At Innovation Day Summit at the University of Oregon, Professor Sphinx (aka Dr. B) and the Revolutionary Imaginaires, aka Clark Honors College students lighting up STEM research with imagination and love for our earth and one another: (l to r) Hanna Minns, Megan Wyatt, Laura Queen, Hannah Solheim, and Makenna Pennel, with shout outs to STEMpathy pal Mary Oliver

And/or, You Are My Sunshine as Rocket Science: the Physics of Campfire Wisdom, with thanks to Thomas Friedman for “Stempathy,” and my contribution to the case for learning the world needs now, now more than ever: in calling for empathy, as scientists do, we see the role of poetry, and it’s all “equation elation:” metaphor as Rx to save the world. (Professor Sphinx told us that long ago) We’ll hear guest artists Einstein, Richard Feynman, John Steinbeck, Goethe, John Muir, Story Musgrave (featured in next show), Albert Schweitzer, Emily Dickinson, Dalai Lama, Buddha, Confucius, Rachel Carson, and Mary Oliver, and the best poem, by Pablo Neruda, Sonnet 16, that sums it all up, love, sunshine, earth, you.

© Barbara Mossberg 2017

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From October, 2013:

“Today when persimmons ripen,” as Jane Hirshfield begins us, we’re slowing down—you know you move too fast—in this slowed time of year, where trees are strutting their structural moxie, revealed when their leaves take flight, sing the song of gravity, and reveal the gold orange and red and yellow reality in them all along, a way that poetry slows us down to express the fall foliage colors, the way a poem can turn us into what we have been all along—as Rumi puts this idea, “lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” And the Mayan saying, You are the other me–perhaps this YOU is the poem in which we recognize what’s amazing, what’s to love . . . as D.H. Lawrence says in a poem called Know Deeply, Know Thyself More Deeply. Slowing down with poetry reveals a beauty, a hope, a redeeming knowledge that’s been there, In there, all along. So today, we’re going savor how a poem changes it up, saves the day, revealing not only the changing leaves but the beautiful trunk and limbs in us, as our leaves leave and turn—shimmering, gleaming, luminous moving and heart-shaking poems by Wendell Berry in his book Given, Susan Laughter Meyers in her My Dear, Dear Staggergrass, Albert Goldbarth, in Saving Lives, Charles Wright, in Bye and Bye, and poems by our own Charles Tripi, Pablo Neruda, Garcia Lorca, D.H. Lawrence, David Whyte, Fran Landesman, Shakespeare, Robert Bly, Mary Oliver, and what words we give our children, Maurice Sendak’s newly re-issued 1956 book, Kenny’s Window, and Leo Lionni’s profile of the poet in his Frederick . . . So ears, hears the story, and thank you for joining me, Professor Barbara Mossberg*

© Barbara Mossberg 2013

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And talk about poetry we will, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ada Limon, Ross Gay, and Emily Dickinson. She started it, really: she said “Nobody knows this little rose.” Now we know Nobody: Odysseus’ cunning way to describe himself when he escapes the Cyclops, Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, and Emily Dickinson’s anthem poem, I’m Nobody, a startling messing with our minds, since you can’t say you’re nobody, to say, I am, is to be somebody, and then to say you’re nobody is to completely undercut that in existential shenanigans. You can’t say you are not. Except, you can.

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From October 21, 2012:

Bees, why bees, Dr. B? You’ve given us shows of moles and bats and hats and coots, roosters, birds, foxes, bears, butterflies, and even worms! How low can you go? You’ve had us walking, on our knees, falling from the sky and down stairs, lying in a hammock, slowed down to and swinging with revelation.What can be said about the plain old butter-knife bee? We’re into lyric, epic, ode, the quirky manic Bernstein, Stern, Williams, and Gregg, remember? I know you are!

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Standard Podcast [ 52:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“Today when persimmons ripen,” as Jane Hirshfield begins us, we’re slowing down—you know you move too fast—in this slowed time of year, where trees are strutting their structural moxie, revealed when their leaves take flight, sing the song of gravity, and reveal the gold orange and red and yellow reality in them all along, a way that poetry slows us down to express the fall foliage colors, the way a poem can turn us into what we have been all along—as Rumi puts this idea, “lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

Continue reading →

Standard Podcast [ 48:47 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download