BELLWETHERS: STUDENTS READ JAMES WRIGHT’S
“I HAVE WASTED MY LIFEâ€:
Good News for the Future Generations
THE POETRY SLOW DOWN with Professor Barbara Mossberg
February 22, 2015 Sunday Noon-1 pm radiomonterey.com
bell·weth·er
noun: bellwether; plural noun: bellwethers
1 the leading sheep of a flock, with a bell on its neck.
▪                    an indicator or predictor of something.”
| synonyms: | harbinger, herald, indicator, predictor “a bellwether of change” |
What does James Wright mean when he ends his lyric lazy swing idling away an afternoon, “I have wasted my life?†With student eco-literati from the Clark Honors College, University of Oregon Emma Fager, Brian Amdur, Jordan Weems, Selena Blick, Verneet Brar, Kate Ballard, Virginia LaGrow, Hannah Lewman, Jake Bailey, eco critics Thom Gunn, Crunk aka Robert Bly, Bruce Henricksen, Dave Smith, poets Billy Collins and Mark Doty, and notes of Albert Einstein, William Blake, W.B. Yeats, and the words of James Wright himself (“what I actually meantâ€) and why and how they matter as we confer on this great mystery: how the way we read poetry is a harbinger of what is to come in our society, and through the lens of the people in whose hands our future lies, it’s good news. A good news show of the news we need, the news we heed, the news “without which men die miserably every day†(William Carlos Williams).
Join me for our Poetry Slow Down, our own hammock of the mind, Produced by Sara Hughes for radiomonterey.com, I’m your professor Barbara Mossberg, bmossber@uoregon.edu
© Barbara Mossberg 2015
