Read a poem, talk about it, read it again.

Episode 154 A Sunset of the City - Gwendolyn Brooks w/Special Guest Michael Kleber-Diggs

3/11/2022

Connor and Jack are joined by special guest Michael Kleber-Diggs for a conversation about the Gwendolyn Brooks poem "A Sunset of the City." Michael Kleber-Diggs won the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, has been widely published, and teaches poetry through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop. In addition to digging into Gwendolyn Brooks' captivating poem, the trio also discuss Kleber-Diggs' new collection Worldly Things from Milkweed Editions.

Get a copy of Worldly Things here.

A Sunset of the City
By: Gwendolyn Brooks

Kathleen Eileen

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.

It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.

It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.
The sweet flowers indrying and dying down,
The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.

It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes.
I am aware there is winter to heed.
There is no warm house
That is fitted with my need.
I am cold in this cold house this house
Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls.
I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs.
I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.

Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my
Desert and my dear relief
Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.

Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke.
Back to podcasts