Dickinson and Eco poets Denshosha? Wetzeng? A talk with Kim Stafford . . . Emily Dickinson serves as earthling terran hostess for the season and our show today on March 5, for, as she says, “We like March. His shoes are purple.†March, this Versace fashionista dude in a hat, comes panting to her door, and she opens it wide, so glad, takes him upstairs with her, ready for all he has to tell her, and she, because she’s Emerson’s Poet, air-lord, sea-lord, land-lord, to tell us.
“The simple news that nature told with tender majesty.†We’re going to hear about this role, as we have conversash with Kim Stafford, and let’s begin with this question: If you were March, with “Nature’s news,†wouldn’t you head straight to little old Nobody Emily Dickinson’s house on Mainstreet? You’d want her to tell your story, right? To retweet it? “I’ll tell you how the sun rose—a ribbon at a time.†Her InstaGrams. Her Snapchats. To see daily things as gifts, as momentous, as miracles, as Einstein said, our choice, after all, to see everything as miracle, or nothing as miracle, that’s what we’re hearing about today as we welcome back March! And You! So come right upstairs with me, there’s so much to tell . . . poets who march in their poetic feet to welcome Spring, or sort of Spring, in just spring, at last, the kind of kick and leap in our spirits like March hares, who spring up and box each other, with Nancy Willard’s The Man in the Marmelade Hat, and Jane Hirshfield’s shining moment, and David Whyte, and of course Rumi, and John Keats, and e.e. cummings, and Pablo Neruda, Kim Stafford, Mary Oliver, D. H. Lawrence, Chuck Tripi, our own Chuck Tripi, Rupert Brooke, Robert Creeley, Chaucer, Seikilos, an ancient 1 AD Greek song, poetry in the news, headline news and various sections of our newspaper or news feeds including Raymond Carver’s role—we just had the Academy Awards—do you remember “Birdman†–and I just saw Paterson, an homage to William Carlos Williams, a great film, and we’ve all just seen The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which features haiku, and a new leaping version of Homer’s The Odyssey. Our theme is from the first century AD Hellenistic song: While you live, shine, have no grief at all, life exists only for a short while and time demands its toll. So we will slow down time for a moment, for momentousness on our Poetry Slow Down, with Professor Barbara Mossberg, your own Dr. B, Produced by Zappa Johns
© Barbara Mossberg 2017
