Transcript: Poems on Air, Episode 5 - Holly Prado Northrup

[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: It’s only appropriate that this week when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to the Motion Picture and Television Fund, I honor Holly Prado Northrup who lived in the community the Fund established until her death in 2019. I met Holly only a few times but it was enough time to know that she was a force in L.A.’s literary community. In addition to her own writing, and with her husband, Harry Northrup, she established Cahuenga Press with the goal of representing the best in the small press tradition. No surprise there, because as Harry reports, she said "I love writing—it's the deepest pleasure I know.”

LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is “Harry, It’s Raining” by Holly Prado Northrup.

Harry, It’s Raining

Your knees against mine as we sleep, 5 A.M. —
ah, there’s time, still, to stay here in bed.

When I do get up,

I sit at my desk in my pajamas with two candles lit
and Tibetan peace incense burning. My prayer lifts
with the lively twists of smoke.

May the day pass smoothly so we can get to evening
when we plan to eat out, then see a movie, then come home
and go to sleep again. What an ordinary prayer, I hope
not an insult to the Tibetan Buddhists who made the incense,
who built a floor-to-ceiling mandals for the Universal Peace, all
by hand, infusing it with everything they, enlightened monks,
understand about peace for the entire world. But isn’t
creating peace

in one’s own life a step toward the whole? Aren’t our knees,
gently touching, a mandala forming peaceful symmetry?
Maybe tonight we’re doing our best for peace when we eat
at Zumaya’s, then settle in to watch an Italian movie about

the Mafia. Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that if there are angels,
he wants them organized along the lines of the Mafia. I agree.
Tightly-knit bands of angels could surely do more good than
fluttery, independent-contractor angels. As the incense
smoke curls, I believe in angels; in Buddhism’s intricate cosmos,

in Catholic saints; in our plain, Protestant carpenter—
Christ. He said “Love.” That’s it. That’s my prayer,
breathed into the sweet-smelling incense. Love. Peace.
Nothing new, but so what? The day opens itself as I pray for

our knees, my darling, which touch each other with the
delicacy of folded angel wings. We are saving the world
with our knees. Knees for peace.

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!

[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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