Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (February 12, 2023)

 Coffee. Good poems by other people. Welcome.

Poems read: 

• Just Once by Anne Sexton (from her book Love Poems)
• VII. by Wendell Berry (a 2006 Sabbath poem from his book Leavings)
• Shaping by Mahmud Al-Braikan, trans. by Haider Al-Kabi (from Atlanta Review, Iraq, Spring/Summer 2007)

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🠊 More poetry sessions here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

We the Animals by Justin Torres (Yes, you should read it.)

We the Animals by Justin Torres.

Yesterday, I found this book in my house while pausing in the threshold between kitchen and dining room. Up high on a bookshelf. I’m not sure when or how I came about having it, or for how long I’ve been moving it from one shelf to another. It was published in 2011. So for that long? 

But I started reading it and could tell immediately why I’d bought it (or why someone may have leant it, though its pages turned like a first read). And now a day later, I’ve finished.

It’s a smashing fist of a book. Sharp language, smart movement, perfectly considered images. Dark but light. Very short stories that flash from one moment to the next to create the life of three brothers’ childhoods. Exactly the sort of book I want to read.

And so I have.

Thanks to the writer for writing it.

Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (February 5, 2023)

 

Poems:

By Emily Dickinson:

• A Thought went up my mind today 
• If I can stop one Heart from breaking

(both poems in Final Harvest, edited by Thomas H. Johnson)

By Wendell Berry:

• Questionnaire (from his book Leavings)
• XV. (Sabbath Poem from 2005, collected in his book Leavings)

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🠊 More poetry sessions here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Voices from Chernobyl, edited by Svetlana Alexievich (Yes, you should read it.)

 

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, edited by Svetlana Alexievich

I ran across this at the library last month, read it quickly and will likely check it out and read it again. The book is a collage of testimonies from those who experienced the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, arranged in time from the first fires to years after. The stories come from wives of firemen who were first called to the scene and died horrible deaths a few weeks later. There are the voices of scientists begging people to evacuate (and the people dismissing the advice as ludicrous); the government's myth-making about the low level of concern people should have; the people summoned to the site to evacuate people or to fight the fires or to bury the earth, machines, houses--all while imbibing quarts of vodka due to the myth that the vodka functioned as a bodily barrier to the nuclear radiation. The stories range from long to short anecdotes to singing snippets that altogether accumulate to create the vivid, complicated, and awful event and its effect on the immediate environment, animals, and people--as well as the effects over time to those who returned to live in the zone, those mourning, and those later born (or born dead).  

The reading experience is like that of Hiroshima by John Hersey, and it's impossible not to draw connections between the two, not only because both deal with the sudden effects of nuclear disaster but also in the way brightly strange reality that ensues (fir example, in Chernobyl, abandoned pets being shot by soldiers so that they don't wander outside of the zone; in Hiroshima, the electric blue flowers that start growing over the bomb site)

It is a well-built book that stunned me.

I'd suggest adding it to the top of your stack of necessary reading.

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Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (January 29, 2023)

Every Sunday we share coffee, and I read good poems by other people. I'm glad for that. Somehow, we've reached the last Sunday in January with poems while others compete to sell the most cars by the end of the month, or to kill the most people in a moment, or to kick off the year by murdering a man on his way from here to there. 

I hope you had a week. I hope we have another. 

Amidst it all, preschoolers frown in concentration as they hum the written sounds of their language, cats curl into their beds after breakfast, and mothers try to plan around war. Wherever you may be this week, in this strange world, here are a few poems for you.

Poems:

By Marvin Bell from his book Mars Being Red

• Coffee
• What Things Are

By Wendell Berry from his book Leavings

• A Letter (to Ed McClanahan)
• Men Untrained to Comfort

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🠊 More poetry sessions here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show on Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (January 22, 2023)

 

Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (1/22/23)

Poems read:

• Downtown in January Poem by c.d. wright (from her book Shallcross)
• Obscurity and Isolation by c.d. wright (from her book Shallcross)
• Playing House by Jack Gilbert (from his book The Great Fires)
• Theoretical Lives by Jack Gilbert (from his book The Great Fires) 
• The Farmer and the Sea by Wendell Berry (from his book The Peace of Wild Things)
• Awake at Night by Wendell Berry (from his book The Peace of Wild Things)

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🠊 More poetry sessions here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show on Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (January 15, 2023)

 

Poems read:

• Sabbath Poem IV. (2015 series) by Wendell Berry (from his book A Small Porch)
• Flow Chart by Kathleen Flenniken (from her book Plume)
• The Flower Horses by Laura Read (from her book Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral)
• A Work for Poets by George Mackay Brown (from his book Carve the Runes)

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🠊 More poetry sessions here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show on Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (1/8/23)

We've reached another Sunday! Time for coffee and poetry.

 

Poems read: 

• Winter by Billy Collins
• Some Questions You Might Ask by Mary Oliver (from her book House of Light)
• First Date by Daniel Halpern (from his book Traveling on Credit)
• January by Robert Hass (from his book Human Wishes)
• Poem without Angel Food by c.d. wright (from her book Shallcross)

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🠊 More poetry sessions here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show on Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Happy New Year! Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (1/1/23)

Happy New Year! Thanks for joining me for coffee and poems. We do this most every week, and I hope you'll drop in again next Sunday. If there's ever a poem or poet you'd like to hear, let me know by contacting me through this website or leaving a comment on the video on my Facebook Page. Enjoy!

Poems read:

• Pain for a Daughter by Anne Sexton (from her book Live or Die)
• Nights and Days by Adrienne Rich (from her book The Dream of a Common Language)
• Lost Poem by Molly Saty (from her book put sparklers on my grave)
• Remembering to Sing by Patricia Smith (from her book Blood Dazzler)

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🠊 More poetry sessions here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show on Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle 

Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee (December 18, 2022)

Welcome back to Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee! It has been a hot minute since our last session, and I'm glad we're back together. All is well on my side of the world; we've simply been busier than busy. I hope all is well in your world--or as well as it can be. To make my return to our routine a bit easier, today's reading consists of poems all published in Poetry, one of the popular literary magazines. 

If you're new, welcome! What we do here: Most every Sunday, I read good poems by other people while we all drink coffee. 

 

Poems read:

• Training by Diannely Antigua (from Poetry/December 2021)
• Dried Flowers by Daniel Moysaenko (from Poetry/January 2022)
• Definitive by Melissa Sauma, translated by Janet McAdams (from Poetry/March 2022)
• Dogs' Wedding by Zêdan Xelef (from Poetry/April 2022)

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🠊 More poetry sessions here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/wake-to-words-and-brew-some-coffee.html

🠊 Catch the live show on Sunday mornings at some time-ish: https://www.facebook.com/erintpringle