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 basementpoetrypod@gmail.com

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.

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:

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.