Poems for Company - June 24th, 2024

“Meta-Verse”: The four poems on this episode make a virtue out of being self-conscious.  Each poem comments on the very poem we’re reading.  The poem pulls back the curtain and reveals the composing process.  Or at least that’s what the poem pretends to do.  Billy Collins, “The Suggestion Box,” from Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems (Random House, 2013).  Stephen Dunn, “Bad,” from The Not Yet Fallen World: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2022).  W. B. Yeats, “When You Are Old.”  Lawrence Raab, “Request,” from Visible Signs (Penguin, 2003) and used with kind permission of the author.  The show’s theme music is Philip Aaberg’s “Going-to-the-Sun,” from...