Transcript

At Harvard, there's this place called the Woodberry Poetry Room. It's where some of the oldest known recordings of poems are saved. Recordings of poets have been kept, and made available for listening, since the earliest days of commercial recording technology. Back in the day, that room was called The Listening Room.

They even started their own record label: they called it the Harvard Vocarium, quite literally a “library of voices.” And the space was the first conceived as one of collective, independent listening – so much like for podcasts today.

Poetry is inextricably linked to performance. It is also a tradition, and by writing and reading, we step into that tradition. We borrow words and tools and feelings, we respond and we dedicate. When we share poems with others, we join into the rich chorus of voices old and new.

I'm Major Jackson, and I'm the host of The Slowdown, and my producer is Myka Kielbon.

The Slowdown is a podcast that allows me daily, collaboratively, to contemplate our existence through the words of our most gifted living and past poets. We hunger for clarity during moments in life that seem emptied of meaning. The poets, however, are forever present to the world swirling about them. They record its passage in images and rhythms that frankly are breathtaking, galvanizing, and beautiful. I attempt to honor the threshold of their poems at the top of the podcast by sharing an anecdote or reflection that illumines the questions and examinations of life they gently sing.

In coming to this role, I've been thinking a lot about how poetry shifts from the page to the voice. How the words hold different meanings written versus spoken. For when we speak out loud the words of the poets, we access their freedom and consciousness and rage for order. As my friend Robert Pinsky tells us, “poetry’s medium is the individual chest and throat and mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.” It is a physical embodiment that changes us and the spaces we occupy. The poem creates an environment.

And so, I want to explore this with you. In sharing words, stories, and sharing sound, I’ve said in many places and venues that when we read poetry, we take into ourselves the lives of the poet and are enlarged. It’s how we contain multitudes. In this way, people in the past can be more fully with us. But we can be more fully with each other in this moment.

So, together, let’s turn this very room we’re all in into our very own Vocarium. Our own Listening Room. It is a practice that involves all of us.

This poetic chorus has room for everyone. I am going to ask you now to join me in reading…

Take This Poem
by Elizabeth Willis

Take this spoon
from me, this
cudgel, this axe
Take this bowl
this kettle, this 
continental plate
Take, if you will,
this shallow topsoil
above my bedrock
This swingset 
above the topsoil
this raven
from my hair

Take your fear
from its closet
Take this shirt
in need of washing
this unread book
Take this child
this husband, this
teacup, this
provisional weather
Take this pill
with a tall glass
of water, take this
bus deep into
the interior

Take my wife
even if I meant
to keep her
Take my share
I don’t need it
Take as long
as you need to
Take this line
between breathing
and voting
Take this city
Take that expensive 
ship across this
cellophane model
of the sea

Take the F train
but not to Brooklyn
Take the case
of the missing cufflinks
Take this beverage
with its silver
Pullman ice

Take me with you
as far as you can go
I won’t cause
any trouble

Take this office
overlooking the people 
Take this patience
and burn it to the ground
Take down your
vanities, your hippodrome
your champagne 
pyramid

Take down your hair
your curtains, your
razorwire fence
Take off your greasepaint
your necklace, your wig
your inadequate armor

Take off your coat 
Stay a little longer
Take the low road
out into the sunset

Take it out back
And take it
to the people
Take Florida
Take Ohio
Take Wisconsin
Take Missouri

Take this chamber
like a bullet
Take this house
and paint it black
or take it down

“Take This Poem” by Elizabeth Willis from ADDRESS © 2012, Elizabeth Willis. Used by permission of Wesleyan University Press.