[Music intro]

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: To say 2022 has been a banner year for Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award finalist, Diane Seuss, is an understatement. Seuss won the L.A. Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry for her collection frank: sonnets, and the year isn’t half over! As the PEN judges said of this work: “[h]er ability to radically associate and tell stories extends the [traditional sonnet] far beyond each poem’s initiating moment. The evolution of the sonnet is intertwined with the evolution of self…” Seuss, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other recognitions, taught at Michigan’s Kalamazoo College from 1988 through 2016.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is [My favorite scent is my own funk] by Diane Seuss.

[My favorite scent is my own funk]

My favorite scent is my own funk, my least favorite scent, other
people’s funk, and this, my friends, is why we cannot have nice
things. I value the advice I give others but I don’t like the advice
that comes my way unless it reflects what I would have done anyway.
You know how it goes. I like how my voice sounds in the car
when I sing along with Earth, Wind & Fire but no one else can
pull it off, no one. My bad acting, when I acted, was charming.
I intended it to be bad as a comment on the state of theater
in the 20th century. On days I don’t have to see anyone I don’t brush
my hair. I don’t wear underwear or shoes or chemical portions meant 
to extinguish my funk, and in these times, I am nearly perfectly happy.
If you’re me, it’s luxurious to go unobserved. When asked the inevitable
questions, whether I’d wear eyeliner if I was the last person on earth,
no, hell no. Eyeliner is war. When I’m alone, I lay my weapons down.

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 is available wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

[Music outro]

• Back to Poems on Air: Episode 58



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