal Dig” begins with the discovery of an ancient, child-sized skeleton placed on the wing of a swan and then takes flight, showing us how love and death are riddled with paradoxes — mixing the earthbound and the sacred, the personal and the universal, the time-stamped and the never ending. Don McKay is the multi-award-winning author of multiple books of poetry, including ...

When dictatorial leaders use talk of peace as a smokescreen to conceal their plans for war and  destruction, what are the people to do? Believe in a vision of peace and freedom that is muscular, sturdy, and protective — and pray that it holds, as Ernesto Cardenal does in his poem “Give Ear to My Words (Psalm 5),” translated by Jonathan Cohen. Ernesto Cardenal (1925–2020) was a Catholic priest and...

Many people say their experience of time changes after they have children, a phenomenon that Diego Báez captures in “Inheritance.” In this poem, a past, present, and future starring the same child shift ceaselessly in a parent’s mind, like photos flipped through in an album, dots placed on a timeline, moments that one wishes they could build monuments for. Diego Báez, is a writer and educator in C...

Wonder and strangeness commingle with the commonplace and universal in Danielle Chapman’s “Trespassing with Tweens.” In a not-quite mirroring, a human mother and her children stand and watch together in awe as a great blue heron flaps in and feeds its two offspring. The pleasures found here are profound and multiple – the joys in seeing, in sharing an experience of seeing, in seeing with fresh eye...

In Richard Langston’s poem “Hill walk,” he proffers a handful of things that move us over the course of a day — words said or read, notes played, the sight of halting steps taken by a sibling. We marvel at the sound of an unfamiliar bird call, but there’s a startling mystery to the human heart and what it responds to (or doesn’t) and one that we don’t always mark. Richard Langston is a veteran bro...

What sacrifices were made by your parents when you were a child? How did you think about them as they were happening? And how do you think about them now? In his poem “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden holds space for a weighted childhood memory and the regret, love, and pain it evokes. Robert Hayden (1913-1980) was the first Black American poet to be appointed the Consultant of Poetry to the L...

When you look at people who are younger than you — particularly teenagers — does your mind ever take you back to yourself at their age? Taylor Johnson’s poem “Pennsylvania Ave. SE” performs this feat of time travel, going from a glimpse of two boys on bicycles to a haunting sense memory of what was once so yearned for: to be seen, to be wanted, to be free. Taylor Johnson is proud of being from Was...

In Kinsale Drake’s poem “Put on that KTNN,” she writes about driving to a hometown as a familiar station crackles to life on the car radio. From this corner of America, she creates her own country music — of Navajo voices alongside Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, of drumbeats and guitar licks, of things wrought by nature and things made by humans, all of them rooted in the desert sand. Kinsale Drake...

Poetry Unbound with host Pádraig Ó Tuama is back on Monday, December 2. Featured poets in this season include Robert Hayden, Kinsale Drake, Danielle Chapman, Diannely Antigua, and many more. New episodes every week through March 3. Follow us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Pocket Casts , Overcast , or wherever you listen. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an Ads...

In this concluding episode of "Poems as Teachers," our special miniseries on conflict and the human condition, host Pádraig Ó Tuama says the poems discussed in this offering are a different kind of teacher: “not as teachers that give us rules to follow — more so teachers that share something of their own intuition.” And for a final reflection, he offers Kai Cheng Thom’s “trauma is not sacred,” whi...

Being right may feel good, but what human price do we pay for this feeling of rightness? Yehuda Amichai’s poem “The Place Where We Are Right,” translated by Stephen Mitchell, asks us to answer this question, consider how doubt and love might expand and enrich our perspective, and reflect upon the buried and not-so-buried ruins of past conflicts, arguments, and wounds that still call for our attent...

In “Hebrews 13” by Jericho Brown, a narrator says: “my lover and my brother both knocked at my door.” The heat is turned on, scalding coffee is offered and hastily swallowed, and silence is the soundtrack. What an exquisitely awkward triangle it is, and what a human, beautiful, and loving shape that can be. Jericho Brown is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Em...

In Mosab Abu Toha’s “Ibrahim Abu Lughod and brother in Yaffa,” two barefoot siblings on a beach sketch out a map of their former home in the sand and argue about what went where. Their longing for return to a place of hospitality, family, memory, friends, and even strangers is alive and tender to the touch. Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has s...

We ask questions to find out the facts, but what if you can’t trust the answers, the questions, or the person who's asking the questions? In Constantine P. Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians,” translated by Evan Jones, leaders exercise a sinister kind of violence — they’ve taken over people’s imaginations with showy displays of wealth and privilege, time-wasting ceremony, and fear coursing benea...

As appealing as it may sound, is it really possible to live in a world completely free of conflict? No. And since differences and disagreements are inevitable and natural, Joy Harjo gives ground rules in “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.” Her call to us echoes across time and space — a call to listen, to humility, to justice, and to recognizing the land, the living, the dead, the not-yet-livin...

Host Pádraig Ó Tuama gives an overview of this Poetry Unbound mini season that's devoted to poems with wisdom to offer about conflict and humanity. He also brings us Wisława Szymborska’s “A Word on Statistics,” translated by Joanna Trzeciak, which covers statistics of the most human kind — like the number of people in a group of 100 who think they know better, who can admire without envy, or who c...

If your home were a museum — and they all are, in a way — what would the contents of your refrigerator say about you and those you live with? In his poem “Refrigerator, 1957,” Thomas Lux opens the door to his childhood appliance and oh, does a three-quarters full jar of maraschino cherries speak volumes.  Thomas Lux was an American poet and professor. He was the author of several collections of po...

The word “flush” is a verb, as in an activity that we do umpteen times a day. It’s also an adjective that conveys abundance. Fittingly, Rita Wong’s poem “flush” offers a praise song to water’s expansive and unceasing presence in our lives — from our toilets to our teacups, from inside our bodies to outside our buildings, and from our soil to our skies.  Rita Wong is the author of several poetry co...

Bro — this is definitely not the “Beowulf” that you read back in school. Maria Dahvana Headley’s gutsy, swaggering translation brings the Old English epic poem roaring into this century, showing you why this tale of fraught family ties, power plays and posturing, and mighty, imperfect people is as relevant as ever.   Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times -bestselling author of eight books, m...

A horse race from the 1980s may not seem like the obvious inspiration for a poem that celebrates so many of the things that make our lives worth living — good company (human and animal), good books, good food, and honest work — and that is just part of the surprise, delight, and surging joy of Michael Klein’s “Swale.”  Michael Klein is a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for poetry and...