All Episodes
ME READING STUFF — 399 episodes
Episode 418: Summer Break, Continued Delusions, and a Poem by Joshua Garvelink
Episode 417: C.K. Williams & Definitions of "Quiet"
Episode 416: ❣️This Podcast's 20th Anne Carson Episode❣️
Episode 415: 🏀Celebrating the Poetry of Sportstalk with Fan Favorite: Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion!🎾
Episode 414: 🎙️The 11th Anniversary Special: The Poem That Started It All – "The Man on the Dump"
Episode 413: Dionne Brand – "Islands Vanish" from Nomenclature
Episode 412: 📚Wendell Berry, Building Altars & Exhaustion
Episode 411: Taschen's The Book of Symbols: The Color Gray
Episode 410: Charles Simic & Anne Carson – A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker (1925-2025)
Episode 409: Andy Warhol - "Atmosphere" from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
Episode 408: Mason Currey – Daily Rituals: Women at Work (Octavia Butler & Martha Graham)
Episode 407: Laurie Anderson - O Superman
Episode 406: Mystery Poem Found in a Library Book
Episode 405: Fuyue Anzai, Walt Whitman & Allen Ginsberg
Episode 404: A Michael Silverblatt Tribute & a David Markson Reading
Episode 403: Anne Boyer & Floor Piles
Episode 402: The Public Domain Review & The Bold and the Beautiful
Episode 401: An After Dark Special! Vasko Popa for Valentine's Day
Episode 400: Geri Jewell - I'm Walking as Straight as I Can: Transcending Disability in Hollywood and Beyond
Episode 399: The World Book Encyclopedia - The Letter "A"
Episode 398: Agnes Martin - On Beauty
Episode 397: Nabokov, Merriam-Webster & Bad Documentaries
Episode 396: MY 10th ANNIVERSARY EPISODE❣️ / C.K. Williams - Writers Writing Dying
Episode 395: Lydia Davis - Priority (Again) & Answer Corner
Episode 394: The Life of Northern Calloway (David from Sesame Street)
Episode 393: Joshua Rivkin - In the Black (on Cy Twombly)
Episode 392: Steve Zirnkilton - In the Criminal Justice System
Episode 391: Sick Day
Episode 390: Leonard Cohen - Book of Mercy
Episode 389: Copy & Paste: The Cold Episode
Episode 388: Encyclopedia Corner - Lighting & Lightning
Episode 387: Letters of Note / E.B. White / My Voiceover
Episode 386: Anne Carson - Short Talks
Episode 385: Mary Ruefle & John Clare
Episode 384: John D'Agata & Studio Update
Episode 383: Franz Kafka & Katt Williams
Episode 382: Catullus 85
Episode 381: Emily Dickinson, Petrichor & Me
Episode 380: "Part 1: Party" featuring words by Charles Simic & Melody Beattie
🎁 Friday Night Giftisode 🌮
EP.S. 1: How my dog Henry's DNA ended up at the home of a Vanderpump Rules cast member's apartment.
E❤️🩹 ME READING STUFF ➸ ROBYN'S GATE ❤️🩹
EHello from Robyn and Ricci - An AFTER DARK! episode of ME READING STUFF
EGoodbye.
EAlfonsina Storni - The She-Wolf
EEpisode 379: Mike White - Levi's Letter from Rehab on "Enlightened" + RIP Charles Simic
Episode 378: Eliot Weinberger - An Elemental Thing (The Rhinoceros)
Episode 377: I'll Be Back!
Episode 376: Dire Straits - Money For Nothing
Episode 375: Anne Carson - The Albertine Workout
Episode 374: Daniil Kharms - The Things
Episode 373: Patrizia Cavalli - My Poems Won't Change the World
Episode 372: Mary Ruefle - On Beginnings
Episode 371: Mark Strand - The Mailman
Episode 370: C.K. Williams & Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Episode 369: The Workaholics Anonymous Book of Recovery
Episode 368: Robinson Jeffers - The World's Wonders
Episode 367: Anne Boyer - Garments Against Women (again)
Episode 366: Elsa Gidlow - Of a Certain Friendship
Episode 365: Alex Soojung-Kim Pang - Rest
Episode 364: Patricia Highsmith - Her Diaries and Notebooks (and a conversation with Damien Jurado!)
Episode 363: Chika Sagawa - Composition in Three Primary Colors
Episode 362: Kevin Prufer - Black Woods (and Bill Callahan lyrics)
Episode 361: Yosef Ibn Zabara - My Ex - Look at These People - The Physician
Episode 359: The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, Edited by Eliot Weinberger
Episode 358: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - "A Starling"
Episode 357: Mark Strand & Vladimir Nabokov
Episode 356: Choi Seungja - Phone Bells Keep Ringing for Me
Episode 355: Robert Creeley - A Day Book
Episode 354: Kassia St. Clair - Acid Yellow
Episode 353: Jameson O'Hara Laurens - Spell for a Drowning Man
Episode 352: Graham Burnam - The Thing That Got My Fun
Episode 351: Marlene Dietrich - Daily Rituals
Episode 350: David Markson - This is Not a Novel
Episode 349: Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco - Treasure of the Castilian or Spanish Language (Selected & Translated by Janet Hendrickson)
Episode 348: Wislawa Szymborska - Nonreading
Episode 347: Charles Simic - Dime-Store Alchemy
Episode 346: Anna Akhmatova - Seventh Book
Episode 345: Melody Thomas Scott - Always Young and Restless
Episode 344: A.L. Snijders - Night Train (translated by Lydia Davis)
Episode 343: Werner Herzog - Conquest of the Useless
Episode 342: Kool Keith & Fran Lebowitz
Episode 341: Anne Boyer - Garments Against Women (Yes, again)
Episode 340: The School of Life Dictionary - Ugliness
Episode 339: Keaton Patti - I Forced a Bot to Write This Book
Episode 338: Etel Adnan - The Arab Apocalypse
Episode 337: Marie Howe - What the Living Do
Episode 336: Songs from the Quechua - Translated by Mark Strand
Episode 335: Reader's Digest & Spike Carlsen
Episode 334: Tomas Tranströmer - Below Zero
Episode 333: Claudia Rankine - Intermission in Four Acts
Episode 332: Samantha Irby - Wow, No Thank You
Episode 331: Anne Carson - Short Talk on My Task
Episode 330: Lawrence Wright - Going Clear
Episode 329: Arnaldo Gomez & Mercedes Mesen
Episode 328: Li Ch'ing-chao
Episode 327: Lydia Davis - Priority
Episode 326: Aleksandar Ristović - Gingerbread Heart
Episode 325: Double Mommy/Seduced and Betrayed - Lifetime Movie Club
Episode 324: Eudaimonia - The School of Life Dictionary
Episode 323: Antonio Machado - Fourteen Poems Chosen From Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs
Episode 322: Toni Morrison - The Paris Review Interview
Episode 321: Kassia St. Clair - The Secret Lives of Color
Episode 320: A Scene from "Maps to the Stars", read by Damien Jurado!
Episode 319: Rebecca Solnit - A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Episode 318: Pavel Šrut - Fog is Fog is Fog
Episode 317: Moshe Ibn Ezra - Ivory Palaces
Episode 316: The Poetry of Wang An-shih
Episode 315: Joy Harjo - Perhaps the World Ends Here
Episode 314: Jane Hirshfield - The Lives of the Heart
Episode 313: The School of Life Dictionary - Anxiety
Mark Strand (Book Recommendation #3) & SHOP ANNOUNCEMENT
Truman Capote - In Cold Blood (Book Recommendation #2)
Anne Carson - Autobiography of Red (Book Recommendation #1)
Florine Stettheimer - Crystal Flowers
Pavel Šrut - Worm-Eaten Time
Eliot Weinberger - Angels & Saints
The School of Life Dictionary Part 2
The School of Life Dictionary
Mostafa Nissabouri - Approach to the Desert Space
Juan Gregorio Regino - Cantares
Dawn Lundy Martin - From "Perspective is Supposed to Yield Clarity"
Robby's Chicken & Dumplings
Kenneth Koch - Wishes, Lies, & Dreams
Texas Part 2! Mary Karr - County Fair
A Texas Podcast! Featuring a poem by Anselm Berrigan!
A Conversation with Damien Jurado! Part 2
A Conversation with Damien Jurado! Pt. 1
Laura (Riding) Jackson - Earth, Great Eyeball
Stephanie Goehring - From The Water [Inaudible]
The Proust Questionnaire
Emily Dickinson - Fascicle Thirty-Five
(Before a Hiatus) Raymond Carver - Some Prose on Poetry
Laurie Anderson - NYTimes Book Review Interview
Mary Ruefle - Super Bowl
Blaga Dimitrova - Old Song in a New Voice
Yehuda Amichai - In the Middle of This Century
C.D. Wright - In a Word, a World
Shirley Jackson - Got a Letter From Jimmy
W.S. Merwin - Houses and Travellers
Contemporary Kazakh Literature
Mary Ruefle - Provenance & W.S. Merwin - Thanks
Charles Ramsey - Dead Givaway
Rolf Jacobsen - The Silence Afterwards
An After Dark Special! Hazel Hall - Habit
Mary Ruefle - Halloween & Igor Barreto The Blind Plain
Pablo de Rokha - Architecture of Dispersed Life
Interview with my Dad and poems from Mike Tyson & Herschel Walker
Mary Ruefle - Dunce (Long White Cloud)
Briceida Cuevas Cob - Sun with Spines
Mark Strand - Dark Harbor
Aristophanes - The Clouds
Anne Waldman - Stereo
Lydia Davis - Varieties of Disturbance
The White Pony - An Anthology of Chinese Poetry
Wislawa Szymborska - Here
Philip Guston & The Poets
Cole Swensen - Noon
William Carlos Williams - Paterson
Anna Akhmatova & A. R. Ammons
Mary Ruefle, David Drury, Tomas Transtromer & Nell Carter
David Foster Wallace - INFINITE JEST
T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Daily Rituals from Ann Beattie & Flannery O'Connor (BONUS! A short Anne Carson piece!)
Special Edition!
Lydia Davis & Vasko Popa
Pablo Neruda - Melancholy Inside Families
Eileen Myles - Harmonica
Georgia O'Keeffe - A Letter to Alfred Stieglitz
Reading Collage Night! (Rankine, Ruefle, Carson, Beattie, Ristovic)
Christopher Knowles - "Man Calculating (Crazy Eddie)" from "Einstein on the Beach" by Philip Glass
Marosa di Giorgio - I Remember Nightfall
Juan Gregorio Regino - I Know the World's Tongue
Vaslav Nijinsky - The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky
Nan Shepherd - The Living Mountain
Tom O'Bedlam - Anonymous Mad Song ≈1620 (from Harold Bloom's How To Read & Why)
Pablo Neruda - Reject the Lightning
Joanne Kyger - The Art of Living Slowly
Donald Hall & Charles Schulz
Anne Boyer - No
Koko the Gorilla - I am Flowers
Mark Strand - Hermetic Melancholy
Anne Carson - Each Day Unexpected Salvation (John Cage)
Dubravka Ugresic - Pavlik Morozov
Jamaica Kincaid - The Letter From Home
Dusty Rhodes - Hard Time Blues
A Diary Entry from when I was in 6th Grade.
Vasco Popa - Before Play (Unrest-Field)
Ted Kooser - Pearl
Dubravka Ugrešić - Unknown Title
Andrew Weatherhead - The Origin of the World
Clarice Lispector - Near to the Wild Heart
Kevin Corrigan - Robyn O'Neil - W.S. Merwin
Charles Baudelaire - Spleen
Eliot Weinberger - An Elemental Thing (An After Dark Podcast!)
Vera Sola - Instrument of War (Virago)
Mark Borchardt - American Movie
Mary Ruefle - On Imagination
Martha Ronk - Baked Potato
Claudia Rankine - Citizen: An American Lyric
After Dark Special! Gary Snyder & Anne Carson
Danica Vukićević (translated by Charles Simic) - Ave
Anonymous (Alsea Tribe) - Moon Eclipse Exorcism
W.H. Auden - Musee des Beaux Arts
Wim Wenders - Paris, Texas - Sam Shepard/Harry Dean Stanton "I Knew These People"
Benjamin Horne of Twin Peaks - "I Loved That Bike" (An After Dark! Podcast)
Tomas Tranströmer - Below Zero
AFTER DARK! Elena Passarello - Animals Strike Curious Poses
Kaveh Akbar - Some Boys Aren't Born They Bubble
Marina Tsvetaeva - Letter to the Amazon
Mark Strand - From a Litany
Etel Adnan - An Etel Adnan Reader
Dulce María Loynaz - Selected Poems
A Short Talk w/ My Dad & Anne Carson - Short Talks
Herschel Walker - Multiple Herschels from Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion by Pasha Malla & Jeff Parker
Jessie Redmon Fauset - Oblivion
John Ashbery - They Knew What They Wanted
Mary Ruefle - Middle School
Rainer Maria Rilke - The Poet Speaks of Praising
2nd Anniversary Special & Contest Announcement!
Blaga Dimitrova - Ars Poetica
Sam Shepard - Promising Two-Year Old & Mark Strand - Exhaustion at Sunset
I'm Back! May Sarton - The House by the Sea
Back Issue Exclusive! Catullus, Anna Akhmatova, Joe Brainard
Back Issue Exclusive! Mark Strand-Some Last Words
Back Issue Exclusive! Anne Carson - Autobiography of Red
Back Issue Exclusive! Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion - The Poetry of Sportstalk by Pasha Malla & Jeff Parker
Jared Stanley - EARS
Cole Swensen - SHOULD SOMETHING HAPPEN TO THE HEART
Wallace Stevens - The Plot Against the Giant
Catullus - Odi et Amo & What For?
David Markson - This Is Not A Novel
Eileen Myles - San Diego Poem
Denise Levertov - Goodbye to Tolerance (An After Dark episode!)
Patricia Highsmith - The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder
Paavo Haavikko - Fifteen Epigrams in Praise of the Tyrant
John Wieners - Selected Journals
Kenneth Koch - To You
Mary Ruefle - The Woman Who Couldn't Describe a Thing If She Could
Werner Herzog - Of Walking in Ice
Mary Ruefle - My Private Property (Like a Scarf) (An After Dark Episode!)
Back Issue Exclusive! Anne Boyer
Back Issue Exclusive! Anna Kamieńska
Back Issue Exclusive! Uncle Bill Borchardt from American Movie
Robert Yarber's Artist Statement
Mirabai - His Hair & All I Was Doing Was Breathing
Donald Revell - Muse
W.S. Merwin - Thanks
C.K. Williams - Apes
Claudia Rankine - Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
Tao Lin - promise i'll vote for you
Jean Henri Fabre's BOOK OF INSECTS
Anne Carson - Autobiography of Red
Gabriela Mistral & Alfonsina Storni
Rolf Jacobsen - Some People
Daniil Kharms - A Sonnet
Ted Kooser - Praying Hands
An excerpt from Shijing & Gwendolyn Brooks - "We Real Cool" (An After Dark episode!)
Alida Young - Megan the Klutz
Mark Strand - Two Horses
Novica Tadić - NIGHT MAIL (An After Dark Podcast!)
Seamus Heaney - The Birthplace
César Vallejo - XXVIII (from Trilce)
Kanye West - The McDonald's Man, Calabasas, California (An After Dark Podcast!)
Virginia Woolf - The Waves
Joe Brainard - I Remember
Alejandra Pizarnik - PRIMITIVE EYES
After Dark! Oliverio Girondo - At the gravitating turning
Vasko Popa - Respect for the Axle
Rebecca Solnit - A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Steve Edwards - Fatherhood: Ruining the Writing Career, Saving the Writing
After Dark! John D'Agata - The Making of the American Essay
Kay Ryan - Things Shouldn't Be So Hard & Force
Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion - The Poetry of Sportstalk
Tomas Tranströmer - The Scattered Congregation & The Recent Tweets of Oprah Winfrey
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Heidi Montag - Superficial
The One Year Anniversary of ME READING STUFF!
Lucille Clifton - blessing the boats
Stephen Crane - God Lay Dead in Heaven
Emily Dickinson - To Recipient Unknown
William Carlos Williams - The crowd at the ball game
Oliver Sacks from Daily Rituals
Daphne Gottlieb - Why Things Burn
Juan Ramón Jiménez - Who Knows What Is Going On
Ghalib - My Head and My Knees
AFTER DARK! César Vallejo - The Anger That Breaks a Man Down into Boys
Mark Strand - From a Litany
Wisława Szymborska - Identification
Uncle Bill Borchardt - Be a Comedian
Rebecca Lindenberg - Letter to a Friend, Unsent
Marianne Moore - Observations
Popul Vuh - The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life
C.K. Williams - Writers Writing Dying
Andrew James Weatherhead - THINGS THE PHOTOSHOP INSTRUCTOR SAID AND DID
Emily Dickinson & Philip Larkin
Gertrude Stein - Tender Buttons
AFTER DARK! (a bonus episode) Juliana Spahr - Thrashing Seems Crazy
Theodor Storm & Heinrich Heine
Vasko Popa - The Wolf Bastard & Give Me Back My Rags
Pablo Neruda - Walking Around
Miroslav Holub - Dreams
Carl Sandburg - Wilderness
Charles Simic - The World Doesn't End
Ramblin' Robby on the Road Reading about Samuel Beckett & Richard Strauss from "Daily Rituals"
Kathryn Maris - The House with Only an Attic and a Basement
Gwendolyn Brooks - a song in the front yard
Anne Carson - The Life of Towns
Katherine Anne Porter, an interview from Writers at Work, The Paris Review 1963
Bonus Round! James Galvin - Blue or Green
Wislawa Szymborska - Here
Edna St. Vincent Millay - Dirge Without Music
AFTER DARK! (a bonus episode) Yehuda Amichai - Poems for a Woman
Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) - Ted's Studio Burnt Down & How To Do It
Sohrab Sepehri - Friend
Theodore Roethke - The Surly One & The Swan
Allen Ginsberg - Wichita Vortex Sutra
Mark Halliday - Self-Importance
Derrick Austin - Taking My Father and Brother to The Frick
AFTER DARK! (a bonus episode) Anonymous 12th century poetry & so much more.
Hadewijch - LOVE HAS SEVEN NAMES
Chögyam Trungpa - SHAMBHALA (sorry friends, this one went a little long)
Jack Spicer - Any fool can get into an ocean . . .
Catullus, Anna Akhmatova, Joe Brainard
Charles Simic - The Magic Study of Happiness
Mark Strand - The President's Resignation
Anna Kamieńska - Funny
Mary Karr - Suicide's Note: An Annual
Rainer Maria Rilke - You Who Never Arrived
Rafael Alberti - To Miss X, Buried in the West Wind
After Dark! (a bonus episode) Jorie Graham - Soul Says
Robert Hass - Our Lady of the Snows
Jean Valentine - The Knife
Mary Oliver - Wild Geese
Saturday Night Recorded! Czeslaw Milosz "Song On The End Of The World"
Albert Goldbarth - Human Beauty
Tomas Tranströmer - Answers to Letters
William Stafford - The Way It Is
Kobayashi Issa - Death Poem (haiku)
Paramahansa Yogananda - Scientific Healing Affirmations
Ted Kooser - They Had Torn Off My Face at the Office
Anne Boyer - AT LEAST TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE
Kenneth Fearing - Invitation
Dylan Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night
Leonard Cohen - How To Speak Poetry
Mark Strand - Some Last Words
Anne Carson - Autobiography of Red
Kenneth Fearing - Andy and Jerry and Joe
Luke Davies - Interferon Psalms
Anne Boyer - Garments Against Women
H.D. - The Wind Sleepers
Halloween Bonus Round! Edgar Allan Poe - Annabel Lee
Sylvia Plath - Daddy
Russell Edson - Ape and Coffee & Antimatter
AFTER DARK! (a bonus episode) William Stafford & William Meredith
Jorge Luis Borges - The Palace & Yehuda Amichai - A Man in His Life
Stephanie Goehring - Self-portrait as Craig's List Ad for a Fun Afternoon
Margaret Atwood - Mute
Patrizia Cavalli & Rafael Alberti
Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties & Valéry Larbaud "The Gift of Oneself"
Naomi Shihab Nye - One Boy Told Me
AFTER DARK! (a bonus episode) William Gass - On Being Blue, A Philosophical Inquiry
C.K. Williams "Shame" & Vasko Popa "Before the Game"
Etheridge Knight - Feeling Fucked Up
Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion - The Poetry of Sportstalk by Pasha Malla & Jeff Parker
C.K. Williams - Wait
AFTER DARK! (a bonus episode) Osip Mandelstam & Don Paterson
Evan Dalton Smith - Self-Portrait as My Name & Self-Portrait at Conception
Ingeborg Bachmann, poems.
Jessica Hagedorn - Sorcery
LIVE FROM VEGAS! Carson McCullers - The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
The Winners of the "Channing Tatum Attempts To Write Erotic Poetry" Contest Are Announced!
Walt Whitman - Song of Myself (1892)
Margaret Atwood-Variation On The Word Sleep & The Moment
CHANNING TATUM EROTIC POETRY CONTEST! A description of the contest & an entry.
Margaret Atwood - Happy Endings
Theodore Roethke - Elegy for Jane (My Student, Thrown by a Horse)
Gertrude Stein-Advertisements & Evian Water from "Geography and Plays", 1922
AFTER DARK! (a bonus episode) Frank O'Hara - As Planned & a surprise entry to the erotic poetry contest!
Hafez - At This Party, An Astronomical Question, Find a Better Job, All the Hemispheres - Hafiz
Donald Hall - Affirmation
Sarah Manguso - Siste Viator - Ancient Gods Walk the Earth
Leonard Cohen-A Note To The Reader & Rainer Maria Rilke - Put Our My Eyes & The Poet Speaks of Praising
Emily Moore-Auld Lang Syne
e.e. cummings - my father moved through dooms of love
Heather Christle - I Can't Swim & Reading Is Basically Impossible
Tennessee Williams - Blue Song
Jason Preu - Billy Jean King
Heinrich Heine & Frank Stanford & Robinson Jeffers
Vasko Popa - Give Me Back My Rags IV & A Forgetful Number
Lydia Davis - I'm Pretty Comfortable But I Could Be a Little More Comfortable
John Berryman - Dream Song 22 - Of 1826
Charles Bukowski - The Genius of the Crowd
Anne Carson - Glass, Irony & God
Mark Strand - The Continuous Life & Rafael Alberti - Song
Yehuda Amichai - Try To Remember Some Details
Carson McCullers - Stone Is Not Stone
Vladimir Nabokov - Bend Sinister
Wallace Stevens - The Man On The Dump