Living Poetry with Poet Joshua Bennett

This episode features a wide-ranging conversation about poetry: what it is, where it comes from, and why it matters. Our guest, poet (and poetry professor) Joshua Bennett, talks about the early experiences that pushed him toward poetry and about the people who shaped and inspired his creative approach as a writer. Many of these people are fellow poets, others are his own grandparents, parents, and teachers, but Prof. Bennett has also found inspiration in less expected figures; over the course of the interview, he name-checks the singers Yolanda Adams and Marvin Gaye, the biologists Charles Henry Turner and Ernest Everett Just, the astronaut Mae Jemison, and various characters from the TV series Star Trek: the Next Generation. Other topics Prof. Bennett addresses include the relation between poetry and generative AI (his own work is among the vast body of text that has been fed as training data into large language models), education as liberation, and the concept of social poetics. Eventually, the interview blossoms into a heartfelt meditation on human experience: childhood, aging, parenthood, identity, and the ways poetry enhances our humanity by capturing the magic of being alive.Relevant Resources:MIT OpenCourseWareThe OCW Educator PortalJoshua Bennett’s faculty pageJoshua Bennett (Poetry Foundation)Aracelis Girmay, from The Black Maria June Jordan, “The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America”Charles Henry Turner (Wikipedia)Ernest Everett Just (Wikipedia)Mae Jemison (Wikipedia)Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Connect with UsIf you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517On our siteOn FacebookOn XOn InstagramOn LinkedInStay CurrentSubscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. Support OCWIf you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseware, donate to help keep these programs going! CreditsSarah Hansen, host and producer Brett Paci, producer  Dave Lishansky, producer Jackson Maher, producerShow notes by Peter Chipman