Robin Becker Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robin-becker

To spice things up with the start of the 4th season of the Basement Poetry Podcast, we will look at John Kenney's poem, "Hold the Elevator?" Link to John Kenney's website: Books — John Kenney (byjohnkenney.com) Amazon.com: Love Poems for the Office: 9780593190708: Kenney, John: Books If you would like a poem read on the podcast, send an email to [email protected]

Today we will take a look at the poem, "15" from The Feeling Sonnets published in Volume 51 of The American Poetry Review. American Poetry Review – Home (aprweb.org) Eugene Ostashevsky Eugene Ostashevsky was born in Leningrad in 1968 and immigrated with his family to New York in 1979. He is the author of the poetry collections Iterature and The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, both of which are published by Ugly Duckling Presse, and a scholar and translator of Russian avant-garde and contemporary poetry, especially by the 1930s underground writers Alexander Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms. He currently lives in Berlin and New York and teaches literature in the Liberal Studies program at New York University. His contributions to New York Review Books include translating Vvedensky's An Invitation for Me to Think and The Fire Horse: Children's Poems by Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, and Kharms.

Link to poem: American Poetry Review – Poems (aprweb.org) If you stayed to listen to the end, or if you did not, please submit your work to American Writers Review (San Fedele Press Submission Manager (submittable.com)

https://allpoetry.com/Tonight-I-Can-Write-(The-Saddest-Lines) Happy Valentine's Day.  Today we talk about Pablo Neruda's poem, "Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines)  Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines) Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.' The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms. I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is starry and she is not with me. This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer. My heart looks for her, and she is not with me. The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same. I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing. Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses. Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes. I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her. Translation by W. S. Merwin

Today we will be looking at the poem "Words for Worry" by Li-Young Lee. Bio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/li-young-lee The Poem: Words for Worry by Li-Young Lee Another word for father is worry. Worry boils the water for tea in the middle of the night. Worry trimmed the child’s nails before singing him to sleep. Another word for son is delight, another word, hidden. And another is One-Who-Goes-Away. Yet another, One-Who-Returns. So many words for son: He-Dreams-for-All-Our-Sakes. His-Play-Vouchsafes-Our-Winter-Share. His-Dispersal-Wins-the-Birds. But only one word for father. And sometimes a man is both. Which is to say sometimes a man manifests mysteries beyond his own understanding. For instance, being the one and the many, and the loneliness of either. Or the living light we see by, we never see. Or the sole word weighs heavy as a various name. And sleepless worry folds the laundry for tomorrow. Tired worry wakes the child for school. Orphan worry writes the note he hides in the child’s lunch bag. It begins, Dear Firefly….

Today we will be looking at the poem "Mr. On Time" by Alan King Link to Alan King's Website: https://alanwking.com/2018/06/02/mr-on-time-alan-kings-point-blank/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/poet-billy-collins-reflects-on-9-11-victims-in-the-names "The Names" - Billy Collins Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night. A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze, And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows, I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened, Then Baxter and Calabro, Davis and Eberling, names falling into place As droplets fell through the dark. Names printed on the ceiling of the night. Names slipping around a watery bend. Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream. In the morning, I walked out barefoot Among thousands of flowers Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears, And each had a name — Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins. Names written in the air And stitched into the cloth of the day. A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox. Monogram on a torn shirt, I see you spelled out on storefront windows And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city. I say the syllables as I turn a corner — Kelly and Lee, Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor. When I peer into the woods, I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden As in a puzzle concocted for children. Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash, Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton, Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple. Names written in the pale sky. Names rising in the updraft amid buildings. Names silent in stone Or cried out behind a door. Names blown over the earth and out to sea. In the evening — weakening light, the last swallows. A boy on a lake lifts his oars. A woman by a window puts a match to a candle, And the names are outlined on the rose clouds — Vanacore and Wallace, (let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound) Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z. Names etched on the head of a pin. One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel. A blue name needled into the skin. Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers, The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son. Alphabet of names in a green field. Names in the small tracks of birds. Names lifted from a hat Or balanced on the tip of the tongue. Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory. So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

Today we will take a look at "The Rainstick" by Seamus Heaney.  Bio: Seamus Heaney is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. A native of Northern Ireland, Heaney was raised in County Derry, and later lived for many years in Dublin. He was the author of over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism, and edited several widely used anthologies. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." Heaney taught at Harvard University (1985-2006) and served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry (1989-1994). He died in 2013. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/seamus-heaney "The Rainstick" by Seamus Heaney. Upend the rainstick and what happens next Is a music that you never would have known To listen for. In a cactus stalk Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe Being played by water, you shake it again lightly And diminuendo runs through all its scales Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves, Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies; Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air. Upend the stick again. What happens next Is undiminished for having happened once. Twice, ten, a thousand times before. Who cares if the music that transpires Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus? You are like a rich man entering heaven Through the ear of a shower. Listen now again. https://newrepublic.com/article/114546/seamus-heaney-rainstick

Today we will be taking a look at the great Nikki Giovanni's poem, "No Pancakes Please"  This poem direness from her 2020 collection of poetry and prose Make Me Rain Bio: Nikki Giovanni is one of America’s foremost poets. Over the course of a long career, Giovanni has published numerous collections of poetry—from her first self-published volume Black Feeling Black Talk (1968) to New York Times best-seller Bicycles: Love Poems (2009)—several works of nonfiction and children’s literature, and multiple recordings, including the Emmy-award nominated The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004). Her most recent publications include Make Me Rain: Poems and Prose (2020), Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (2013) and, as editor, The 100 Best African American Poems (2010). A frequent lecturer and reader, Giovanni has taught at Rutgers University, Ohio State University, and Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/nikki-giovanni