Our New Show Is Hot Out of the Oven and Ready to be Plated!

We’re featuring the launch of the Tupelo Press 30-30 Project and the 9 well-known writers committed to a poem a day to support poetry shenanigans.

…Precious McKenzie, on the optometrist’s reply to the nymph, rhymed, giving an ancient patina–we have never seen this perky lust, amorous sensibility in the exam chair before, who longs to “push away the slit lamp stand/and ravish you like a young man.” Whoa–fanning myself here. Outed.

Catharine Sutthoff Slaton, “what was once tree”–science, geologic lyricism, astronomy verve: astonishing!—“the shatter and flint of brittle glass–a momentary Milky Way, the clash of shards on concrete–/the startle of an unstable glass.”

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Advice & love letters we savor, letters we take literally to the table. . . from Pablo Neruda (a foodie) to Sandra Gilbert (a foodie), Emily Dickinson (a foodie) to Thomas Jefferson (a foodie), and many more. Music by Bob Hope, Mick Jagger, Trini Lopez, and Adele.
“Maybe it is the topic of food, because, to be truthful, don’t we love to think and read and hear (and write, I confess) about food? And maybe it is the idea that “you can’t go wrong here,” as I insist in my directions to making the dish. We cannot hear that enough. Because we feel we can go wrong every which way, early, late, often. So it seems that we need solace, to know that someone thinks the world of us. We need a fork in warm lemon pie, and a letter. This show is for you, then, O my cherished Character. Hear on.”
THE POETRY SLOW DOWN with Professor Barbara Mossberg (a foodie)
livestreamed today Noon-1 pm radiomonterey.com
podcast 24/7 BarbaraMossberg.com
produced by Zappa Johns
© Barbara Mossberg 2015

Standard Podcast [ 59:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“I notice I keep saying this and this seems to be my theme. It is a philosophy of life. That if you do it, if you hokey-pokey it, put your whole self in, that is, your memories, your fears, your hopes, your irrepressible optimism and belief, your wistful love, your imagination, your hungers, your forgivable greed, you can’t go wrong. It will turn out all right. Like William Stafford’s poem, “Waking at 3 am”. I love poems that end with assurance: Rumi’s “Zero Circle”– “and we shall be a mighty kindness.”

–Barbara Mossberg, The Poetry Slow Down

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Lively Arts and Classical Poetry As Survival Schemes and Shenanigans . . .news from the Bard to Nietzsche to Dante to Star Trek, of the Clown, the Fool, The Witch, the Dodo—Us in the Poet’s Mind Writ Large and Personal.   

“We ponder what it is in a poet’s vision, as species extinction accelerates, and we wait for the other limb to drop, that not only is enduring, but necessary for each and all of us to endure, beyond survival, the reading of the daily news.”

Listen live at radiomonterey.com, Produced by Zappa Johns, podcast 24/7 at BarbaraMossberg.com, with Professor Barbara Mossberg, Sunday Noon-1 pm PST

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OF RESILIENCE AND HOW POETRY MATTERS AS WE (LIMP) (HOBBLE) FORWARD WITH PANACHE AND VERVE (THAT IS MY STORY AND I’M STICKING TO IT), OF GRATITUDE FOR THE WORDS OF GRACE AND KINDNESS AND IMAGINATION AND BRAVERY OF THIS LISTENING COMMUNITY DEVOTED TO WHY AND HOW POETRY MATTERS IN OUR DAILY LIVES. OR, I MAY BE KING LEAR ON THE OUTSIDE BUT NOT ON THE INSIDE. (IS NOT THAT EACH OF US?) AND A LITTLE BIT ON LIONS, BECAUSE, THIS IS, AFTER ALL, THE MONTH OF LEO THE LION, AND LIONS ARE CERTAINLY IN THE NEWS, AND CERTAINLY PART OF ONE’S LIFE VISION AS A POET . . . HOW SO? STAY TUNED, FOR FAVS THAT SAVE AND MAKE THE DAY . . . LET’S CELEBRATE! Continue reading →

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