https://stonesoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Poetry-Soup-Ep.-16-Take-2.MP3.mp3 Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Today, I’ll be talking about the poem, “Kids Who Die,” by Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri. As an African American alive at the time of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes wrote influential poetry, prose, and plays. These often talked about the lives of Black people and fought against racism. Many of his poems serve as empowering anthems for Black people. Hughes was raised by his grandmother after his father left his family and his mother had to seek employment. In high school, he began to write in all genres, in addition to editing the school yearbook. Hughes attended Columbia at first, writing poetry all the while, but left soon after because of racism. He eventually settled at Lincoln University, from which he earned a B.A. degree. Langston Hughes was a communist. Much of his writing, especially from the 30s (in fact, “Kids Who Die” was written in 1938), shows this, in uniting Black and white working people to achieve one goal – a communist revolution. This can be seen in “Kids Who Die.” This is for the kids who die, Black and white, For kids will die certainly. The old and rich will live on awhile, As always, Eating blood and gold, Letting kids die. Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi Organizing sharecroppers Kids will die in the streets of Chicago Organizing workers Kids will die in the orange groves of California Telling others to get together Whites and Filipinos, Negroes and Mexicans, All kinds of kids will die Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment And a lousy peace. Of course, the wise and the learned Who pen editorials in the papers, And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names White and black, Who make surveys and write books Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die, And the sleazy courts, And the bribe-reaching police, And the blood-loving generals, And the money-loving preachers Will all raise their hands against the kids who die, Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets To frighten the people— For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people— And the old and rich don’t want the people To taste the iron of the kids who die, Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power, To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together Listen, kids who die— Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you Except in our hearts Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field, Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht But the day will come— You are sure yourselves that it is coming— When the marching feet of the masses Will raise for you a living monument of love, And joy, and laughter, And black hands and white hands clasped as one, And a song that reaches the sky— The song of the life triumphant Through the kids who die. Langston Hughes directs this poem towards the “kids who die.” These people are brave children of all races who organize people to fight for a better future. These children are found all over the world, receiving backlash due to their discontentment with the injustice they face now, their want for something more, for equality and for unity. These children are imprisoned and killed because they fight for their basic human rights. They are forgotten by people who don’t want change – by generals and police officers and the rich. They are wiped out, written over. Their stories are buried, and in that way, important nutrients are being taken away from the people – the children are iron being taken out of their blood. Hughes incorporates a turn into his poem as well, in the last stanza. The rest of the poem describes the deaths of the “kids who die,” and acknowledges that in the society we live in, they will continue to die. However, in the last stanza, he speaks directly to these young victims, singing a song of hope, writing that they will eventually succeed and people of all races will be united. This is a change both in tone and in audience – a very skillful and powerful way to end the poem. One of the most important things about this poem, however, is that it isn’t about Black people fighting against white people, or vice versa. It is, instead, about the fight of working people of all races against the rich, the prejudiced, and those that wish to silence others. Langston Hughes emphasizes the fact that equality and solidarity are key parts of a better world. So the kids who die are dying not only for people of their race, they are dying for all people. The kids who die are not only dying for their own benefit, but for the benefit of all. This message comes across beautifully in Hughes’ writing. In “Kids Who Die,” Hughes portrays a struggle that we should all participate in, a fight that we should all try to win. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you soon with the next one!
Poetry Soup – Ep. 15: “Witchgrass” by Louise Gluck
https://stonesoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Poetry-Soup-Ep.-15-copy.MP3.mp3 Transcript: Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup. I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. There’s been a short break, but Poetry Soup is back, with “Witchgrass,” by the late Louise Gluck. Louise Gluck was born on April 22, 1943 in New York City. She wrote 12 books of poetry, including The Wild Iris, which I will be reading from today. Though she never finished a degree, Gluck attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University, and went on to later teach poetry at Stanford and English at Yale. She won many awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. From 2003 to 2004, she was also the U.S. poet laureate. She died on October 13, 2023. Louise Gluck’s personal experiences are prominent in her poetry. She often wrote about trauma and sadness. Some of her poetry was also influenced by Greek mythology, such as in her chapbook, October. Her poems are haunting, even in The Wild Iris, when Gluck combines her themes of tragedy with seemingly innocent flowers, which is exactly what she does in “Witchgrass.” Something comes into the world unwelcome calling disorder, disorder— If you hate me so much don’t bother to give me a name: do you need one more slur in your language, another way to blame one tribe for everything— as we both know, if you worship one god, you only need One enemy— I’m not the enemy. Only a ruse to ignore what you see happening right here in this bed, a little paradigm of failure. One of your precious flowers dies here almost every day and you can’t rest until you attack the cause, meaning whatever is left, whatever happens to be sturdier than your personal passion— It was not meant to last forever in the real world. But why admit that, when you can go on doing what you always do, mourning and laying blame, always the two together. I don’t need your praise to survive. I was here first, before you were here, before you ever planted a garden. And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon are left, and the sea, and the wide field. I will constitute the field. Louise Gluck centers her poem on a plant called witchgrass. It’s a sort of weed, unwanted in gardens and often pulled out. Gluck connects this unwantedness to her own life, as well as to the lives of others. Rather than backing down from the slurs and names she refers to in stanza two, she proudly declares, “I was here first.” Rather than agreeing that witchgrass is unneeded and forgetting about it, rather than getting rid of it and writing about something different, something more exciting, Gluck gives this plain weed a personality and significance. She shows how important the smallest things can be, how everything can play a role. By identifying with a plant – and a despised, insignificant one at that – Gluck composes an original and deep poem. In the first three stanzas, Gluck ends with dashes, signifying pauses in her speech. As she keeps going, however, she gets rid of these, showing that she is becoming more confident in what she is saying. But even the witchgrass has grown violent from the ages of violence that have been committed towards it. It has grown over the flowers, an act it cannot control, but one that it doesn’t excuse – it is stronger, or “sturdier,” after all. In a way, the witchgrass has embraced the concept of “survival of the fittest.” For plants and animals, this is a law of nature – the bigger organisms survive more than the smaller. But, humans having stepped in, the situation becomes a question of either preference or prejudice, leaving us to ponder whether what is acceptable in nature is acceptable for human beings – and why it is or isn’t. Told from the point of view of the plant itself, Gluck ends the poem with the line, “I will constitute the field.” She means that witchgrass, despite being hated by humans, has the right to and can be a part of the field that they love. However, this is where survival of the fittest comes in again – because witchgrass could also reclaim the field when the weaker flowers that rely on human care have died. In “Witchgrass,” Louise Gluck shows us the perspective of an ordinary weed and leaves us to think about the meaning behind it. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you soon with the next one!
Poetry Soup – Ep. 14: “Dreamocracy” by Matthew Rohrer
Poetry Soup – Ep. 14 Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Have you ever been halfway between being awake and dreaming? If so, you’ll like “Dreamocracy,” by Matthew Rohrer. Matthew Rohrer was born in 1970, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His first book of poetry was “A Hummock in the Malookas,” which was chosen for the 1994 National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver (one of her poems was featured in this podcast). Among other poetry collections, Matthew Rohrer wrote “Nice Hat. Thanks.” with Joshua Beckman, another poet I enjoy, and the collection “Satellite,” from which I’ll be reading today. He is known as a surrealist poet. The most terrifying sound— an ice cream truck in the middle of the night. I’m perfectly flat feeling my fingerprints. It occurs to me that the answer to our childhood questions is: we’re being tortured. When I’m with my thoughts finally I’m someone else, I am driving an ice cream truck though the night with no lights, pulling on the string that rings the bell. I am the unwholesome whippoorwill trilling in the moonlight. I am awake late defending the campsite against elves. I am tortured in a sandbox at the army base. I am throwing sand in a little boy’s eyes. I am getting very sleepy. “Dreamocracy” explores the state between being awake and sleeping. This is a state where poems can come to us, where your subconscious produces the weirdest images in your mind that you are too sleepy not to believe but too awake to fully feel yourself in the dream. In an interview published in “The Adroit Journal,” Rohrer talks about the value of this state for the creation of poetry. He says, “I became fascinated by how you sort of lose control of your body and your mind, and begin to hear voices and you think, ‘What was that?’ I began paying attention to the voices and the phrases and sentences I heard, and realized they were weird—and not weird in a dreamy way or surreal; they were sort of boring. In fact, they were mostly boring.” In fact, this poem is a visual representation of falling into dreams. As the poem goes on, the stanzas get longer (the third being the longest and the first being the shortest). This shows the long metamorphosis that you undergo when you do fall asleep. Starting with a very New York image, of an ice cream truck driving in the middle of the night, the poem slowly moves into the feeling of falling asleep and beginning to dream. Throughout the poem, Rohrer undergoes many transformations and becomes many things, from the ice cream truck driver (or the “unwholesome whippoorwill”) to what could be a reference to the Sandman, a figure in Scandinavian mythology who throws sand in children’s eyes to make them fall asleep. In the second stanza of the poem, Rohrer writes, “…the answer to our childhood questions is:/we’re being tortured.” The word “questions” is plural, meaning that there are so many queries that could be answered this way, such as “why do we die?” and even “why do we sleep?” – why are we forced through this day and night routine every day? This realization, that we’re all being tortured, that it’s part of the core of every human being, is what allows Rohrer to become all of the different people in the poem, such as the one “defending the campsite against elves” and the boy tortured in the sandbox. By being all these people and embodying all these personalities, he is able to form a democracy, but of dreams – hence the title of the poem. In dreams, you might wonder who you are. Are you really you, or are you someone else? Are you two people, stuck in the same body? And do you even notice the details of that body or are you too busy being lost in your own head? When you finally really fall asleep, when you are no longer aware of what is happening, it is a relief. It is the assurance that there is only one final transformation before morning. “Dreamocracy” uses astonishing imagery to pull readers into the realm of dreams. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you soon with the next one!
