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Oct 10, 2026 <1 min

Mother to Son

from Ririro.com - Poetry Hosted by Ririro

"Mother to Son" is a poem by Langston Hughes in which a mother speaks directly to her son about the harsh, unvarnished reality of her life — a staircase riddled with tacks, splinters, and torn-up boards. Through this raw extended metaphor, she maps her decades of struggle and quiet endurance, urging her son never to sit down, never to turn back, no matter how dark the climb feels. The poem is urgent, intimate, and alive with a voice that refuses to surrender. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ririro-com-poetry--6577576/support.

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Mother to Son

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Song Against Songs, The by G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936) LibriVox LibriVox volunteers bring you 9 recordings of The Song Against Songs by G. K. Chesterton. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for October 16, 2011. Chesterton was a large man, standing 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and weighing around 21 stone (130 kg; 290 lb). His girth gave rise to a famous anecdote. During World War I a lady in London asked why he was not 'out at the Front'; he replied, 'If you go round to the side, you will see that I am.' On another occasion he remarked to his friend George Bernard Shaw: "To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England". Shaw retorted, "To look at you, anyone would think you have caused it". P. G. Wodehouse once described a very loud crash as "a sound like Chesterton falling onto a sheet of tin."( Summary from Wikipedia )

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