"To An Absence" by Brian Brodeur
Manage episode 361137160 series 3396484
Content Warning: Abortion, dead fetuses
Mea culpa: Ugh, I should've said "volta italiana." What a philistine I am.
Topics discussed in this episode include:
-Lake View Cemetery and the Haserot Angel
-Getting called out from beyond the grave
-My Great-Uncle, Elton Glaser
-Buy Brian's latest book: Some Problems With Autobiography
-Wins and almost-wins in The Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest.
-Yet more ways to make formal poems sound contemporary
-The art of rhymes that don't rhyme
-Another hybrid sonnet?
-The triumphant return of the pyrrhic-spondee.
-When Facebook stalking is part of podcast research
-Radford's Meat Market is real.
-The dark truth by which we see
-The haunting of Brian Brodeur
-Is guilt itself a crime?
-Verbal dentistry
-How joy is deepened by suffering
-A dripping bag of redemption
Text of poem:
To An Absence
The kid in latex gloves at Radford’s beef
brown-bags my five-pound brisket, saying, “Dude,
have a blessed day.” I do the math—you’d be
a teenager, his age. Across the counter,
the brisket drips (the kid grinning, “My bad”),
but all I feel for you is gratitude
for the life your death allowed—my wife and daughter
I’d like one day to see I might deserve.
And would deserve, I think, if I could live
without the guilt I tongue like a decayed
incisor I’ve refused to have removed—
afraid what joy I’ve known might disappear
without a counter-pain to root it here.
The kid says, “Wait,” and stamps my brisket PAID.
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My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight
Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug
List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)
77 episodes