Episode 140: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Like the movie of the same name, the poems we discuss here, Slushies, take on the cares of the world in an unrelenting torrent. In this episode, we discuss three poems by Harriet Levin which reference the Haitian writer and artist Frankétienne, Barcelona’s as-yet unfinished Sagrada Familia cathedral, and the constellation of Orion, (for starters). We think about how poems featuring babies can avoid the sentimental (as we ultimately decide these do). We end considering the picture book chaos found in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are as a counterpoint to real-world displacement. At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Lisa Zerkle, Jodi Gahn, Lillie Volpe (sound engineer)   With thanks to one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Lorraine” opens our show.  Harriet Levin is the author of three poetry books, The Christmas Show (Beacon Press, 1997), Girl in Cap and Gown (Mammoth Books, 2010), and My Oceanography (CavanKerry 2018). Her honors include the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, The Barnard New Women Poets Prize, Nimrod's Pablo Neruda/Hardiman Award, The Ellen LaForge Memorial Poetry Prize, and a PEW Fellowship in the Arts discipline award. Her debut novel, How Fast Can you Run, a novel based on the life of Lost Boy of Sudan Michael Majok Kuch, was excerpted in The Kenyon Review and chosen as a 2017 Charter for Compassion Global Read. A 2022-23 Stein Family Foundation Fellow, she holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and teaches writing at Drexel University. Website: harrietlevinmillan.org