Episode 139: The Ghosts of Figueroa (ENCORE)

We're bringing back favorite episodes over the summer as encore editions. Since this episode first aired, poet Jen Siraganian won the 2026 Perugia Press Prize for her debut collection "Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead," which is forthcoming in September 2026. Congratulations, Jen!  Slushies, we invoke the retelling of a ghostly experience shared by Kathy and Marion at the Hotel Figueroa in California earlier this year partway into this episode. Two poems by Jen Siraganian are at the heart of our discussion, and it’s the first of these that puts ghosts into our heads. This poem also causes us to consider at some length the physical form chosen by or for a poem, and how this can utterly enhance the experience of the poem when it’s just right. It’s also an opportunity for Jason to raise the spectre of the virgule (or slash) once again, and we even pause briefly to recall when WYSIWYG was a useful acronym. We end the episode with an ekphrastic that prompts an on-the-spot tie breaker (thanks to our sound engineer Lillie for saving the day!).   https://whitney.org/collection/works/2171 https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/gorky-the-artist-and-his-mother.html    At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Lisa Zerkle, Jason Schneiderman, Dagne Forrest, Jodi Gahn, Derek Grebis (sound engineer)   Jen Siraganian is an Armenian-American writer, educator, and former Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Barrow Street, Best New Poets, Cortland Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Smartish Pace, and other journals. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won the 2024 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. A former managing director of Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, she is a current Lucas Artist Fellow. jensiraganian.com      Social media handles:   Facebook @jen.siraganian, Instagram @jsiraganian, Bluesky @jsiraganian.bsky.social, Website   Walking into St. James Cathedral as If We Were Already Ghosts     My Father and I View Two Versions of Arshile Gorky’s The Artist and his Mother   Lip corners sink, an upturned bowl dripping its contents onto the white   of her dress. Her eyes, Armenian saucers of round, outline hollows of darkness.   Sharing color only, no overlap of limbs or space, shades of pink echo his coat,   her lap, a paleness descends. My father nudges my elbow. He seldom mentions   his mothers, the one who raised him, the other who gave him away. I want him   to discuss the lack of daisies in the boy’s hands, the mother’s face swaddled in a cocoon of scarf.   Instead, he stands, cloud-drifts across the gallery. We bench in front of The Liver is the Cock’s Comb.   He points to the ferns feuding with triangles, the thorned stems breathing blossom.