You’re under the weather, my friend, feeling stressed and blue! Dr. B has a potion that will do: It’s light as a feather, word flour and fat, called for when the world seems sour and flat! Just when you’re going to fall on your face, Rumi’s people run in with stretchers of grace, talking about a mighty kindness, and Wendell Berry is right there with a flighty mindfulness. You may be able to tell, evolved listener as you are, I’ve been reading Dr. Suess, beloved inspirational star, and the rhymes are coming in fast and loose. But like all dishes we need, a little of that and this, we’re stirring in Dante (in dark days in the middle of our lives), and Cavafy (who says embrace the strife and hives).  And more rich fare to air, and that is only part of what’s in store, in our toolbox, our toolkit, our wheelhouse galore, a pantry of angst whisperer and poetic roar. It’s the news feed you need, the news you heed, the news without which “men die miserably every day†(William Carlos Williams), our POETRY SLOW DOWN, with your host Professor Barbara Mossberg (aka Dr. B) and Producer Zappa (that Zappa) Johns, at barbaramossberg.com, live from Eugene, Oregon and California’s Central Coast, with notes of east coast lake district and college riverbank towns, Texas hill country watering holes, Los Angeles plains and mountain lakes, Colorado peak towns where poetry thrives. We have questions for you on our show today, and you can send them our way at drb@barbaramossberg.com, or Barbara.mossberg@gmail.com. You’ll receive—and you can write to request– our I SLOW DOWN FOR THE POETRY SLOW DOWN or NO PLACE SAFE FROM POETRY bumper sticker, because you do, and inhabit that space where poetry is welcome. And on that note, I’m grateful to you, who hear this hum, to your ear, to your being here.
So let’s begin. Here is a little Dr. B Rx roue for what you rue, Cavafy’s “Ithaka,” Rumi, stirring in a little Raymond Carver, Wendell Berry, Margaret Atwood, Mary Oliver, and fairy tale theory, ruminating on finding the light and one’s path gloriously in dark days, the middle of our lives, our cantos, where Virgil finds US! Yes, all we have to do is stand there quivering in terror and despair, and epic poet does a pop up deus ex machina, and leads us to light!
© Barbara Mossberg 2018
