logo
episode-header-image
Apr 2022
14m 58s

Rita Dove — Eurydice, Turning

ON BEING STUDIOS
About this episode

How do you speak with your mother when she’s forgotten who you are? By turning to myth, it seems, and by holding gentleness with bewilderment, love with patience. Rita Dove lets us overhear a phone call, and in this listening, we hear lifetimes unfold.

Rita Dove was U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993–1995 and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004–2006. In 1987 she received the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her book Thomas and Beulah. She is currently Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Rita Dove’s poem, and invite you to sign up here for the latest from Poetry Unbound.

Up next
Mar 2025
Denise Duhamel — How It Will End
Have you ever gotten consumed by watching a couple argue in public and trying to decipher what’s really going on between them? Denise Duhamel’s deliciously entertaining “How It Will End” offers us that experience. Come for the voyeurism, stay for the awareness it stirs up. Why ar ... Show More
17m 2s
Feb 2025
Fady Joudah — [...]
Even though Palestinian-American Fady Joudah’s poem is sparingly titled “[...],” an ellipsis surrounded by brackets, this work itself is psychologically dense. Through crisp lines and language, it wrestles with the nature of human ambivalence — about things like fear, desire, dis ... Show More
12m 55s
Feb 2025
Benjamin Zephaniah — To Michael Menson
Benjamin Zephaniah’s urgent, imperative “To Michael Menson” was written when he was a poet in residence at a human rights barrister in England. His poem resonates with his repeated calls for justice for a murdered Black musician — not a justice that is gullible, impotent, or hope ... Show More
12m 52s
Recommended Episodes
Mar 2022
Mary Oliver — “I got saved by the beauty of the world.”
The late poet Mary Oliver is among the most beloved writers of modern times. Amidst the harshness of life, she found redemption in the natural world and in beautiful, precise language. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award among her many honors — and published nu ... Show More
49m 42s
Jun 2018
Elisa New on Poetry in America and Beyond
Elisa New believes anyone can have fun reading a poem. And that if you really want to have a blast, you shouldn't limit poetry to silent, solitary reading  - why not sing, recite, or perform it as has been the case for most of its history? The Harvard English professor and host o ... Show More
54m 10s
Jun 2024
“The End of Poetry” by Ada Limón
An impassioned plea, a yearning for connection — the poem U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón wrote when she says all language failed her. Take in Ada's reading of her piece, “The End of Poetry” — and hear her read more of her work in the On Being episode, “To Be Made Whole.”Ada Limón i ... Show More
1m 43s
Dec 2021
Valerie Mejer Caso : Edinburgh Notebook
Today’s guest, Mexican poet, painter, and translator Valerie Mejer Caso talks about her latest book, the bilingual publication of poetry, collage, and photography Edinburgh Notebook, translated by Michelle Gil-Montero for Action Books. What does it mean to write something both au ... Show More
1h 53m
May 2024
New From Poetry Unbound: A Series on Conflict and the Human Condition
A taste of a special mini-season of Poetry Unbound — bringing contemplative curiosity and the life-nurturing tether of poetry to the very present matter of conflict in our world. In this first offering, Pádraig introduces the intriguing idea of poems as teachers and ponders Wisła ... Show More
11m 9s
Aug 2022
Rediffusion - Virginia Woolf, Précoces esquisses
Durant l'été, le podcast Portraits vous invite au voyage. Cette semaine, rendez-vous dans le sud de l'Angleterre avec Virginia Woolf.  La jeune Virginia Woolf, qui grandit dans la riche bibliothèque de son père intellectuel, se mesure à l’écriture très tôt : fantaisies enfa ... Show More
8m 25s
Mar 2023
The Art of Noticing – and Appreciating – Our Dizzying World
“Poetry is the attempt to understand fully what is real, what is present, what is imaginable, what is feelable, and how can I loosen the grip of what I already know to find some new, changed relationship,” the poet Jane Hirshfield tells me. Through poetry, she says, “I know somet ... Show More
1h 20m
Sep 2022
the healing power of literature and poetry
This week I'm joined by my co-author of On Grief. The poet William Bortz and I talk about:The difficulty of putting difficult life experiences into words and the healing power of poetry to help us reflect on what's most important to us.William shares his story of becoming ... Show More
1h 10m
Mar 2024
Emily Wilson on Sappho ("Ode to Aphrodite")
This is the kind of conversation I dreamed about having when I began this podcast. Emily Wilson joins Close Readings to talk about Sappho's "Ode to Aphrodite," a poet and poem at the root of the lyric tradition in European poetry. You'll hear Emily read the poem in the Ancient Gr ... Show More
1h 27m