Soapbox Where I Can Shout It Podcast

A track-by-track rereview of The Dead Weather’s second album Sea of Cowards for its 15 birthday, plus a little reflection on collecting, compulsion, and kick-ass music. Read the essay version here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com

National Poetry Month 2025 comes to a conclusion with a predicable Billy Collins double-shot (“The Trouble with Poetry” and “Introduction to Poetry”), Lawrence Ferlinghetti (“A Coney Island of the Mind, 6”), and an original with a name so ridiculous in the context of this episode I can’t bear to add it to the show notes.Thank you listeners for following along and celebrating poetry with me these last 30 days. The podcast will continue though at a slower pace, stay tuned! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com

Three poems by my first poetry teacher: Terry Hermsen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com

Okay, there’s a lot to this one. Think back to April 8th’s episode, the loosely tied trio, this is one of those days. Last week, I was thinking about The Hold Steady, specifically because of their album Separation Sunday because it was Easter (I wrote about that one, too). Anyway, those guys rock, and they have a different album that name checks John Berryman a number of times, John Berryman is a rock and roller’s poet, and that got me thinking on poetry about rock and roll. This was on my mind for at least a week, I was trying to remember the name of a book my mentor at University of San Francisco, Bruce Synder (did an episode on Bruce, too) recommended knowing I was both a poetry guy (obviously) and rock head, too. Good news, readers, I finally remembered the book: Mystery Train by David Wojahn. Bad news, readers: I have long sold my copy of that book to a second-hand store and interlibrary loans only happen so fast.Seemingly, none of Wojahn’s rock poems are online, but Poetry Foundation dot com has a number of other poems, including “Elegy for James Wright.” James Wright is a wonderful Ohio poet who I was quite fond of chasing a recommendation by a poetry mentor from Otterbein, Terry Hermsen. I’ll read him on the pod tomorrow, but for now, here’s Wojahn eleugizing Wright and two poems by Wright, “A Lazy Poem on Saturday Evening” and “Just Before a Thunder Shower” that capture this moment in the midwest nicely. As for the Monday morning commute, well, Saturday will be here soon enough. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com

Ben joins me to talk briefly about one of my all-time favorite poets, Francisco X. Alarcón. We read “Ode to my Shoes” and “Words Are Birds.” Alarcón’s work, both for grown-ups and children, reveals something about poetry which is so spcieal to me that we kind of hear in the impromptu poetry-by-way-of-playing-choo-choo-trains in the basement with Ben, that poetry, an important tool for capturing the imagination, is not limited by intellect, skill, or age. Ben digs it. I dig it. You can too! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com

Another late nite episode. In honor (?!?) the heaviness of my own eyelids, the utter lack of inspiration, two songs of going to bed, by two classics, from two perspectives occasionally at odds, the wakeful grown up in the anxious “To Sleep” by John Keats and the excitable kiddos, as was Ben this evening, in “The Children’s Hour” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com

This evening I was honored to participate in the ODU World Student Club’s second annual Global Gala, where I read “To a Young Poet” and “To Our Land” by Mahmoud Darwish, and “A Palestinian Might Say” by Naomi Shihab Nye. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com

Yesterday the immortal Bard shared a birthday with sweet Desi, so today we celebrate William S. with Sonnet 18 and I get gross and sentimental about Rachel. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com

A sad poem about my boyhood dog, Maggie, “Puppies on Holiday” and a newer poem called “Dog tracks in the tall grass.” A return to Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs: “The Poetry Teacher” and “Percy Speaks While I am Doing Taxes”Dog tracks in the tall grassDog tracks in the tall grassserpentine reverie; loveletter – not from sky toground, too many poemswritten with green & dewtipped blades tickling thepoet’s neck gazing up“oh what majesty” theymight say, “oh what abyssdoes hang above” the lastword on those green pasturesis in Leaves of Grass. Forthat matter, too many poemsare written of the sky,meadows busily sequesteringmileage on library shelves.What does the sky writeupon the ground? Is herhandwriting two long-bodieddachshunds, dog tracks inthe tall grass spelling outwhat autumn leaves willsome months from now,what shadow-script threemeadowlarks might paintwhile listing breeze-to-breezeon their way to taller trees,branches unbothered bythe barking of neighbor dogsor gnashing cats, the occasionalraccoon scuttled deeperinto town by a developer’scareless greed. The greatmowing has commenced,I think, hand dumblyclinging leash. As if acul-de-sac was someprophesy and not justthe harbinger of newhouses, more dogs tobark, more garage lightposts for birds to nestbehind, more porch stepsfor cats to holler from.This is to say it is allhappening, quietly,but with no conspiracy,just. Time. July willcontinue tomorrow, atleast until August’s borninto September, and soon, and so on. This, untilthe dog tracks spell someother psalm on the grasslying in wait, underneathsome loosely packed snow. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com

Celebrating some Emily Dickinson just for fun. We read “Tell all the truth but tell it slant”, “A Bird, came down the walk” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. Great stuff, enjoy, and enjoy the brevity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tonyisapoet.substack.com