A wonderful sense of wordplay permeates the poems we were able to discuss from Barbara Diehl. Sadly, one of three poems we’d flagged for the podcast was snapped up before our discussion was recorded, and we talk a bit at the start of this episode about our process and timelines. Barbara’s work gave us space to consider how word choices, sequencing, and combining can lead to new experiences in a poem, as well as a debate over the roles of joy and darkness in poetry, including the balance we seek as readers in the world we find ourselves living in these days.
This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.
At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer and Dagne Forrest.
Barbara Westwood Diehl is senior editor of The Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poetry appear in a variety of journals, including Quiddity, Potomac Review (Best of the 50), SmokeLong Quarterly, Gargoyle, Superstition Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Atticus Review, The MacGuffin, The Shore, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Raleigh Review, Ponder, Fractured Lit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Five South, Allium, The Inflectionist Review, Switch, Split Rock Review, and Free State Review.
Socials: Twitter @BarbaraWestwood, Facebook @ barbara.w.diehl.3, Poets & Writers listing
December Goodnight
it’s sunfall, and the papersky is grayed
with erasures of bestlaid plans
all the daymistakes
forgiven
the brokenpencil points of planes
thumbsmudged away
their grumblechatter
hushed
the blackening windows
shuttered
*
so sleep in the nightsee
in the skylisten
so dream a planetdance
breathe a metronome
so keep time to a ticktock moon
to evening’s pocketwatch
its face a dozing chaperone
so humfade, so eyes closed
nothing to shudderfret
allsafe
Episode 124: Pinpricks of Process
Episode 123: The Catholic Episode
Episode 122: Concrete Poetry & Champagne
Episode 121: The Tie Breakers Episode
Episode 120: On Seeing & Being Seen
Episode 119: Line Breaks & The Iambic Lilt
Episode 27: Suicides and Skeleton Jazz (REISSUE)
Episode 19: The Dinosaur-Robot Episode (REISSUE)
PBQ Summer Teaser Episode
Episode 117: This Episode Smells Delicious
Episode 116: Finding Flow
Episode 115: We’re Obsessed
Episode 114: The Swirl
Episode 113: The Call of the Wild
Episode 112: Letting Go of Meaning
Episode 111: What Lingers
Episode 110: The Logic of Heartbreak (or Caveats Rock)
Episode 109: The Gigue is Up
Episode 108: #Mood (or the Murmurations)
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