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Thursday, December 4, 2025

The Enlighten Radio Poetry Show: Noon

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

 Noon Time Gymnastics: Flex yr metaphors!

 

Noon Song

 

The intensity and diversity of poems on the them of Noon will surprise you: Emily Dickinson, Henry Van Dyke, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, Teddy Macker, Daniel Gabriel Rosetti

Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded Dec 3, 2025

 

 

Noon Song

by Henry Van Dyke

 


There are songs for the morning and songs for the night,
For sunrise and sunset, the stars and the moon;
But who will give praise to the fulness of light,
And sing us a song of the glory of noon?
     Oh, the high noon, the clear noon,
         The noon with golden crest;
    When the blue sky burns, and the great sun turns
        With his face to the way of the west!

How swiftly he rose in the dawn of his strength;
How slowly he crept as the morning wore by;
Ah, steep was the climbing that led him at length
To the height of his throne in the wide summer sky.
    Oh, the long toil, the slow toil,
        The toil that may not rest,
    Till the sun looks down from his journey's crown,
        To the wonderful way of the west!


Then a quietness falls over meadow and hill,
The wings of the wind in the forest are furled,
The river runs softly, the birds are all still,
The workers are resting all over the world.
    Oh, the good hour, the kind hour,
        The hour that calms the breast!
    Little inn half-way on the road of the day,
        Where it follows the turn to the west!

There's a plentiful feast in the maple-tree shade,
The lilt of a song to an old-fashioned tune,
The talk of a friend, or the kiss of a maid,
To sweeten the cup that we drink to the noon.
    Oh, the deep noon, the full noon,
        Of all the day the best!
    When the blue sky burns, and the great sun turns
        To his home by the way of the west.

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

Sunday, November 30, 2025

Paris on the Potomac : The Early Thanksgiving

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac : The Early Thanksgiving

The Fat Pig Holiday -- I ain't shopping there anymore!

 

Paris on the Potomac :  The Early Thanksgiving

 

Broadcast LIVE Fridays, 7:30 AM Eastern on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Karen Valentine, John Case

Shit is Hitting the Fan: No turkey, only pigs.

Is this a Harvest, or a Pestilence?

Huh?

This Episode Recorded 11/15 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

The Last Stop Cafe: ELDFIBAM!

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: ELDFIBAM!

The Nov 6 Show

Forget it. It's Already Gone

 

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Broadcast Thrusdays 10 AM, unless we are asleep, or dead.

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

What does it mean?: Million Dollar Reward For Who Gets It Right. Hint: '69 SDS'

This Episode Recorded Nov. 6 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

The Last Stop Cafe: Halloween 202555555

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: Halloween 202555555

Commanders Aint Commanding Much

 

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Broadcast LIVE Fridays, 7:30 AM Eastern on player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

Applications for suicide bomber jobs seem to be falling.....

This Episode Recorded Halloween 2025, or thereabouts at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

The Poetry Show: Dawn

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

Night was her only Love. She keeps its mystery and its stars, for herself, all the long day.

 

Aubade

 

Poetry on the theme of Aubade: Song to Dawn. Joy Harjo, Elsa Gitlow, Helen Hunt Jackson, Paul Dunbar.

Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded November 12, 2024

Aubade (1937)

by William Empson

 

Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake.
My house was on a cliff. The thing could take
Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row.
Then the long pause and then the bigger shake.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

And far too large for my feet to step by.
I hoped that various buildings were brought low.
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

It seemed quite safe till she got up and dressed.
The guarded tourist makes the guide the test.
Then I said The Garden? Laughing she said No.
Taxi for her and for me healthy rest.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

The language problem but you have to try.
Some solid ground for lying could she show?
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

None of these deaths were her point at all.
The thing was that being woken he would bawl
And finding her not in earshot he would know.
I tried saying Half an Hour to pay this call.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

I slept, and blank as that I would yet lie.
Till you have seen what a threat holds below,
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

Tell me again about Europe and her pains,
Who’s tortured by the drought, who by the rains.
Glut me with floods where only the swine can row
Who cuts his throat and let him count his gains.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

A bedshift flight to a Far Eastern sky.
Only the same war on a stronger toe.
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

Tell me more quickly what I lost by this,
Or tell me with less drama what they miss
Who call no die for a god for a throw,
Who says after two aliens had one kiss
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

But as to risings, I can tell you why.
It is on contradiction that they grow.
It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
Up was the heartening and the strong reply.
The heart of standing is we cannot fly.

 

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

Friday, October 31, 2025

The Poetry Show: Ghosts

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Escaping the Marble Forest

 

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You have seen them. The ones you left behind. The one thats missing. The griefs that keep hanging around. A comfort. A fate. The marble forest: make them be stone.

Elizabeth Jennings, Wilfred Owen, Christopher Kennedy, Kiki Petrosina, Gregory Orr, Sylvia Plath, Claribel Allegria, Eric Pankey

Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded 10/29/2025

Ghost in the Land of Skeletons

by Christopher Kennedy

 


For Russell Edson


If not for flesh's pretty paint, we're just a bunch of skeletons, working hard to deny the fact of bones. Teeth remind me that we die. That's why I never smile, except when looking at a picture of a ghost, captured by a camera lens, in a book about the paranormal. When someone takes a picture of a spirit, it gives me hope. I admire the ones who refuse to go away. Lovers scorned and criminals burned. I love the dead little girl who plays in her yard, a spectral game of hide and seek. It's the fact they don't know they're dead that appeals to me most. Like a man once said to me, Do you ever feel like you're a ghost? Sure, I answered, every day. He laughed at that and disappeared. All I could think was he beat me to it.

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com

 

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

The Poetry Show: Poets Born in October

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

"Especially When The October Wind ... With fists of turnips punishes the land"

 

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Janet has found some famous poets born in October, but chosen some lesser known gems -- only one of which whose SUBJECT is 'October'. Sylvia Plath, John Keats, E.E. Cummings, Dylan Thomas, Robert Pinsky. These poems are more difficult than some. So we take our time with them.

Broadcast LIVE Wednesdays, 10 AM on https://player.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded October 22, 2025

Especially When The October Wind

by Dylan Thomas


Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,


By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks

Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows


Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,

Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.


Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,


Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

 

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questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com