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 86: Sonograms, Vanity & Truman Capote
Caitlyn Jenner and Baked Alaska (or When Thumbs Cry)
Episode 84: Hot Pants & Sneeze Ghosts
Episode 83: Goodnight, Mary Magdalene
Episode 82: "1-4-3"
Episode 81: Dad Jokes & Happiness
Episode 80: In Flux
Episode 79: Do it again! Do it again!
Episode 78: It’s Brusque!
Episode 77: Belly-up!
Episode 76: A Toilet in Denver or Florida is for the Fraught
Episode 75: Gate Opening and Other Sweaty Festivities
Episode 74: Drugs, Love and Cagelights
Episode 73: Hornery Is as Hornery Does
Episode 72: Just the Tip
Episode 71: The Lost Episode (with bonus Anatomy Lessons!)
Episode 70: Scalloped Potatoes (with apologies to Ohio)
Episode 69: Memories in Connecticut
Episode 68: Rooftops and Buttered Popcorn
Episode 67: Poprocks and Monocles
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