Black Box Poetry

05/09/2019

Having a Coke With You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún,
Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in
Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better
happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your
love for yoghurt
As Sean says, "we did curse poems in the last episode, so we're doing love poems next to get the bitter taste out of our mouths." In this episode, we talk about how love poems are always starting with the threat of sentimentality, always have an implied narrativity, and are always in defiance of Rilke's directive to his young poet addressee, "Don't write love poetry."
In this episode, with attention to the fact that we all hate-to-love and love-to-hate love poems, and extra attention to some canonical love poems that are talking about LGBT relationships before the poets could openly talk about them, Anastasia Nikolis, Sean Hughes, and Isaac Wheeler talk about Walt Whitman's lesser-known "From Pent-Up Aching Rivers"; Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous Sonnet 44 about married love; and Frank O'Hara's sweet and frantic "Having a Coke with You."
Want to read along? Check out the Whitman poem here (https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/30) the Browning poem here (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50538/sonnets-from-the-portuguese-44-beloved-thou-has-brought-me-many-flowers) and O'Hara's here (https://poets.org/poem/having-coke-you)

As Sean said, we did curse poems in the last episode, so we're doing love poems next to get the bitter taste out of our mouths." In this episode, we talk about how love poems are always starting with

01/08/2019

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
HEXES! CURSES! ILL-WISHES! Check out our NEW EPISODE about CURSE POEMS. What makes a curse a curse and not just rage? How much does the backstory needs to be present to make a hex effective? How quietly savage can language be? Sean, Isaac, and Anastasia answer these questions and more when they talk about how poems seek vengeance and spew forth ire.
We talk about "I am Rowing" by Henri Michaux, (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7641926-i-am-rowing-a-hex-poem-i-have-cursed-your); “A Poem Some People Will Have to Understand” by Amiri Baraka (https://wikipoem.org/2018/02/19/a-poem-some-people-will-have-to-understand-by-amiri-baraka-1969/); and "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2)

HEXES! CURSES! ILL WISHES! What makes a curse a curse and not just rage? How much does the backstory needs to be present to make a hex effective? How quietly savage can language be? Sean, Isaac, and A

07/06/2019

"(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)
then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent"
Didn't think wire lips could be so sexy? Neither did we! But Jean Toomer doesn't hold back showing how "Her Lips Are Copper Wire" are so nightime-in-the-city-sultry.
Following up on episode 12 about METAPHOR, this NEW EPISODE is about THE OUTER REACHES OF METAPHOR and how metaphors get so very weird. In this episode, Anastasia, Isaac, and Sean talk about how Allen Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra" can make everything seem like a sunflower; how our lady Elizabeth Bishop's "12 O'Clock News" makes a writer's desk a war zone, and how Jean Toomer's "Her Lips Are Copper Wire" is just so sexy.

https://soundcloud.com/blackboxpoetry/outer-reaches-of-metaphor

This episode was recorded before we recorded episode 12, but we recommend listening to that episode on METAPHOR before listening to this episode on the OUTER REACHES OF METAPHOR. In this episode that

03/05/2019

"Then came the white sisters clapping
to the waves’ progress,
and that was Emancipation—

jubilation, O jubilation—
vanishing swiftly
as the sea’s lace dries in the sun,

but that was not History,
that was only faith,
and then each rock broke into its own nation"

Check out this STUNNER of a poem by Derek Walcott and two other gems by Shakespeare (those bare ruined choirs make our knees WEAK!) and Ted Hughes on our NEW NEW NEW NEW episode on METAPHOR!

In this track, Anastasia, Isaac, and Sean talk about metaphor! We talk about the academic jargon (a "tenor" is the thing being described, the "vehicle" is the thing the tenor is being compared to). We

04/04/2019

NEW EPISODE LAUNCHED TODAY in which we talk about why loincloths aren't sexy and other adventures when reading POETRY IN TRANSLATION.
after an accidental yearlong hiatus (where does time go?!) Sean, Isaac, and Anastasia are back in your feeds with a brand new episode on POETRY IN TRANSLATION!
In this first episode of SEASON 3 we talk about why grocery lists aren't poems while we read "After the Flood" by Arthur Rimbaud translated by John Ashbery; why "uniforms" are too on the nose while we read "What Does The Train Carry Over the Border?" by Aleksey Porvin translated by our very own Isaac Wheeler and how to turn the world inside out (think: viscera becomes clouds, clouds become viscera) while we read "Red Scissors Woman" by translated by Don Mee Choi.

After a one year hiatus, Sean, Isaac, and Anastasia are BACK! In the episode, they discuss how reading translated poems isn't that different (but also, is different) from reading poems in your native

02/04/2019

Happy National Poetry Month, folks! Our NEW SEASON launches on THURSDAY! But till then...
Shout out to Carrie Crothers, librarian extraordinaire and fellow Haverford College alum, over at USM Libraries at the University of Southern Maine for featuring Black Box Poetry as a National Poetry Month resource along with other such AWESOME resources. You're making us blush! ☺️

15/01/2019

COMING SOON: SEASON 3 of BLACK BOX POETRY.

Click the links in the comments to read along with Sean, Isaac, and Anastasia: and 's erotic triad.

06/12/2018

09/03/2018

There are stories we tell ourselves, she says.
There are stories we tell others.
Then there’s the sum
of our hours
death will render legible.

I unfasten the top button of her blouse
and nibble her throat with more kisses.

Go on, I say, I’m listening.
You better be, she says,
You’ll be tested.
Did you love listening to Anastasia, Isaac, and Sean talk about Li-Young Lee's "The Un******ng" last week? If you can't get enough, listen to Lee talk about his (erotic) encounter with Sophia, wisdom, and read his gorgeous poem in this video.

This is the first half of Li-Young Lee's new poem, "The Un******ng". Li-Young Lee was a featured poet along with Tina Chang at the Hill-Stead Museum's premie...

02/03/2018

Listen, she says,
Never let the fires go out.
The paler, the hotter.

But I’m thinking, Pale alcove.
I’m thinking, My heart ripens with news
the rest of me waits to hear.

Are you listening?
But I’m not listening.

Even if that guy's not listening, you should listen to Black Box Poetry's first LONG POEM episode!

Isaac, Sean, and Anastasia got totally lost in "The Un******ng" by Li-Young Lee. Get lost in this gorgeous poem, too!

http://aprweb.org/poems/the-undressing

Rather than choosing three short poems that teach us something about a theme, Isaac, Sean, and Anastasia read one long poem allow one long poem, "The Un******ng" by Li-Young Lee, to teach them a few t

16/02/2018

We're not going to write you a love song, but we will talk to you about sonnets this Valentine's Day week!

In this episode, we cover 500 years of poetic history, from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 9, to Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias," to Terrance Hayes's very contemporary "American Sonnet for My Past of Future Assassin."

Join Anastasia, Sean, and Isaac as they chat about sonnets and what they teach us about the tradition of the lyric poem!

In this episode, Isaac, Sean, and Anastasia talk about sonnets! In talking about Shakespeare's sonnet 9, Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias." and Terrance Hayes's "American Sonnet for My Past and Future As

02/02/2018

Has winter cabin fever got you talking to yourself?
Never fear! Black Box Poetry is here!

In this episode, Anastasia, Isaac, and Sean chat about how poetic speakers address their beloveds, talk to themselves by addressing others, and carry on conversations with abstract ideas and inanimate objects.

After listening to these poems, by John Donne, John Keats, and Sylvia Plath, we hope you feel better about talking to yourself... because at least you aren't talking to the concept of sleep, that soft embalmer of midnight, right?

(P.S... ain't John Keats's death mask the very creepiest?)

https://soundcloud.com/blackboxpoetry/poems-of-address

In this episode we discuss poems of address and we read "The Sun Rising" by John Donne; "To Sleep" by John Keats ; and "The Applicant" by Sylvia Plath. Donne: (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/

19/01/2018

New year, new you, new podcast episode!

If you are looking to make yourself fresh in 2018... skip the gym and listen to Sean Hughes, Isaac Wheeler, and Anastasia Nikolis as they chat about how poets make themselves new in our PERSONA POEMS episode!

In this episode, the team talks about persona poems and--spoiler alert!--finds that persona poems might not have as much to do with voicing as we expected! We talk about "Trillium" by Louise Glück, "C

31/10/2017

After a short hiatus, Black Box Poetry is back in action--and just in time for Halloween!

Check out our long-ish episode about SHORT POEMS, featuring a truly terrifying fragment poem by John Keats. This one has been freaking out Anastasia, Sean, and Isaac for years, so trust us that if it doesn't haunt thy days, it will definitely chill thy dreaming nights!
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d –-see here it is-–
I hold it towards you.

In this episode, Isaac, Sean, and Anastasia work through the weirdness of short poems. First we go through three different translations of the same Basho haiku. Then we look at one of Emily Dickinson'

28/07/2017

Today is John Ashbery's 90th birthday!

Ashbery is so great that we have already spotlighted him in TWO of our episodes: for his poetry in our POEM AS PROCESS episode, and for his translations in our most recent episode on PROSE POEMS.

POEM AS PROCESS is an episode in which Sean, Isaac, and Anastasia try to explain what makes their way of reading poems different, and it only makes sense that Ashbery would feature in this episode.

Join us in wishing one of our greatest living poets a very happy birthday!

In this episode, the team explains how we approach poetry, our reading style, and lay some groundwork for our podcast project. We might even talk about how we all met in college a decade ago...yikes!

14/07/2017

Bernadette Mayer (pictured below with a stone on her head) says copper makes her think about hallucinations in her prose poem "April 19"... I don't know about copper, Bernadette, but the humidity makes us hallucinate, too.

Hear more about Bernadette Mayer and hallucinations and PROSE POEMS in the newest episode of the Black Box Poetry podcast!

If the heat is really getting to you and you think you are hearing extra voices in this episode, never fear! It's just special guest Noel Capozzalo who joined Isaac, Sean, and Anastasia for this wildly surreal episode.

In this episode we talk prose poems with our first special guest, Noel Capozzalo! We read "April" by Bernadette Mayer; "The Beggar Woman of Naples" by Max Jacob, trans. John Ashbery; "A Little Fable"

03/07/2017

Need another way to celebrate America's break away from Great Britain this week?

Listen to the BRAND NEW line break episode now up on Black Box Poetry!

In this episode, Sean, Isaac, and Anastasia chat about the most visible feature of poems--line breaks! We talk about how lines break off and form new nations of sense; how new worlds of meaning grow as one line expands into the territory of the next...and we try not to pun too much while we do it.

All this and Marianne Moore (ha!), John Berryman, and William Carlos Williams on this newest episode!

In this episode we discuss line breaks, enjambment, line endings--the typographical feature that alerts readers that they are encountering a poem. We discuss "To a Poor Old Woman" by William Carlos Wi

01/07/2017

Black Box Poetry is now on Stitcher!

If you were sick of listening to us on Sound Cloud or iTunes or Google Play, you now have another way to consume our media!

Poets managing technology... man, what a trip!

13/06/2017

Today is W.B. Yeats's birthday!

There are lots of magnificent Yeats poems to read to celebrate the occasion, but one of his most storied is "Easter, 1916," which--lo!--we discuss in our Occasional Poetry episode.

If you haven't listened yet and find yourself (pod)casting about for ways to celebrate the day of this Irish poet's birth, Sean, Isaac, and Anastasia would love to celebrate with you!

In which we told ourselves we were going to talk about inaugural poems and didn't. This inaugural episode of the Black Box Poetry Podcast was recorded in January 2017, just after the inauguration of

02/06/2017

Today is (beta) launch day for the Black Box Poetry podcast!

Check us out on iTunes or SoundCloud or Google Play!

What is the Black Box Poetry podcast, you say? It’s a poetry elucidation machine.

Poems are infamously mystifying and intimidating. In this podcast we lean right into that difficulty and break apart the black box problem of poetry. In these first few episodes, we talk about what makes an occasional poem occasional, what makes an anecdotal poem anecdotal, and how these poems work their magic.

This project is high nerd, high enthusiasm, and in beta. Isaac Wheeler, Sean Hughes, and I (Anastasia Nikolis) would love to hear your thoughts (DM us!) as we get this project off the ground and embark on our second decade of conversations about poetry.

Anastasia Nikolis, Isaac Wheeler, and Sean C. Hughes started talking about poetry a decade ago at Haverford College and never stopped. Now they talk about poems they love and explain how they work to

01/06/2017