Lit from the Basement

We are back from our sickness hiatus with “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian” by Ross Gay. Topics include: gratitude, single-scene poem, short line breaks, and figs in myth.

For their 50th show, Danielle goes big with a long, long, powerful poem by Jacqueline Osherow. Topics include: terza rima, formalism, Willa Cather, interruptive syntax, and your present self admonishing your past self. 

Owing to a house-wide plague, we are forced to pull a show from our reject pile. Please join us as we deviate from poetry to flash fiction with Mary Robison's "Yours" and as we go on way too long about personal ghost stories. Topics include: Halloween, fall, mortality, May/December romances, and failing to keep your atheist cred while discussing the supernatural. 

We discuss the poem "Photo of a Girl, 1988: Cyborg" from Faylita Hicks's debut collection Hoodwitch. Topics include: the mother figure in literature, enjambment, end-stopped lines, Afrofuturism, and the ampersand.

We tackle the limerick form with poetry scholar Mike Chasar as he leads a deep dive into two versions of "A Wonderful Bird is the Pelican" by Dixon Lanier Merritt. Topics include: humorous poetry, "children's" literature, the pleasures of rhyme, and the 1913 Armory Show.

Danielle introduces Max to the list poem form with Lee Ann Roripaugh's "Things that Leave an Aching Feeling Inside." Topics include: list form, The Pillow Book, the importance of poetry during the Heian period, and breaking your own heart.

Danielle introduces Max to the concept of Ars Poetica with Karyna McGlynn's poem "Sensual Vocabulary." Topics include: Ars Poetica, Marianne Moore, September Women Poets, modernists, and George Washington as a school marm.

Addressing a recent loss in her own life, Danielle shares with Max an elegy by Sally Ball that helped with her grieving. Topics include: elegies, suicide, stages of grief, Virginia Woolf, W.S. Merwin, and Dancer pose. 

We have another guest in our creepy basement; the author Scott Nadelson! He shares Rane Arroyo's poem "The Immigrants (Winter Wear)" with us. Topics include: tercets, Wallace Stevens, and Santa tempting Jesus in the desert.

In celebration of her appointment as the United States Poet Laureate, Danielle shares Joy Harjo's poem "Unmailed Letter" with Max. Topics include: irrational numbers, dialectical argument structure, and frustrating relationships.

We open season three (and celebrate 4th of July) with a fistful of Americana as Danielle introduces Max to Bruce Snider through his poem "Map." Talking points include the ghazal structure, Indiana, the color yellow, homoerotic Americana, and Walt Whitman.

For our last show of season two, we have a twofer! Danielle shares Don Bogen's "A Citizen" and "Immediate Song" with Max. Talking points include lyric sequences, persona poems, an empire's twilight, and phrenology.

Danielle shares Carmen Giménez Smith's "Something New" with Max. Talking points include love as work, marriage as labor, plushy chambers, and the etymology of mortgage.

Danielle shares Gary Soto's "Ambition" with Max. Talking points include friendship, Seneca, Cicero, zoomorphism, pleasure, and Max’s time as a disgruntled shoe salesman.

Danielle shares A. Molotkov's "Lightening" with Max. Talking points include the prose poem, Aloysius Bertrand, fig trees, eye surgery, and Duncan MacDougall's dead-weighing experiments. 

Danielle shares "[but the rain is full of ghosts tonight]" by dawn lonsinger with Max. Talking points include Danielle's coining of the term "maximalism," Edna St. Vincent Millay, ghosts of lovers past, and rain, rain, rain.

Guest host dawn lonsinger shares Frank O'Hara's "Animals" with Danielle and Max. Talking points include: idioms, the New York School, personism, dune buggies, time, and square things vs. round things.

Danielle shares "The Romantic Lead" by Ian Williams with Max. Talking points include contemporary sonnets, sextets and octaves, Swan Lake vs. Ladyhawk, reaction shots, and finding displeasure with Aquaman.

Danielle shares "The Soils I Have Eaten" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil with Max. Talking points include strophes, memories of place, prospecting by taste, and the 1980s arcade game Dig Dug.

Danielle shares "Dangerous for Girls" by Connie Voisine with Max. Talking points include dead girls, associative leaps, capitalist consumption, and watching infomercials while depressed.

Danielle and Max discuss "Cities in Dust" by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Talking points include March Vladness, Pompeii, verse-chorus form, Pliny the Younger, and Goth! Goth! Goth!

In this episode, Danielle shares "The Same City" by Terrance Hayes. Talking points include revision poems, cold and flu season, crappy weather, and mixing up biblical stepfathers. 

In this episode, Danielle shares Michael Ondaatje’s “The Cinnamon Peeler.” Talking points include encounters with wild bears, how specifics make life interesting, persona poems, and Dune spice.

In this episode, Danielle shares Rebecca Lindenberg’s “Litany.” Talking points include Gal-entine’s Day, the classical formula of god summoning, lethologica vs. aphasia, and sabotaging people’s efforts to break up with you.

In this episode, Danielle shares Carl Phillips’s “What Myth Is.” Talking points include what myths we identify with, Sonnet 130, the blazon, objective correlatives, and languid fingering.

In this episode, Danielle shares Erika L. Sánchez’s “Letter from New York.” Talking points include, well, New York, obviously, the epistolary form, our flooding basement, and poet Richard Hugo literally dropping bombs on five-year-old poet Charles Simic in Belgrade.

In this episode, Danielle shares with Max Yona Harvey’s "Report from the Daughter of a Blue Planet." Talking points include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Audre Lorde, and perfect line breaks.

In this episode, Danielle overcomes Max's resistance to D.A. Powell's "[ode]." Talking points include Pindar vs. Horace, odes, hyacinths, trochees, and blue movies.

For her 40th birthday, Danielle has selected Robert Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas.” Talking points include Platonic ideals, blackberries, the linguist Saussure, and mastodon steaks.

Danielle and Max slam the door on 2018 by reading Naomi Shihab Nye's poems "Kindness" and "Burning the Old Year." Talking points include the new year, empathy, cruelty, and metaphorical landscapes.

For this Christmas week, Danielle introduces Max to Mark Doty's Visitation. Talking points include the holidays, the Christmas Whale, and complicated joy.

Danielle and Max celebrate the 2018 winter solstice by reading Paisley Rekdal's “Nightingale." Talking points include handling a rude guest lecturer, John Keats, Odysseus/Ulysses, dwelling in doubt, and autolysis.

Danielle introduces Max to the poet Kaveh Akbar with the poem “Portrait of the Alcoholic Floating in Space with Severed Umbilicus.” Topics include addiction, the sublime, and why we love people in recovery.

Danielle shares the poem “Visions and Interpretations” by Li-Young Lee with Max. Topics touched upon include elegies, miscommunications, and Mercury in retrograde.

Danielle shares Hannah Dow's poem "What is the Body" from her debut collection Rosarium with Max. Topics touched upon include René Descartes, nesting instincts. and tape worms.

Danielle shares Natalie Diaz’s poem “I Watch Her Eat the Apple” with Max... who gets the poem very, very, very wrong. Topics include Thanksgiving, Oedipus, and some ugly facts about the Pilgrims.

Danielle shares Brenda Shaughnessy’s brutally clever poem “Drift” with Max. Topics touched upon include metaphysical poets, paradox, and staying in bad relationships. 

Danielle explains her personal connection to Dana Levin's "Door," working for a mean art dealer, and the dream that lead her to teaching. Max laments too many choices and, once again, brings up Watership Down. 

By sheer coincidence, our 13th show falls on Halloween week! Danielle sets the Halloween mood with Lorca's Ghazal of Dark Death. Max is a little disappointed to find it has nothing to do with the Ghostbusters antagonist.

Danielle explains what an aubade is to Max by sharing Ocean Vuong's wonderfully dark poem "Departure" with him. Max is thrilled. Maybe too thrilled. 

In this extended episode, Shaun and Danielle discuss two poems from Richard Siken's Crush (Wishbone and Planet of Love) and how they work together in that crazy, sexy thrill ride of a book.  

Danielle is in Washington, DC with friend Shaun Daniels to discuss Wishbone from Richard Siken's crazy, sexy thrill ride of a book Crush. 

This week we look at Lindsay Bernal's poem Rodin's Fallen Caryatid from her book What It Doesn't Have to Do With, which won the 2017 National Poetry Series. 
We discuss Danielle's history with the poet, Godzilla studies, and Danielle tries to explain "ekphrasis" to Max. 

We have our first guests! Portland-based Doula Olivia Murphy brings Rilke's poem to the show and tells us why she loves it. Topics touched upon include the 2008 financial crisis, translation, winter in Vermont, Greek myth, and enduring hardship with grace. Max pays Danielle the best compliment she has ever received.

September Women Poets month wraps up with Samiya Bashir's poem. We discuss the pastoral tradition and how this poem can be an anti-pastoral work, our poor gardening, and Danielle explains some math terms to Max. 

Jennifer Chang's poem leads to a discussion of the "flatness" of fairy tale characters, and how her poem defies it with the complexity of her speaker.

Lessley's poem prompts D&M to contemplate the geopolitical complexities of love and where to meet in the afterlife.

To celebrate Labor Day, we share a Denis Johnson poem sure to make you further hate your office job.

Danielle and Max try to have a glib, upbeat conversation about Lisa Fay Coutley’s poem on inherited trauma…and fail.

This Robert Hayden poem leads D&M into a conversation about parental love and sacrifice.

D&M discuss this Tracy K. Smith coming-of-age poem "Thirst," disagreeing on their interpretations.

Danielle uses Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s poem to change Max's opinion of a discovery that he initially found to be unsettling.