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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. I said at the beginning of the hour, we were going to do two April call-ins this hour, the first one for Arab American Heritage Month and the one to close the show today in our last 15 minutes or so here on the last Friday of National Poetry Month, we're going to make some time for poetry. For these last few minutes of the show today, we are opening the phones to invite you to recite a few lines from any poem that has personal significance to you. You can recite them from memory or you can read them. We're asking you to keep these to about 30 seconds per caller so we can get a bunch of people in here.

It's open mic, open stage for any poem that is meaningful to you. 212-433-WNYC, call in to recite and try to keep it to about 30 seconds. Obviously, in many cases, that won't be a whole poem. It'll be an excerpt. Some of you might call in with haikus, and you'll do them in nine seconds. Any poem you love, you are now welcome to recite about half a minute of, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, with a few days to go in National Poetry Month, 212-433-9692. Our lines are filling up fast. I will go first, and then we'll hear you, 212-433-9692, right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we're going to take your calls on National Poetry Month Open Mic on The Brian Lehrer Show. About 30 seconds of any poem you love, 212-433-WNYC. I will start with the first stanza from William Butler Yeats’ The Second Coming because this poem is-- well, there's a line, there’s a phrase I'll even call it, that gets excerpted from this poem a lot in political commentary these days, but not the whole poem. Keeping to our time limit suggestion, here is just the first stanza.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

From Yeats. A couple of those lines make their way into news commentary here and there. There was the whole stanza that they come from. All right, how about you? 212-433-WNYC. Pamela in Elmhurst you're on WNYC. Hi Pamela.

Pamela: Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Hello Pamela.

Pamela: Yes. Thank you very much for taking me after you. I'm reading the very last stanza of W. H. Auden's poem Tell Me the Truth About Love.

When it comes, will it come without warning,

Just as I'm picking my nose?

Will it knock on my door in the morning,

Or tread in the bus on my toes?

Will it come like a change in the weather?

Will its greeting be courteous or rough?

Will it alter my life altogether?

O tell me the truth about love.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that bus reference-

Pamela: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: -as insignificant as it was in a way in that stanza reminded me, as did one of my producers in my ear, that Auden was a New Yorker-

Pamela: Yes, he was, eventually.

Brian Lehrer: -lived in an apartment on St. Mark's Place for a long time. Pamela, thank you. Wonderful way to start. Susan in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susan.

Susan: Hi. I'm a very frequent listener and I love your show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Susan: I'm reading Emily Dickinson's I'm Nobody, which was a posthumous poem that was discovered.

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us - don't tell,

They‘d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell one's name of livelong day

To an admiring bog!

That's it.

Brian Lehrer: Well done. Well delivered, Susan. Thank you very much.

Susan: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: I'm Nobody by Emily Dickinson. Wow, that could have-- even in a light-hearted way she read it, that could have so many applications, right? Kind of a segue maybe. Mary in Fairhaven, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mary.

Mary: Hi. I'm going to introduce a little note of levity, if I may. One of my very favorite poems is by Ogden Nash and it is called The Guppy.

Whales have calves,

Cats have kittens,

Bears have cubs,

Bats have bittens,

Swans have cygnets,

Seals have puppies,

But guppies just have little guppies.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] Thank you, Mary.

Mary: Thank you for a nice week, Brian. I Hope you have a nice weekend.

Brian Lehrer: Very kind of you, you too. Matthew in Jackson Heights. You're on WNYC. Hi, Matthew.

Matthew: Hello. My poem is called Loyalty, it's by William Matthews.

They gave him an overdose of anesthetic,

And its fog shut down his heart in seconds.

I tried to hold him, but he was somewhere else.

For so much of love, one of the principles is missing,

It's no wonder we confuse love with longing.

Oh, I was thick with both and I wanted my dog to live forever,

And while I was working on impossibilities,

I wanted to live forever, too.

I wanted company and be alone.

I wanted to know how they trash a stiff 95-pound dog,

And I paid them to do it and not tell me.

What else? I wanted a letter of apology delivered by decrepit hand,

By someone shattered for each time I had to eat pure pain.

I wanted to weep, not like a baby in gulps and breathing stretches and howls,

But steady like an adult, according to the fiction,

That there is work to be done, and almost inconsolably.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. We had the Auden poem that was about love, and people probably weren't thinking of love for a dog, which is, I guess, what this is, right?

Matthew: Yes, it is. It's a wonderful poem. There's one you would like by him called Masterful. It's a baseball poem. I almost read it, but it has a word in it and I don't think you'd let me say.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] I'll look it up. All right. That was Loyalty, though, that poem read by Matthew in Jackson Heights. A couple of people are calling with poems that they wrote. It's okay. Naomi in Queens, you’re on WNYC. Hi, Naomi.

Naomi: Hi, Brian, long-time listener. I wrote this poem after I had to put my cat down, and I was devastated. Her name was Rosie.

I loved you with all my heart and soul,

And Rosie loved me back.

Be very good and go to work,

My Rosie had none of that.

Love me, feed me, play as well,

Keep me warm and covered.

That's all she really asked of me.

And then she loved me back.

Rosie hissed everyone, including me at times,

Bath time, medicine, cleaning ears,

And still, she loved me back.

When Rosie got so very sick,

I took her to her hated place,

Doctors, tests, examinations,

And yet she loved me back.

When I had to put her down--

I can't remember now.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, you were doing it from memory?

Naomi: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, well, we get the idea and the beautiful sentiment. You know what? After the caller just before you who had a love poem to a dog, I didn't know you were going to follow with a love poem to a cat, but what a beautiful segue. Naomi, I'm going to leave it there, but thank you very much. It definitely landed. Thank you.

Naomi: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Edson in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Edson.

Edson: Hey, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. The one that I want to read, it’s Harlem, Langston Hughes.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-

And then run?

Does it stink like a rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-

like a syrup sweet?

Maybe it's just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

There is a line, “Like a raisin in the sun,” from A Raisin in the Sun play, Lorraine Raspberry.

Brian Lehrer: That's right. Hansberry. I was thinking as you were reading it that a couple of phrases or just a couple of word terms- -from just that little bit that you read have landed in the general culture, Raisin in the Sun, for exactly the reason you say became that play and Dream Deferred, which, of course, gets talked about in racial justice and social justice terms. Edson, thank you for your contribution. Leonard in Killington, Vermont. You're on WNYC. Hi, Leonard.

Leonard: Hi. Good morning. Thank you. This one compliments the one that you read, Brian. This one is called Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand,

Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed

And on the pedestal these words appear

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,

Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Brian Lehrer: A classic, Ozymandias. Why do you love it?

Leonard: A couple of reasons. Obviously, the political overtones and there’s a spiritual element, too. I love it because it was the first poem that I recited when I was in grammar school.

Brian Lehrer: They make people-- I know that one gets taught, right? Were you required to memorize it?

Leonard: We were, yes. It was a very strict regimen. I can't remember what grade. It must have been third or fourth grade, but everybody had to get up there.

BRIAN Lehrer: Leonard, thank you very much. Ruhi in Trenton, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ruhi.

Ruhi: Hi. I love your show. I'm calling about a poem from the 11th-century poet Sheikh Saadi Shirazi from Iran. He's less well known than Rumi, but very similar style. I actually translated it into English, into poetry. It says,

A diamond, when it falls in mud, retains a value very high,

And dust remains a worthless thing, though his plumes may billow to the sky.

That's it.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. That was so short that I'm going to invite you to read it again. Would you like to?

Ruhi: Sure. Thank you.

A diamond, when it falls in mud, retains a value very high,

And dust remains a worthless thing, though his plumes may billow to the sky.

Brian Lehrer: You get to interpret it for no longer time than it took you to read it. Would you like to?

Ruhi: Actually, I wrote this poem-- I interpreted it into poetry for a friend who was going through domestic violence, and I was trying to convince her of her worth, what the poet intended and could not say. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Good for you, Ruhi. Thank you so much. Great contribution. One more, maybe Debbie in Manhattan. Debbie, you're on WNYC.

Debbie: Yes. Hi, Brian. Not such a long-time listener, about a year now, but a huge fan already.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Debbie: My poem is from J. R. R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings.

Still around the corner, there may wait

A new road or a secret gate,

And though I oft I have passed them by

A day will come at last when I

Shall take the hidden paths that run

West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

Brian Lehrer: Debbie in Manhattan and Tolkien get the last word. Thank you, Debbie. On our open mic for National Poetry Month call-in to end The Brian Lehrer Show for today and for this week. That was wonderful. Thank you all for your calls. Morning Edition, by the way, has been doing such amazing National Poetry Month work. I hope you've been catching those segments. A couple more to come, I think, on the last two days of the month on Monday and Tuesday. So just a shout out to Michael Hill and company about that.

That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen edits our National Politics podcast. Our intern this term is Ethlyn Daniel-Scherz, and we had Shaina Sengstock today at the audio controls. Have great weekend, everyone. Stay tuned for All Of It.

 

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