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LYNNE THOMPSON: Hello! My name is Lynne Thompson, Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles and I’m so happy to welcome listeners to this installment of Poems on Air, a podcast supported by the Los Angeles Public Library. Every week, I’ll present the work of poets I admire, poets who you should know, and poets who have made a substantial and inimitable contribution to the art and craft of poetry.
LYNNE THOMPSON: There are some people who encourage and inspire with such a deft hand that one might miss the gift that’s being given. Such a person is David St. John. St. John currently teaches in the Ph.D. Program in Creative Writing and Literature and is the Chair of English at the University of Southern California and is the author and/or editor of numerous collections of poetry, most recently, The Last Troubadour. He is the recipient of the Prix de Rome Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors. St. John also serves as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Long before I suspected I might have written the poems that would comprise my first collection, Beg No Pardon, David simply said “...it’s time for you to have a book...”. That was it. The number of persons he’s given similar prescient support to cannot, I believe, be counted. On their behalf as well as my own, we give him abiding gratitude.
LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is "Coast Poppies" by David St. John
Coast Poppies
The sea air blues the sheer cliffs
Rising up from the shaggy foam below
To these narrow terraces of blowing orange masks
Tiny paper faces nodding on their stalks
& as we walk the snaking muddy trail above
Against the rocks along the fringe of Little Sur I want to gather those fields of paper bells
Swaying like fragile Japanese lanterns yes
Just gather as we pass a whole basket
Of crenelated orange lips into my arms
& bury you in them until every move you’d make Would rustle like this summer breeze
& the soft laughter of poppies
LYNNE THOMPSON: The Los Angeles Poet Laureate was created as a joint program between the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Public Library and this podcast will be available on the Library’s website. In the future, episodes will be available on iTunes, Google, and Spotify. Thanks for listening!
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- Back to Poems on Air: Episode 18
DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a certified or verbatim transcript, but rather represents only the context of the class or meeting, subject to the inherent limitations of real-time captioning. The primary focus of real-time captioning is general communication access and as such this document is not suitable, acceptable, nor is it intended for use in any type of legal proceeding. Transcript provided by the author.