200! This is the 200th monthly episode of PoemTalk. To mark the occasion, we celebrated Evie Shockley with a day of events and recordings and conversation and it was all informally dubbed “Evie Day.” Before a live audience in the Arts Café of KWH we talk about two of Evie’s poems: “My last modernist poem, #4 (or, re-re-birth of a nation)” from The New Black; and “studies in antebellum literature (or, topsy-turvy)” from Semi-automatic. Evie’s expansive PennSound page happens to include recordings of her performing both of these poems, but since we were feeling the honor of having Evie there with us in person, we asked her if she wouldn’t mind reading these poems. She did, and you'll be hearing them as part of the PoemTalk discussion after the introductions. It was the annual gathering of a group that had been meeting for some years: Aldon Nielsen, William J. Harris, and the late and much-missed Tyrone Williams.
October 11, 2024
Writing poems about presidential elections
by Michael Ruby
Many American poets have written poems about presidential elections, and many are likely to write about this 2020 election, which was frightening. For years, I have written poems about elections, some of which can be found in my recently published book, The Star-Spangled Banner, including the 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections. I took somewhat different approaches in these poems, which are linked here to recordings on PennSound.