Transcript: Poems on Air, Episode 30 - Janice Harrington

[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: As we approach the end of October, I note a chill in the air, pumpkins in windows, and cos-tumes for sale in anticipation of Halloween. Poets have long been inspired by ghosts and to-day’s poem is one of those. Shaking the Grass is the last poem in Janice Harrington’s book Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone which won the Kate Tufts Award from Claremont Graduate University in 2007. Harrington is a former Librarian, the author of nu-merous childrens’ books, and currently teaches in the creative writing program at the Univer-sity of Illinois.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is "Shaking the Grass" by Janice Harrington.

Shaking the Grass

Evening, and all my ghosts come back to me
like red banty hens to catalpa limbs
and chicken-wired hutches, clucking, clucking,
and falling, at last, into their head-under-wing sleep.

I think about the field of grass I lay in once,
between Omaha and Lincoln. It was summer, I think.
The air smelled green, and wands of windy green, a-sway,
a-sway, swayed over me. I lay on green sod
like a prairie snake letting the sun warm me.

What does a girl think about alone
in a field of grass, beneath a sky as bright
as an Easter dress, beneath a green wind?

Maybe I have not shaken the grass.
All is vanity.

Maybe I never rose from that green field.
All is vanity.

Maybe I did no more than swallow deep, deep breaths
and spill them out into story: all is vanity.

Maybe I listed to the wind sighing and shivered,
spinning, awhirl amidst the bluestem
and green lashes: O my beloved! O my beloved!

I lay in a field of grass once, and then went on.
Even the hollow my body made is gone.

LYNNE THOMPSON: The Los Angeles Poet Laureate was created as a joint program between the City’s Depart-ment 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!

[Music outro]

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    • 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.

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