Episode Transcript
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(00:25):
This is episode 24 of Ed Falcoon the air.
In this episode, I'll be readingBrit Washburn's poem, Dear Dad,
and my own poem, Coy, and we'lllisten to Steve Gibson reading
his poem, The Crown for MyFather on Memorial Day.
Regular listeners may wonder howwe've come around to reading
(00:46):
poetry from where we started,listening to The Strangers, a
serialized science fictionnovel.
The circuitous route by whichwe've arrived here begins after
the completion of The Strangersin episode 19, when I started
trying to answer a reader'squestion, where do your ideas
come from?
Which I generalized to one ofthe most common questions all
(01:08):
writers hear, which is, where doyou get the ideas for your
stories, poems, plays,screenplays, etc.
In episodes 20 through 23, Isuggested some answers to that
question, arguing basically thatwriters ideas emerge in the act
of writing and are grounded inthe writer's unique and
particular deep sources, thoseintellectual, spiritual,
(01:32):
cultural, or personal mattersthat trouble them, whether that
troubling, is destructive orconstructive, a source of
despair or elation.
In the three poems I've chosenfor this episode, each of the
speakers address their fathers,either directly, as in Gibson's
and Washburn's poems, orindirectly, in a third person
(01:54):
narrative, as I do in Coy.
In all three of these poems, thespeakers relationships to their
fathers is the deep source ofthe writing, a source that
everyone who has ever wrestledwith a relationship to a parent,
which is all of us, shouldrecognize.
Here's Brit Washburn's poem,Dear Dad.
(02:22):
Dear Dad, Yesterday, on thedrive home from work, I heard a
piece on monarch butterflies,how they're rapidly
disappearing, 80 percent gone inthe East, 95 in the West.
Such small fractions left, left,left.
He had only threatened, notendangered, not technically.
(02:46):
At dusk, a silent explosion offuchsia and marigold bloomed
behind the city's strip mallsand smokestacks.
And this morning, peeling anorange in bed, I was struck
again by the absurdity of whatgrows on trees, such elaborate
and delicious vehicles forseeds.
The color, the sweetness, theway the rind opens and falls
(03:09):
away like the wrapping of a giftin my hands.
Out the window, a cardinal inthe rain gutter cocks its head,
bright red.
Against the grey of lateNovember.
I tell you all of this to saythere remains insects, sunsets,
citrus, birds, flickers andflashes of magic amid the
(03:33):
wreckage.
That was Dear Dad, by BrittWashburn.
On one level, Dear Dad is a poemoffering consolation to a
parent, proposing the beauty ofthe physical world, the sensual
(03:54):
world that remains, as anantidote to despair over the
ongoing loss of that worldreferenced in the first stanza,
the near extinction of monarchbutterflies.
The poem works as a thoughtfuladdress to the speaker's father,
arguing that yes, We aredestroying our world, but there
(04:14):
is still beauty to console us.
For me at least, on anotherlevel, I feel embedded in the
poem an acceptance of death, anacceptance even of extinction.
The reader assumes the father'sdeath, if not imminent, will
precede the death of thespeaker.
And so, the poem's idea, thatthe beauty of this world is
(04:36):
consolation for our mortality,arises out of the deeper source
of the poem, which is thespeaker's loving relationship to
her father.
My poem, Koi, is a little story.
(04:57):
In it, I merge and reconstruct acouple of memories.
In one memory, the speakerplaces a koi in a backyard pond,
while his aged mother watches,bound in a wheelchair, barely
able to speak.
In another memory, while themother watches, a heron lands on
(05:18):
the edge of the pond and stealsthe koi, which is white, with a
flash of bright red between itseyes.
Mixed and merged with these twomemories is a dip into the
mother's consciousness as sherecalls her life with her
husband, the speaker's father.
(05:43):
Koi.
A blue heron dips its beak intothe backyard pond and lifts from
beneath dark water a foot longkoi, the white one with bright
red Like an ink spill betweenits eyes, back to the dorsal
fin.
Her husband built the pond withslate and cement, added, at her
(06:06):
wish, a waterfall.
Recirculated water trickles downstones and drops into the pond.
There were goldfish in it then,scores of them breaking the
surface when she dropped theflaked food in.
She thought the koi lookedbloodstained and said so before
her son slipped it into thepool.
(06:27):
Koya knelt at her feet in frontof the wheelchair, rested his
head a moment in her lap.
He said, it's all right, mom, ina voice so like his father's
that she managed to lift agnarled hand and rested on his
gray hair.
It was almost as if he were aboy again, come to her with a
skinned knee or a child's smallheartbreak to be stroked and
(06:50):
comforted.
She tried again to say that theKoya's red stain looked like
blood, and again he said, it'sall right, mom.
Before he called for his sister,who came out of the house and
into the sunlight, carrying atray of medicines.
The heron tilts its beak up tosecure the koi, which is
(07:12):
curiously still.
Forty five years in the samehouse, so that everywhere she
looks, she sees him.
On his knees with the trowels,smoothing the freshly poured
cement of the patio.
Shirtless in the yard.
A shovel in his grimed hands,Digging this or that, always
(07:32):
digging something.
She sees him in the plants andflowers, Especially in the
plants and flowers, In thebleeding hearts and salvia, In
the crowded hostas andclustering hen and chicks, In
the showy pink hibiscus, Whichshouldn't grow here, But do and
come back year after year, Theirroots deep under the foundation,
(07:55):
Where they huddle in a pocket ofwarmth.
All those years, home, fromeight hours in the shop, and
then out in the yard, digging inthe garden, planting something
new, working on this or thatproject, while she tended the
kids, before the kids were allgrown, and she tended only him.
(08:17):
Today, she's sitting in the sun,her daughter in the house, on
the phone.
She wants to speak, but she longago lost words.
Her body has shriveled andcrumpled into itself.
The heron's great wings open ina magnificent show of blue.
It rises into the air, carryingin its beak the blood stained
(08:39):
koi.
She watches as long as she can,and feels herself growing
smaller as the blue of the birdis swallowed by the blue of the
sky, till for an instant it'sonly that ink spill blood stain
that remains, the bright speckof it on the air, a momentary
spark or flame.
About to disappear.
(09:09):
Koi is a story about a son,mother and father sandwiched
between the moments when a heronlands on a pond, steals a koi
and flies off with it in itsfinal image of the herrin
disappearing into the blue sky.
With the koi in its grasp, Ihope the reader feels the sense
(09:30):
of all our mortality seenthrough the mother's eyes.
As she recalls the speaker'sfather.
Steve Gibson is a poet who oftenuses the tight restraints of
formal constructions to containpowerful emotions, as he does
(09:54):
here in A Crown for My Father onMemorial Day.
A sonnet defined broadly.
is a poem of 14 lines that usesa regular rhyme scheme.
And a crown of sonnets is asequence of 7 sonnets linked by
repeating the last line of eachsonnet as the first line of the
next, while the first line ofthe first sonnet is repeated as
(10:19):
the last line of the finalsonnet.
The crown in the title of hispoem then has the double meaning
of naming the formalconstruction of the poem as a
crown of sonnets, and also theconferring to the speaker's
father a symbol of honor andpower, a crown.
(10:41):
This poem was originallypublished in the journal Rattle
with the audio of Steve Gibsonreading the poem, and that's
what we'll listen to here.
Steve Gibson reading his poem, ACrown for My Father on Memorial
Day.
(11:04):
A crown for my father onMemorial Day.
One, I have often told storiesabout you as a kid I promised
not to forget, like the photo Ikept in my wallet when you were
in boot camp in World War II,posing outside your tent.
Everyone knew the future wouldhappen, but didn't let
(11:26):
themselves think too much, onlyto regret what was in the past
they could not undo.
I'd look at that photo andpromise you thoughts of the
Bronx River Housing Project withyou home, like that pic in my
wallet, would remain with meforever.
That photo, which had serratededges, was lost long ago, so
(11:49):
much for pledges.
Lost long ago, so much for thepledges to a dead father in a
photograph, who stands outside atent, and almost laughs.
The smile is hard around theedges, and the photo in memory
dredges up memories after thephotograph.
(12:12):
An adult, I want to cut time inhalf, and remember only a boy's
pledges.
But how can you forget what youstill know?
Cut time in half.
And remember before, but notever, what will happen later.
It's not like tearing in half aphoto and pretending you didn't
go to war.
(12:33):
Or what you did later to mymother.
Three.
And what you did later to mymother, a child should never
see.
Court photos document theviolence blow by blow to justify
each restraining order, whichyou would comply with and then
ignore.
It must have been, I didn't wantto know, and turned my mind off
(12:56):
as two shadows entered thebedroom and closed the door.
The cops would come as they hadcome before, and ask your wife
if she wanted to go with them tothe hospital, and she'd say no.
When the door opened, This wasin the Bronx River Housing
Project.
Images not in the photo in mywallet.
(13:21):
Four.
Images not in the photo in mywallet.
No, the image of you in yourboxer shorts, cops helping you
with your pants.
Their reports included theweapons, German war helmet, Nazi
flag, and the letters you wouldlet the cops pretend to read,
pretend to sort, then return tothe shoe boxes.
(13:44):
You were caught trying to makesense of what you couldn't
forget.
Hence, the war trophies on thebed, and letters, and you going
over each one again and again,and never recalling what you'd
done to her, after you promisedit would never happen, after
what you had experienced in war.
Your gravestone marker reads,Tank Destroyer.
(14:07):
5.
Your gravestone marker reads,Tank Destroyer.
I took my wife and kids there onvacation.
At Bay Pines, they gave me a mapof the section, and circled in
blue, your row with the number.
I went there because I hadpromised her.
I have a wife, a daughter, and ason.
(14:27):
The visit was a side trip on thevacation.
By chance, in another sectionwas a bagpiper.
I took a photograph of yourgrave marker.
It gives your name, rank anddivision.
You passed away when you were37, the war over.
But a casualty of the war.
And as a casualty, I include mymother.
(14:51):
After convulsive shock andpneumonia.
Six.
After convulsive shock andpneumonia, you died.
Buried in Bay Pines in Florida.
I went to visit as I promisedher.
Before your wife died of livercancer.
I have the map, with section,row, number, circled in blue
(15:13):
ink.
I keep in a drawer withbatteries, flashlight, if we
lose power in the nexthurricane.
I live in Florida.
I'm retired.
I was a college professor.
My wife of 50 years, also ateacher, retired.
Plans trips to our son anddaughter, and daughter's
boyfriend in Seattle eachsummer.
(15:35):
I don't live in the Bronx RiverHousing Project.
I don't have that photo of youin my wallet.
7.
I don't have that photo of youin my wallet because I lost it a
long time ago.
But I do have the cemeteryphoto.
It's on my bookcase.
I don't want to forget that atCity College, you wanted to get
(15:58):
your CPA.
The war came.
You had to go.
That's you outside that tent inthe photo.
And the future hasn't happened,not yet, and nothing is lost.
The photo, the wallet, the youalmost smiling, because you know
that's how she needs to see youas you go off to a future
(16:20):
neither of you could expect.
The past is past, what's done wecan't undo.
I have often told stories aboutyou.
That was Steve Gibson reading ACrown for My Father on Memorial
(16:40):
Day.
The poem, in one sense, is astory about the speaker's father
and the father's relationship tohim and his mother.
It tells us, in the formallanguage of poetry, Though this
is a formal language, madeskillfully to sound colloquial,
about the difficulties he andhis family faced upon his
(17:01):
father's return from fighting inWorld War II.
It is simultaneously a poem offorgiveness for his father and
respect for his father, and atthe same time it is an anti war
poem, for the damage done to thefamily.
is the result of the damage doneto the man by the war he fought
in.
(17:28):
All three of the poems intoday's episode were catalyzed
in part or entirely by the poetsrelationships to their fathers.
I've been making the argument inthe past few episodes that a
writer's ideas are grounded inthe deep sources that motivate
the writing, and perhaps thereis no deeper source than our
relationship to our parents.
(17:49):
The ideas in these poems arevarious.
They may be about mortality orforgiveness, or sorrow at the
damage wrought by wars, or aboutthe ongoing damage to the planet
and its species.
But these ideas all emerged, atleast in part, out of the
writer's relationships with hisThat was episode 24 of Ed Falco
(18:20):
On The Air, featuring poems byBrit Washburn, Steve Gibson, and
myself.
Brit Washburn's poem is recent,and I want to thank her for
giving me permission to read ithere.
She is the author of the poetrycollections Notwithstanding and
What Is Given, both from WetCement Press, and of the essay
(18:41):
collection Homing In.
Attempts on a Life of Poetry andPurpose, Alexandria Quarterly
Press.
My poem, Coy, was firstpublished in the Southern Review
and later included in my 2024poetry collection from LSU
Press, X in the Tick Seat.
(19:02):
Steve Gibson's poem waspublished in the journal Rattle
and is available online as ishis reading of the poem.
He's the author of eight poetrycollections, most recently Frida
Kahlo and Fort Lauderdale fromAble Muse Press.
Other collections include SelfPortrait in a Door Length
Mirror.
(19:22):
That was the Miller WilliamsPrize winner from the University
of Arkansas Press.
The Garden of Earthly DelightsBook of Gazals from Texas Review
Press.
Rorschach Art II, which won theDonald Justice Prize from
Storyline Press and was laterreprinted by Red Hand Press.
From University of ArkansasPress Fresco's, which won the
(19:46):
Lost Horse Press book PrizeMassa's Expulsion, which won the
Margie Intuit House book Prizeand Roshak Art from Red Hand
Press.
I'm Ed Falco and I hope you'llcome back next Monday for
episode 25, which will be thefinal episode in season one of
(20:06):
Ed Falcon on the Air.
If you have a question you'dlike me to answer in that final
episode, you can email medirectly at falco.
ed at gmail.
com.
In any event, thanks forlistening, and do come back next
Monday for episode 25.
This is episode 24 of Ed Falcoon the air.
In this episode, I'll be readingBrit Washburn's poem, Dear Dad,
and my own poem, Coy, and we'lllisten to Steve Gibson reading
his poem, The Crown for MyFather on Memorial Day.
Regular listeners may wonder howwe've come around to reading
(00:46):
poetry from where we started,listening to The Strangers, a
serialized science fictionnovel.
The circuitous route by whichwe've arrived here begins after
the completion of The Strangersin episode 19, when I started
trying to answer a reader'squestion, where do your ideas
come from?
Which I generalized to one ofthe most common questions all
(01:08):
writers hear, which is, where doyou get the ideas for your
stories, poems, plays,screenplays, etc.
In episodes 20 through 23, Isuggested some answers to that
question, arguing basically thatwriters ideas emerge in the act
of writing and are grounded inthe writer's unique and
particular deep sources, thoseintellectual, spiritual,
(01:32):
cultural, or personal mattersthat trouble them, whether that
troubling, is destructive orconstructive, a source of
despair or elation.
In the three poems I've chosenfor this episode, each of the
speakers address their fathers,either directly, as in Gibson's
and Washburn's poems, orindirectly, in a third person
(01:54):
narrative, as I do in Coy.
In all three of these poems, thespeakers relationships to their
fathers is the deep source ofthe writing, a source that
everyone who has ever wrestledwith a relationship to a parent,
which is all of us, shouldrecognize.
Here's Brit Washburn's poem,Dear Dad.
(02:22):
Dear Dad, Yesterday, on thedrive home from work, I heard a
piece on monarch butterflies,how they're rapidly
disappearing, 80 percent gone inthe East, 95 in the West.
Such small fractions left, left,left.
He had only threatened, notendangered, not technically.
(02:46):
At dusk, a silent explosion offuchsia and marigold bloomed
behind the city's strip mallsand smokestacks.
And this morning, peeling anorange in bed, I was struck
again by the absurdity of whatgrows on trees, such elaborate
and delicious vehicles forseeds.
The color, the sweetness, theway the rind opens and falls
(03:09):
away like the wrapping of a giftin my hands.
Out the window, a cardinal inthe rain gutter cocks its head,
bright red.
Against the grey of lateNovember.
I tell you all of this to saythere remains insects, sunsets,
citrus, birds, flickers andflashes of magic amid the
(03:33):
wreckage.
That was Dear Dad, by BrittWashburn.
On one level, Dear Dad is a poemoffering consolation to a
parent, proposing the beauty ofthe physical world, the sensual
(03:54):
world that remains, as anantidote to despair over the
ongoing loss of that worldreferenced in the first stanza,
the near extinction of monarchbutterflies.
The poem works as a thoughtfuladdress to the speaker's father,
arguing that yes, We aredestroying our world, but there
(04:14):
is still beauty to console us.
For me at least, on anotherlevel, I feel embedded in the
poem an acceptance of death, anacceptance even of extinction.
The reader assumes the father'sdeath, if not imminent, will
precede the death of thespeaker.
And so, the poem's idea, thatthe beauty of this world is
(04:36):
consolation for our mortality,arises out of the deeper source
of the poem, which is thespeaker's loving relationship to
her father.
My poem, Koi, is a little story.
(04:57):
In it, I merge and reconstruct acouple of memories.
In one memory, the speakerplaces a koi in a backyard pond,
while his aged mother watches,bound in a wheelchair, barely
able to speak.
In another memory, while themother watches, a heron lands on
(05:18):
the edge of the pond and stealsthe koi, which is white, with a
flash of bright red between itseyes.
Mixed and merged with these twomemories is a dip into the
mother's consciousness as sherecalls her life with her
husband, the speaker's father.
(05:43):
Koi.
A blue heron dips its beak intothe backyard pond and lifts from
beneath dark water a foot longkoi, the white one with bright
red Like an ink spill betweenits eyes, back to the dorsal
fin.
Her husband built the pond withslate and cement, added, at her
(06:06):
wish, a waterfall.
Recirculated water trickles downstones and drops into the pond.
There were goldfish in it then,scores of them breaking the
surface when she dropped theflaked food in.
She thought the koi lookedbloodstained and said so before
her son slipped it into thepool.
(06:27):
Koya knelt at her feet in frontof the wheelchair, rested his
head a moment in her lap.
He said, it's all right, mom, ina voice so like his father's
that she managed to lift agnarled hand and rested on his
gray hair.
It was almost as if he were aboy again, come to her with a
skinned knee or a child's smallheartbreak to be stroked and
(06:50):
comforted.
She tried again to say that theKoya's red stain looked like
blood, and again he said, it'sall right, mom.
Before he called for his sister,who came out of the house and
into the sunlight, carrying atray of medicines.
The heron tilts its beak up tosecure the koi, which is
(07:12):
curiously still.
Forty five years in the samehouse, so that everywhere she
looks, she sees him.
On his knees with the trowels,smoothing the freshly poured
cement of the patio.
Shirtless in the yard.
A shovel in his grimed hands,Digging this or that, always
(07:32):
digging something.
She sees him in the plants andflowers, Especially in the
plants and flowers, In thebleeding hearts and salvia, In
the crowded hostas andclustering hen and chicks, In
the showy pink hibiscus, Whichshouldn't grow here, But do and
come back year after year, Theirroots deep under the foundation,
(07:55):
Where they huddle in a pocket ofwarmth.
All those years, home, fromeight hours in the shop, and
then out in the yard, digging inthe garden, planting something
new, working on this or thatproject, while she tended the
kids, before the kids were allgrown, and she tended only him.
(08:17):
Today, she's sitting in the sun,her daughter in the house, on
the phone.
She wants to speak, but she longago lost words.
Her body has shriveled andcrumpled into itself.
The heron's great wings open ina magnificent show of blue.
It rises into the air, carryingin its beak the blood stained
(08:39):
koi.
She watches as long as she can,and feels herself growing
smaller as the blue of the birdis swallowed by the blue of the
sky, till for an instant it'sonly that ink spill blood stain
that remains, the bright speckof it on the air, a momentary
spark or flame.
About to disappear.
(09:09):
Koi is a story about a son,mother and father sandwiched
between the moments when a heronlands on a pond, steals a koi
and flies off with it in itsfinal image of the herrin
disappearing into the blue sky.
With the koi in its grasp, Ihope the reader feels the sense
(09:30):
of all our mortality seenthrough the mother's eyes.
As she recalls the speaker'sfather.
Steve Gibson is a poet who oftenuses the tight restraints of
formal constructions to containpowerful emotions, as he does
(09:54):
here in A Crown for My Father onMemorial Day.
A sonnet defined broadly.
is a poem of 14 lines that usesa regular rhyme scheme.
And a crown of sonnets is asequence of 7 sonnets linked by
repeating the last line of eachsonnet as the first line of the
next, while the first line ofthe first sonnet is repeated as
(10:19):
the last line of the finalsonnet.
The crown in the title of hispoem then has the double meaning
of naming the formalconstruction of the poem as a
crown of sonnets, and also theconferring to the speaker's
father a symbol of honor andpower, a crown.
(10:41):
This poem was originallypublished in the journal Rattle
with the audio of Steve Gibsonreading the poem, and that's
what we'll listen to here.
Steve Gibson reading his poem, ACrown for My Father on Memorial
Day.
(11:04):
A crown for my father onMemorial Day.
One, I have often told storiesabout you as a kid I promised
not to forget, like the photo Ikept in my wallet when you were
in boot camp in World War II,posing outside your tent.
Everyone knew the future wouldhappen, but didn't let
(11:26):
themselves think too much, onlyto regret what was in the past
they could not undo.
I'd look at that photo andpromise you thoughts of the
Bronx River Housing Project withyou home, like that pic in my
wallet, would remain with meforever.
That photo, which had serratededges, was lost long ago, so
(11:49):
much for pledges.
Lost long ago, so much for thepledges to a dead father in a
photograph, who stands outside atent, and almost laughs.
The smile is hard around theedges, and the photo in memory
dredges up memories after thephotograph.
(12:12):
An adult, I want to cut time inhalf, and remember only a boy's
pledges.
But how can you forget what youstill know?
Cut time in half.
And remember before, but notever, what will happen later.
It's not like tearing in half aphoto and pretending you didn't
go to war.
(12:33):
Or what you did later to mymother.
Three.
And what you did later to mymother, a child should never
see.
Court photos document theviolence blow by blow to justify
each restraining order, whichyou would comply with and then
ignore.
It must have been, I didn't wantto know, and turned my mind off
(12:56):
as two shadows entered thebedroom and closed the door.
The cops would come as they hadcome before, and ask your wife
if she wanted to go with them tothe hospital, and she'd say no.
When the door opened, This wasin the Bronx River Housing
Project.
Images not in the photo in mywallet.
(13:21):
Four.
Images not in the photo in mywallet.
No, the image of you in yourboxer shorts, cops helping you
with your pants.
Their reports included theweapons, German war helmet, Nazi
flag, and the letters you wouldlet the cops pretend to read,
pretend to sort, then return tothe shoe boxes.
(13:44):
You were caught trying to makesense of what you couldn't
forget.
Hence, the war trophies on thebed, and letters, and you going
over each one again and again,and never recalling what you'd
done to her, after you promisedit would never happen, after
what you had experienced in war.
Your gravestone marker reads,Tank Destroyer.
(14:07):
5.
Your gravestone marker reads,Tank Destroyer.
I took my wife and kids there onvacation.
At Bay Pines, they gave me a mapof the section, and circled in
blue, your row with the number.
I went there because I hadpromised her.
I have a wife, a daughter, and ason.
(14:27):
The visit was a side trip on thevacation.
By chance, in another sectionwas a bagpiper.
I took a photograph of yourgrave marker.
It gives your name, rank anddivision.
You passed away when you were37, the war over.
But a casualty of the war.
And as a casualty, I include mymother.
(14:51):
After convulsive shock andpneumonia.
Six.
After convulsive shock andpneumonia, you died.
Buried in Bay Pines in Florida.
I went to visit as I promisedher.
Before your wife died of livercancer.
I have the map, with section,row, number, circled in blue
(15:13):
ink.
I keep in a drawer withbatteries, flashlight, if we
lose power in the nexthurricane.
I live in Florida.
I'm retired.
I was a college professor.
My wife of 50 years, also ateacher, retired.
Plans trips to our son anddaughter, and daughter's
boyfriend in Seattle eachsummer.
(15:35):
I don't live in the Bronx RiverHousing Project.
I don't have that photo of youin my wallet.
7.
I don't have that photo of youin my wallet because I lost it a
long time ago.
But I do have the cemeteryphoto.
It's on my bookcase.
I don't want to forget that atCity College, you wanted to get
(15:58):
your CPA.
The war came.
You had to go.
That's you outside that tent inthe photo.
And the future hasn't happened,not yet, and nothing is lost.
The photo, the wallet, the youalmost smiling, because you know
that's how she needs to see youas you go off to a future
(16:20):
neither of you could expect.
The past is past, what's done wecan't undo.
I have often told stories aboutyou.
That was Steve Gibson reading ACrown for My Father on Memorial
(16:40):
Day.
The poem, in one sense, is astory about the speaker's father
and the father's relationship tohim and his mother.
It tells us, in the formallanguage of poetry, Though this
is a formal language, madeskillfully to sound colloquial,
about the difficulties he andhis family faced upon his
(17:01):
father's return from fighting inWorld War II.
It is simultaneously a poem offorgiveness for his father and
respect for his father, and atthe same time it is an anti war
poem, for the damage done to thefamily.
is the result of the damage doneto the man by the war he fought
in.
(17:28):
All three of the poems intoday's episode were catalyzed
in part or entirely by the poetsrelationships to their fathers.
I've been making the argument inthe past few episodes that a
writer's ideas are grounded inthe deep sources that motivate
the writing, and perhaps thereis no deeper source than our
relationship to our parents.
(17:49):
The ideas in these poems arevarious.
They may be about mortality orforgiveness, or sorrow at the
damage wrought by wars, or aboutthe ongoing damage to the planet
and its species.
But these ideas all emerged, atleast in part, out of the
writer's relationships with hisThat was episode 24 of Ed Falco
(18:20):
On The Air, featuring poems byBrit Washburn, Steve Gibson, and
myself.
Brit Washburn's poem is recent,and I want to thank her for
giving me permission to read ithere.
She is the author of the poetrycollections Notwithstanding and
What Is Given, both from WetCement Press, and of the essay
(18:41):
collection Homing In.
Attempts on a Life of Poetry andPurpose, Alexandria Quarterly
Press.
My poem, Coy, was firstpublished in the Southern Review
and later included in my 2024poetry collection from LSU
Press, X in the Tick Seat.
(19:02):
Steve Gibson's poem waspublished in the journal Rattle
and is available online as ishis reading of the poem.
He's the author of eight poetrycollections, most recently Frida
Kahlo and Fort Lauderdale fromAble Muse Press.
Other collections include SelfPortrait in a Door Length
Mirror.
(19:22):
That was the Miller WilliamsPrize winner from the University
of Arkansas Press.
The Garden of Earthly DelightsBook of Gazals from Texas Review
Press.
Rorschach Art II, which won theDonald Justice Prize from
Storyline Press and was laterreprinted by Red Hand Press.
From University of ArkansasPress Fresco's, which won the
(19:46):
Lost Horse Press book PrizeMassa's Expulsion, which won the
Margie Intuit House book Prizeand Roshak Art from Red Hand
Press.
I'm Ed Falco and I hope you'llcome back next Monday for
episode 25, which will be thefinal episode in season one of
(20:06):
Ed Falcon on the Air.
If you have a question you'dlike me to answer in that final
episode, you can email medirectly at falco.
ed at gmail.
com.
In any event, thanks forlistening, and do come back next
Monday for episode 25.
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