Episodes
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Lawson Fusao Inada. A third-generation Japanese American, his collections of poetry are Before the War: Poems as They Happened (1971); Legends from Camp (1992), winner of the American Book Award; Just Into/Nations (1996); and Drawing the Line (1997). Both jazz and the experience of internment are influences in Inadaâs writing. The section titles of his Legends from Camp reveal these ongoing concerns: Camp, Fresno, Jazz, Oregon, and Performance. Inada edited the anthology Only What We Carry: The Japanese Internment Experience (2000), a major contribution to the record of the Japanese American experience. He narrated the PBS documentaries Children of the Camps and Conscience and Constitution and is featured in the video What It Means to Be Free: A Video About Poetry and Japanese American Internment and the animated film Legends from Camp, made with his son Miles Inada. One of his poems is inscribed on a stone at the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Portland, Oregon. Source
This episode includes a reading of his poem, âHealing Gilaâ. You can find more poems like this in our Get Lit Anthology at www.getlitanthology.org .
âHealing Gilaâ
for The PeopleThe people don't mention it much.
It goes without saying,
it stays without sayingâ
that concentration camp
on their reservation.
And they avoid that massive site
as they avoid contaminationâ
that massive void
punctuated by crusted nails,
punctured pipes, crumbled
failings of foundations . . .
What else is there to say?
This was a lush land once,
graced by a gifted people
gifted with the wisdom
of rivers, seasons, irrigation.
The waters went flowing
through a network of canals
in the delicate workings
of balances and health . . .
What else is there to say?
Then came the nation.
Then came the death.
Then came the desert.
Then came the camp.
But the desert is not deserted.
It goes without saying,
it stays without sayingâ
wind, spirits, tumbleweeds, pain.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, librarian, and memorist, Toyo Suyemoto. During her early years, Suyemoto published under her husbandâs surname as Toyo Kawakami, Toyo S. Kawakami, and Toyo Suyemoto Kawakami, though later in life she preferred to be remembered only by her family name. Suyemoto was trained from an early age to be a poet. Her mother taught Japanese literature to her and her eight siblings as children, and also recited Japanese translations of Shakespeare. Suyemotoâs own work in haiku and tanka is the direct result of her motherâs influence, though she was also worked in conventional English lyric forms. Suyemoto herself began publishing poems in Japanese American community papers when she was a teenager, and she continued writing during her years of incarceration as a young woman in Topaz. During her lifetime, Suyemoto published a reference book for librarians, Acronyms in Education and the Behavioral Sciences, as well as poems in Yale Review, Common Ground and the anthology American Bungaku (1938). Interest in her work increased in the 1970s and 80s, however, and Suyemotoâs work soon appeared in the anthologies Speaking for Ourselves: American Ethnic Writing (1969), Ayumi: A Japanese American Anthology (1980), and Quiet Fire: A Historical Anthology of Asian American Poetry 1892-1970 (1996) as well as in the magazines Many Mountains Moving and Amerasia Journal. Four years after her death in 2003, Rutgers University Press published her memoir I Call to Remembrance: Toyo Suyemotoâs Years of Internment (2007). Source
This episode includes a reading of her poem, "Barracks Home". You can find more poems like this in our Get Lit Anthology at www.getlitanthology.org .
"Barracks Home"
This is our barracks, squatting on the ground,
Tar papered shacks, partitioned into rooms
By sheetrock walls, transmitting every sound
Of neighbor's gossip or the sweep of brooms
The open door welcomes the refugees,
And now at least there is no need to roam
Afar: here space enlarges memories
Beyond the bounds of camp and this new home.
The floor is carpeted with dust, wind-borne
Dry alkalai, patterned with insect feet,
What peace can such a place as this impart?
We can but sense, bewildered and forlorn,
That time, disrupted by the war from neat
Routines, must now adjust within the heart.Support the Show.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, memoirist, and editor, Garrett Hongo. His collections of poetry include Yellow Light (1982), The River of Heaven (1988), Coral Road: Poems (2011), and The Mirror Diary (2017). His poetry explores the experiences of Asian Americans in Anglo society, using lush imagery, narrative techniques, and myth to address both cultural alienation and the trials of immigrants, including the forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, as well as the anti Japanese sentiment today. Source
This episode includes a reading of an excerpt from his poem, âSomething Whispered in the Shakuhachiâ. You can find more poems like this in our Get Lit Anthology at www.getlitanthology.org .
âSomething Whispered in the Shakuhachiâ
No one knew the secret of my flutes,
and I laugh now
because some said I was enlightened.
But the truth is
Iâm only a gardener
who before the War
was a dirt farmer and learned
how to grow the bamboo
in ditches next to the fields,
how to leave things alone
and let the silt build up
until it was deep enough to stink
bad as night soil, bad
as the long, witch-grey
hair of a ghost.
No secret in that.
My land was no good, rocky,
and so dry I had to sneak
water from the whites,
hacksaw the locks off the chutes at night,
and blame Mexicans, Filipinos,
or else some wicked spirit
of a migrant, murdered in his sleep
by sheriffs and wanting revenge.
Even though they never believed me,
it didnât matterâno witnesses,
and my land was never thick with rice,
only the bamboo
growing lush as old melodies
and whispering like brush strokes
against the fine scroll of wind.
I found some string in the shed
or else took a few stalks
and stripped off their skins,
wove the fibers, the floss,
into cords I could bind
around the feet, ankles, and throats
of only the best bamboos.
I used an ice pick for an awl,
a fish knife to carve finger holes,
and a scythe to shape the mouthpiece.
I had my flutes.
*
When the War came,
I told myself I lost nothing.
My land, which was barren,
was not actually mine but leased
(we could not own property)
and the shacks didnât matter.
What did were the power lines nearby
and that sabotage was suspected.
What mattered to me
were the flutes I burned
in a small fire
by the bath house.
*
All through Relocation,
in the desert where they put us,
at night when the stars talked
and the sky came down
and drummed against the mesas,
I could hear my flutes
wail like fists of wind
whistling through the barracks.
I came out of Camp,
a blanket slung over my shoulder,
found land next to this swamp,
planted strawberries and beanplants,
planted the dwarf pines and tended them,
got rich enough to quit
and leave things alone,
let the ditches clog with silt again
and the bamboo grow thick as history....Support the Show.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Layli Long Soldier. She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory (2010) and the full-length collection Whereas (2017). She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and poetry editor at Kore Press; in 2012, her participatory installation, Whereas We Respond, was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Source
This episode includes a reading of her poem, âResolution (6)â featured in our 2023 Get Lit Anthology.
âResolution (6)â
I too urge the President to acknowledge the wrongs of the United States against Indian tribes in the history of the United States in order to bring healing to this land although healing this land is not dependent never has been upon this President meaning tribal nations and the people themselves are healing this land its waters with or without Presidential acknowledgement they act upon this right without apologyâ
To speak to law enforcement
these Direct Action Principles
be really clear always ask
have been painstakingly drafted
who what when where why
at behest of the local leadership
e.g. Officer, my name is _________
from Standing Rock
please explain
and are the guidelines
the probable cause for stopping me
for the Oceti Sakowin camp
you may ask
I acknowledge a plurality of ways
does that seem reasonable to you
to resist oppression
donât give any further info
*
People ask why do you bring up
we are Protectors
so many other issues itâs because
we are peaceful and prayerful
these issues have been ongoing...
Read more in our Get Lit Anthology at www.getlitanthology.org .Support the Show.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, writer, and activist, Alice Walker. Her books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four childrenâs books, and volumes of essays and poetry. Source
This episode includes a reading of her poem, âHow Poems are Made / A Discredited Viewâ featured in our 2021, 2022, and 2023 Get Lit Anthology.
âHow Poems are Made / A Discredited Viewâ
Letting go
In order to hold one
I gradually understand
How poems are made.There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
Of the too full cup
And runs and hides
Its too full self
In shame.I gradually comprehend
How poems are made.
To the upbeat flight of memories.
The flagged beats of the running
Heart.I understand how poems are made.
They are the tears
That season the smile.
The stiff-neck laughter
That crowds the throat.
The leftover love.
I know how poems are made.There is a place the loss must go.
There is a place the gain must go.
The leftover love.Support the Show.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Claude McKay. He was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a prominent literary movement of the 1920s. His work ranged from vernacular verse celebrating peasant life in Jamaica to poems that protested racial and economic inequities. His philosophically ambitious fiction, including tales of Black life in both Jamaica and America, addresses instinctual/intellectual duality, which McKay found central to the Black individualâs efforts to cope in a racist society. He is the author of The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Poetry and Prose (1973), The Dialectic Poetry of Claude McKay (1972), Selected Poems (1953), Harlem Shadows (1922), Constab Ballads (1912), and Songs of Jamaica (1912), among many other books of poetry and prose. McKay has been recognized for his intense commitment to expressing the challenges faced by Black Americans and admired for devoting his art and life to social protest, and his audience continues to expand. Source
This episode includes a reading of his poem, âI Know My Soulâ featured in our 2022 and 2023 Get Lit Anthology.
âI Know My Soulâ
I plucked my soul out of its secret place,And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, Iâm comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, filmmaker, educator and performer, Fatimah Asghar. Their work has appeared in many journals, including POETRY Magazine, Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed Reader, The Margins, The Offing, Academy of American Poets and many others. Their work has been featured on new outlets like PBS, NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others. In 2011, they created a spoken word poetry group in Bosnia and Herzegovina called REFLEKS while on a Fulbright studying theater in post-genocidal countries. They are a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman Fellow. They are the writer and co-creator of Brown Girls, an Emmy-Nominated web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Their debut book of poems, If They Come For Us, was released One World/ Random House, August 2018. Along with Safia Elhillo, they are the editor of Halal If You Hear Me, an anthology that celebrates Muslim writers who are also women, queer, gender nonconforming and/or trans. Source
This episode includes a reading of their poem, âIf They Come for Usâ featured in our 2023 Get Lit Anthology.
âIf They Come for Usâ
these are my people & I findthem on the street & shadow
through any wild all wild
my people my people
a dance of strangers in my blood
the old womanâs sari dissolving to wind
bindi a new moon on her forehead
I claim her my kin & sew
the star of her to my breast
the toddler dangling from stroller
hair a fountain of dandelion seed
at the bakery I claim them too
the Sikh uncle at the airport
who apologizes for the pat
down the Muslim man who abandons
his car at the traffic light drops
to his knees at the call of the Azan
& the Muslim man who drinks
good whiskey at the start of maghrib
the lone khala at the park
pairing her kurta with crocs
my people my people I canât be lost
when I see you my compass
is brown & gold & blood
my compass a Muslim teenager
snapback & high-tops gracing
the subway platform
Mashallah I claim them all
my country is made
in my peopleâs image
if they come for you they
come for me too in the dead
of winter a flock of
aunties step out on the sand
their dupattas turn to ocean
a colony of uncles grind their palms
& a thousand jasmines bell the air
my people I follow you like constellations
we hear glass smashing the street
& the nights opening dark
our names this countryâs wood
for the fire my people my people
the long years weâve survived the long
years yet to come I see you map
my sky the light your lantern long
ahead & I follow I follow
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet and writer, Carolyn ForchĂ©. Coiner of the term âpoetry of witness,â she is frequently characterized as a political poet; she calls for poetry to invest in the âsocial.â She published her first book of poetry, Gathering the Tribes, in 1975. ForchĂ© received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship after translating the work of Salvadoran-exiled poet Claribel AlgerĂa in 1977; the fellowship enabled her to work as a human rights advocate in El Salvador. She has published five books of poetry and the 2019 memoir What You Have Heard Is True. Her work is often described as âdevastatingâ due to its searing honesty and unflinching accounting of travesties. ForchĂ© has been given various awards in recognition of her work on behalf of human rights and the preservation of culture and memory.
This episode includes a reading of her poem, âThe Boatmanâ featured in our 2023 Get Lit Anthology.
âThe Boatmanâ
We were thirty-one souls all, he said, on the gray-sick of seain a cold rubber boat, rising and falling in our filth.
By morning this didnât matter, no land was in sight,
all were soaked to the bone, living and dead.
We could still float, we said, from war to war.
What lay behind us but ruins of stone piled on ruins of stone?
City called âmother of the poorâ surrounded by fields
of cotton and millet, city of jewelers and cloak-makers,
with the oldest church in Christendom and the Sword of Allah.
If anyone remains there now, he assures, they would be utterly alone.
There is a hotel named for it in Rome two hundred meters
from the Piazza di Spagna, where you can have breakfast under
the portraits of film stars. There the staff cannot do enough for you.
But I am talking nonsense again, as I have since that night
we fetched a child, not ours, from the sea, drifting face-
down in a life vest, its eyes taken by fish or the birds above us.
After that, Aleppo went up in smoke, and Raqqa came under a rain
of leaflets warning everyone to go. Leave, yes, but go where?
We lived through the Americans and Russians, through Americans
again, many nights of death from the clouds, mornings surprised
to be waking from the sleep of death, still unburied and alive
but with no safe place. Leave, yes, we obey the leaflets, but go where?
To the sea to be eaten, to the shores of Europe to be caged?
To camp misery and camp remain here. I ask you then, where?
You tell me you are a poet. If so, our destination is the same.
I find myself now the boatman, driving a taxi at the end of the world.
I will see that you arrive safely, my friend, I will get you there.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet and writer, Joy HarÂjo. She is the 23rd Poet LauÂreÂate of the UnitÂed States and a memÂber of the Mvskoke Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv (HickÂoÂry Ground). She is only the secÂond poet to be appointÂed a third term as U.S. Poet Laureate. HarÂjo began writÂing poetÂry as a memÂber of the UniÂverÂsiÂty of New Mexicoâs Native stuÂdent orgaÂniÂzaÂtion, the Kiva Club, in response to Native empowÂerÂment moveÂments. HarÂjo is the author of nine books of poetÂry, includÂing her most recent, the highÂly acclaimed An AmerÂiÂcan SunÂrise (2019), which was a 2020 OklaÂhoma Book Award WinÂner; ConÂflict ResÂoÂluÂtion for Holy Beings (2015), which was shortÂlistÂed for the GrifÂfin Prize and named a Notable Book of the Year by the AmerÂiÂcan Library AssoÂciÂaÂtion; and In Mad Love and War (1990), which received an AmerÂiÂcan Book Award and the DelÂmore Schwartz MemoÂrÂiÂal Award. HarÂjo perÂforms with her saxÂoÂphone and flutes, solo and with her band, the Arrow DynamÂics Band, and preÂviÂousÂly with Joy HarÂjo and PoetÂic JusÂtice. HarÂjo has proÂduced sevÂen award-winÂning music albums includÂing WindÂing Through the Milky Way, for which she was awardÂed a NAMÂMY for Best Female Artist of the year. Source
This episode includes a reading of her poem, âPerhaps the World Ends Hereâ featured in our 2024 Get Lit Anthology.
âPerhaps the World Ends Hereâ
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.Support the Show.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, writer, and scholar, Lateef McLeod. He published his first poetry book entitled A Declaration of A Body Of Love in 2010 chronicling his life as a black man with a disability and tackling various topics on family, dating, religion, spirituality, his national heritage and sexuality. He also published another poetry book entitled Whispers of Krip Love, Shouts of Krip Revolution this year in 2020. He currently is writing a novel tentatively entitled The Third Eye Is Crying. In 2019 he started a podcast entitled Black Disabled Men Talk with co-hosts Leroy Moore, Keith Jones, and Ottis Smith. Source
This episode includes a reading by Mason Granger of McLeod's poem, âI Am Too Pretty For Some Ugly Lawsâ featured in our 2021 and 2023 Get Lit Anthology.
âI Am Too Pretty For Some Ugly Lawsâ
I am not suppose to be here
in this body,
here
speaking to you.
My mere presence
of erratic moving limbs
and drooling smile
used to be scrubbed
off the public pavement.
Ugly laws used to be
on many U.S. citiesâ law books,
beginning in Chicago in 1867,
stating that âany person who is
diseased, maimed, mutilated,
or in any way deformed
so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object,
or an improper person to be allowed
in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares,
or public places in this city,
shall not therein or thereon
expose himself to public view,
under the penalty of $1 for each offense.â
Any person who looked like me
was deemed disgusting
and was locked away
from the eyes of the upstanding citizens.
I am too pretty for some Ugly Laws,
Too smooth to be shut in.
Too smart and eclectic
for any box you put me in.
My swagger is too bold
to be swept up in these public streets.
You can stare at me all you want.
No cop will buss in my head
and carry me away to an institution.
No doctor will diagnose me
a helpless invalid with an incurable disease.
No angry mob with clubs and torches
will try to run me out of town.
Whatever you do,
my roots are rigid
like a hundred-year-old tree.
I will stay right here
to glare at your ugly face too.Support the Show.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, W.E.B. Du Bois. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, civil rights activist, and historian. Throughout his career, Du Bois was a founder and editor of many groundbreaking civil rights organizations and literary publications, such as The Niagara Movement and its Moon Illustrated Weekly and The Horizon periodicals, as well as the hugely influential National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its monthly magazine The Crisis. An adamant socialist and peace activist, his writing for these journals was pointedly anti-capitalist, anti-war, and pro-womenâs suffrage, on top of his core pursuit of the dismantling of systemic racism and discrimination. Possessing a large and hugely influential body of work, Du Bois is perhaps most notably the writer of the authoritative essay collection The Souls of Black Folks (1903) and his monumental work Black Reconstruction in America 1860â1880 (1935). Du Bois never stopped fighting for and evolving his beliefs, joining the Community Party at the age of 93.
This episode includes a reading by Austin Antoine of Du Bois' poem, âThe Song of Smokeâ featured in our 2023 Get Lit Anthology.
âThe Song of Smokeâ
I am the Smoke KingI am black!
I am swinging in the sky,
I am wringing worlds awry;
I am the thought of the throbbing mills,
I am the soul of the soul-toil kills,
Wraith of the ripple of trading rills;
Up Iâm curling from the sod,
I am whirling home to God;
I am the Smoke King
I am black.
I am the Smoke King,
I am black!
I am wreathing broken hearts,
I am sheathing loveâs light darts;
Inspiration of iron times
Wedding the toil of toiling climes,
Shedding the blood of bloodless crimesâ
Lurid lowering âmid the blue,
Torrid towering toward the true,
I am the Smoke King,
I am black.
I am the Smoke King,
I am black!
I am darkening with song,
I am hearkening to wrong!
I will be black as blackness canâ
The blacker the mantle, the mightier the man!
For blackness was ancient ere whiteness began.
I am daubing God in night,
I am swabbing Hell in white:
I am the Smoke King
I am black.
I am the Smoke King
I am black!
I am cursing ruddy morn,
I am hearsing hearts unborn:
Souls unto me are as stars in a night,
I whiten my black menâI blacken my white!
Whatâs the hue of a hide to a man in his might?
Hail! great, gritty, grimy handsâ
Sweet Christ, pity toiling lands!
I am the Smoke King
I am black.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Paige Lewis. is the author of Space Struck (Sarabande Books, 2019). Their poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2017, Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere.
This episode includes a reading of her poem, âThe Moment I Saw a Pelican Devour.â Find more poems by Lewis in our Get Lit Anthology.
"The Moment I Saw a Pelican Devour"
a seagullâwings swallowing wingsâI learned
that a miracle is anything that God forgot
to forbid. So when you tell me that saints
are splintered into bone bits smaller than
the freckles on your wrist and that each speck
is sold to the rich, I know to marvel at this
and not the fact that these same saints are still
wholly intact and fresh-faced in their Plexiglas
tomb displays. We holy our own fragments
when we canâtrepanation patients wear their
skull spirals as amulets, mothers frame the dried
foreskin of their firstborn, and Iâve seen you
swirl my name on your tongue like a thirst pebble.
Still, I try to hold on to nothing for fear of being
crushed by what can be taken because sometimes
not even our mouths belong to us. Listen, in
the early 1920s, women were paid to paint radium
onto watch dials so that men wouldnât have to ask
the time in dark alleys. They were told it was safe,
told to lick their brushes into sharp points. These
women painted their nails, their faces, and judged
whose skin shined brightest. They coated their
teeth so their boyfriends could see their bites
with the lights turned down. The miracle here
is not that these women swallowed light. Itâs that,
when their skin dissolved and their jaws fell off,
the Radium Corporation claimed they all died
from syphilis. Itâs that youâre telling me about
the dull slivers of dead saints, while these
women are glowing beneath our feet.Support the Show.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Kimiko Hahn. She is the author of ten books of poems, including: Foreign Bodies (W. W. Norton, 2020);The Unbearable Heart (Kaya, 1996); and Earshot (Hanging Loose Press, 1992). As part of her service to the CUNY community, she initiated a Chapbook Festival that became an annual event co-sponsored by major literary organizations. Since then, she has added chapbooks to her publication list: Write it!, Brittle Process, Brood, Ragged Evidence, A Field Guide to the Intractable, Boxes with Respect, The Cryptic Chamber, and Resplendent Slug. In 2017, she and Tamiko Beyer collaborated on the chapbook Dovetail. Hahn takes pleasure in the challenges of collaboration: writing text for film (Coal Fields, 1985 experimental documentary by Bill Brand, Ainât Nuthinâ But a She-Thing 1995 MTV special, and Everywhere at Once 2008 film based on Peter Lindberghâs still photos and narrated by Jeanne Moreau); writing poems for visual arts (2016 art-book poetics and 2017 photograph-broadsides with Lauren Henkin).
This episode includes a reading of her poem, âThe Dream of Shojiâ featured in our 2022, 2023, and 2024 Get Lit Anthology.
âThe Dream of Shojiâ
How to say milk? How to say sand, snow, sow,
linen, cloud, cocoon, or albino?
How to say page or canvas or rice balls?
Trying to recall Japanese, I blank out:
it's clear I know forgetting. Mother, tell me
what to call that paper screen that slides the interior in?Support the Show.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, essayist, and fiction writer, Elisa M. Gonzalez. Her work appears in the New Yorker and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale University and the New York University M.F.A. program, she has received fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Rolex Foundation, and the U.S. Fulbright Program. She is the recipient of a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writerâs Award. Source
This episode includes a reading of her poem, "Failed Essay on Privilege" featured in our 2022 and 2023 Get Lit Anthology.
"Failed Essay on Privilege"
I came from something popularly known as ânothingâand in the coming I got a lot.
My parents didnât speak money, didnât speak college.
StillâI went to Yale.
For a while I tried to condemn.
I wrote Let me introduce you to evil.
Still, I was a guest there, I made myself at home.
And I know a fine shoe when I see one.
And I know to be sincerely sorry for those peopleâs problems.
I know to want nothing more
than it would be so nice to have
and I confess Iâll never hate what Iâve been given
as much as I wish I could.
Still I thought I of all people understood Aristotle: what is and isnât the good life . . .
because, I wrote, privilege is an aggressive form of amnesia . . .
I left a house with no heat. I left the habit of hunger. I left a room
I shared with seven brothers and sisters I also left.
Even the good is regrettable, or at least sometimes
should be regretted
yet to hate myself is not to absolve her.
I paid so much
for wisdom, and look at all of this, look at all I haveâ
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of international touring Chicana poet and teaching artist, AngĂ©lica MarĂa Aguilera. She comes from a mixed family of immigrants and uses spoken word to rewrite the narrative of what it means to be Mexican, woman, and American. Her work has appeared in publications such as Button Poetry, the Breakbeat Poets Anthology LatiNext among others. Aguilera is the author of "Dolorosa" on Pizza Pie Press and "America As She." Source
This episode includes a reading of her poem, âA Star Spanglish Bannerâ featured in our 2022/23 Get Lit Anthology.
"A Star Spanglish Banner"
Oh say can you seeMiguel wants to learn the Star-Spangled Banner.
Miguel was the last fourth grader to migrate
into my English as a second language course,
and is the first to raise his hand for every question.
But Miguel views letters in a different way than most.
Because there are a lot of words in Spanish
that do not exist in English,
he learns how to pack them in a suitcase and forget.
Because many phrases translate backwards
when crossing over from Spanish to English,
throughout the whole song,
he tends to say things in the wrong order.
So when I ask him to sing the second verse,
it sounds like
And the rocket's red glare
We watched our home
Bursting in air
It gave proof to the night
that the flag was still theirs
They say music is deeply intertwined with how we remember.
Miguel hears the marimba and learns the word home,
hears his mother's accent being mocked and learns the words shame,
hears his mother's weeping and learns the word sacrifice.
He asks, what does the word America mean?
What does the word dream mean?
I say two words with the same meaning are what we call synonyms.
You could say America is a dream,
something we all feel silly for believing in.
He says, teach me.
Teach me how to say bandera.
Teach me how to say star.
Teach me how to hide my country behind the consonants
that do not get pronounced.
Miss Angelica,
teach the letters to just flee from my lips like my parents,
and build a word out of nothing.
In my tongue, we do not pronounce the letter H.
Home is not a sound my voice knows how to make.
It's strange what our memories hold on to.
It's strange what makes it over the border
to the left side of the brain,
what our minds do not let us forget,
how an accent is just a mother tongue
that refuses to let her child go.
The language barrier is a 74 mile wall
lodged in the back of Miguel's throat,
the bodies of words so easily lost in the translation.
Oh, say for whom does that
star-spangled banner yet wave
Give back the land to the brave
and let us make a home for us free.
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In this episode of Get Lit Minute, we spotlight the accomplished author, poet and educator, José Olivarez.
José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is the co-host of the poetry podcast, The Poetry Gods. In 2018, he was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. In 2019, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. SourceSupport the Show.
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In this episode of Get Lit Minute, we spotlight the accomplished writer and poet, Rigoberto GonzĂĄlez.
Rigoberto GonzĂĄlez was born in Bakersfield, California and raised in MichoacĂĄn, Mexico. He earned a BA from the University of California, Riverside and graduate degrees from University of California, Davis and Arizona State University. He is the author of several poetry books, including The Book of Ruin (2019); Unpeopled Eden (2013), winner of a Lambda Literary Award; and So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks (1999), a National Poetry Series selection. He has also written two bilingual childrenâs books, Antonioâs Card (2005) and Soledad Sigh-Sighs (2003); the novel Crossing Vines (2003), winner of ForeWord Magazineâs Fiction Book of the Year Award; a memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006), which received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; and the book of stories Men without Bliss (2008). He has also written for The National Book Critics Circle's blog, Critical Mass; and the Poetry Foundation's blog Harriet. The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle, and the PEN/Voelcker Award, GonzĂĄlez writes a Latino book column for the El Paso Times of Texas. He is contributing editor for Poets & Writers, on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and on the Advisory Circle of Con Tinta, a collective of Chicano/Latino activist writers. GonzĂĄlez is a professor of English and director of the MFA Program in creative writing at Rutgers UniversityâNewark. He lives in New York City. Source
This episode includes a reading of his poem, âBirthrightâ featured in our 2022/23 Get Lit Anthology.
"Birthright"
in the villageof your birth
cuts a wall
bleeds a border
in the heat
you cannot swim
in the rain
you cannot climb
in the north
you cannot be
cuts a paper
cuts a law
cuts a finger
finger bleeds
baby hungers
baby feeds
baby needs
you cannot go
you cannot buy
you cannot bring
baby grows
baby knows
bordercrossing
seasons bring
winter border
summer border
falls a border
border spring
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Li-Young Lee. He is the author of The Undressing (W. W. Norton, 2018); Behind My Eyes (W. W. Norton, 2008); Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (BOA Editions, 1990); and Rose (BOA Editions, 1986). Source
This episode includes a reading of his poem, âA Storyâ featured in our 2023 Get Lit Anthology.
"A Story"
Sad is the man who is asked for a storyand can't come up with one.
His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba. A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.
In a room full of books in a world
of stories, he can recall
not one, and soon, he thinks, the boy
will give up on his father.
Already the man lives far ahead, he sees
the day this boy will go. Don't go!
Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more!
You love the spider story. You laugh at the spider.
Let me tell it!
But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,
the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint?
But the boy is here. Please, Baba, a story?
It is an emotional rather than logical equation,
an earthly rather than heavenly one,
which posits that a boy's supplications
and a father's love add up to silence.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Alma Flor Ada. She has devoted her life to advocacy for peace by promoting a pedagogy oriented to personal realization and social jusÂtice. Alma Florâs numerous childrenâs books of poetry, narrative, folklore, and non-fiction have received prestigious awards. Her professional books for educators, include: A Magical Encounter: Latino Childrenâs LitÂerature in the Classroom and, co-authored with F. Isabel Campoy: Authors in the Classroom: A Transformative Education Process, Initial Spanish Literacy: Strategies for Young Learners and EstĂĄ linda la mar: Para comprender y usar la poesĂa en la clase. Source
This episode includes a reading of her poem, âBilingualâ featured in our 2022-23 Get Lit Anthology.
âBilingualâ
Because I speak SpanishI can listen to my grandmotherâs stories
and say familia, madre, amor.
Because I speak English
I can learn from my teacher
and say I love school.
Because I am bilingual
I can read libros and books,
I have amigos and friends,
I enjoy canciones and songs,
juegos and games,
and have twice as much fun.
And someday,
because I speak two languages,
I will be able to do twice as much,
to help twice as many people
and be twice as good in what I do.
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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Agha Shahid Ali. His poetry collections include Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals (W. W. Norton, 2003), Rooms Are Never Finished (2001), and Bone Sculpture (1972). He is also the author of T. S. Eliot as Editor (1986), translator of The Rebel's Silhouette: Selected Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1992), and editor of Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English (2000). Source
This episode includes a reading of his poem, âStationeryâ featured in our 2022-23 Get Lit Anthology.
âStationeryâ
The moon did not become the sun.It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.
Write to me.
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