An episode inspired by two Dalton Day poems: "Love Poem" and "An Understanding" (from the chapbook Overlay).

All poems referenced in the episode (in order of appearance):

YOU SEE I WANT A LOT

You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything: The darkness that comes with every infinite fall And the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing And are raised to the rank of prince By the slippery ease of their light judgments

But what you love to see are faces That do work and feel thirst…

You have not grown old, And it is not too late to dive Into your increasing depths where life Calmly gives out its own secret.

-Rilke

LOVE POEM

Every now & then like a gazillion cicadas dig their way out of the dark earth & they are screaming against the air, against the very thing they have clawed their way into, & the time we call summer is stitched with this terror, this gratitude for knowing something will happen & still having some sense of awe when it actually does, & what I'm saying is, I feel like that, even when I don't.

-Dalton Day

AN UNDERSTANDING

Because howling is scary we begin to cover our eyes.

Because covering our eyes is scary we begin to go underground.

Because going underground is scary we begin to talk to each other. Because talking to each other is scary we begin to howl.

One time, I knew your name. I said it to you every night. It sounded like AOOOOOOOOO AOOOOOOOOO AOOOOOOOOO.

-Dalton Day

STOP THINKING AND END YOUR PROBLEMS

How do I know that it’s “good”? I can’t compare it to anything. I think it’s largely unconscious, feels like a collective decision, not a chain of events. I think you just have to let it wash over you, like pain. I think of it as a very dramatic form of giving up. (It is pitch black outside, not the colour black but rather a complete absence of light.) I think it’s related to how you pick up your friends’ speech patterns. But more unsettling and intense. I just think it’s weird to sit around waiting to develop a sixth sense. I think it’s fooling yourself into thinking you’re thinking. I think it’s philosophical and physical and have not gotten a good answer.

Everything reminds me of it, but I don’t know what “it” is.

-Elisa Gabbert (remixed version | full poem)

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LINKS:

Saved By A Poem (Kim Rosen)

Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (David Abram)

The Wheels On The Bus (Noodle & Pals Version)

Drop It Like It's Hot (Snoop Dogg)

Brown Cicada Being Made To Scream By A Human Animal

Going Sane (Adam Phillips)

Dvořák: Gypsy Melodies, Op. 55, B. 104 - IV. Songs My Mother Taught Me (Arr. Soltani For Solo Cello and Cello Ensemble)

I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl (Nina Simone: Live Version | album track)

Transcript

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TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE (in alphabetical order):

Abram, David; Appetite; Awakenings; Becoming Animal; Being; Buddhism; Carnal Knowledge; Cicadas; Cloned Voices; Consciousness; Creativity; Dalton Day; Death; Desire; Disappointment; Disconnection; Dreams; Ego; Elisa Gabbert; Emergence; Emotion; Empathy; Enlightenment; Essence; Existentialism; Expression; Fear; Fulfillment; Gwyneth Paltrow; Healing; Hot Yoga Teachers; Human Experience; Identity; Imagination; Indigenous Tribes; Inevitability; Insights; Instinct; Intellectual Curiosity; Introspection; Joy; Knowledge; Language; Learning; Liberation; Life; Longing; Love; Love Poem; Mastery; Meaning-Making; Memory; Misfits; Music; Nature; Neurons; Nursery Rhymes; Pain; Passion; Perception; Philosophy; Poem; Poetry; Practice; Psychoanalysis; Psychotherapy; Reciprocity; Reflection; Relationships; Resonance; Rilke, Rainer Maria; Rituals; Rosen, Kim; Samsara; Self-Awareness; Self-Improvement; Shamanism; Sheffield; Social Dynamics; Somatic Memory; South-East Asia; Speechify; Spiritual; Suffering; Symbolism; Terror; Therapy; Thought; Transformation; Transcendence; Understanding; Utterance; Validation; Vision; Voice; Wanting; Workshop; Yoga; Zen.

EPISODE 32: Am I Wasting My Life? Are YOU Wasting Your Life? (James Wright's Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota)

Poetry KoanBy Free Association RadioJun 11, 2020