If your home were a museum — and they all are, in a way — what would the contents of your refrigerator say about you and those you live with? In his poem “Refrigerator, 1957,” Thomas Lux opens the door to his childhood appliance and oh, does a three-quarters full jar of maraschino cherries speak volumes. 

Thomas Lux was an American poet and professor. He was the author of several collections of poetry, including To the Left of Time (Ecco, 2016), Child Made of Sand (Houghton Mifflin, 2012), God Particles (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), and New and Selected Poems of Thomas Lux: 1975-1995 (Ecco Press, 1999). Lux taught for many years at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he held the Bourne Chair in Poetry and directed the McEver Visiting Writers Program.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Thomas Lux’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

The word “flush” is a verb, as in an activity that we do umpteen times a day. It’s also an adjective that conveys abundance. Fittingly, Rita Wong’s poem “flush” offers a praise song to water’s expansive and unceasing presence in our lives — from our toilets to our teacups, from inside our bodies to outside our buildings, and from our soil to our skies. 

Rita Wong is the author of several poetry collections, including monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998), forage (Nightwood Editions, 2007), and undercurrent (Nightwood Editions, 2015). Wong is an associate professor at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Rita Wong’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.

Bro — this is definitely not the “Beowulf” that you read back in school. Maria Dahvana Headley’s gutsy, swaggering translation brings the Old English epic poem roaring into this century, showing you why this tale of fraught family ties, power plays and posturing, and mighty, imperfect people is as relevant as ever.  

Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times-bestselling author of eight books, most recently Beowulf: A New Translation (MCD X FSG Originals, 2020). Her novel The Mere Wife (MCD X FSG, 2018), an adaptation of the Beowulf poem set in suburban America, was named by The Washington Post as one of its Notable Works of Fiction in 2018. Her essays on gender, chronic illness, politics, propaganda, and mythology have been published and covered in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Nieman Storyboard, and elsewhere. She grew up in the high desert of Idaho on a survivalist sled dog ranch, where she spent summers plucking the winter coat from her father’s wolf.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’re pleased to offer Maria Dahvana Headley’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.