The Poetry Show: Ghosts

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Escaping the Marble Forest

 

 

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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The Poetry Show: Poets Born in October

 

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

 

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

 

 

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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Paris on the Potomac: A Prayer Vigil in Lebanon

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

Paris on the Potomac: A Prayer Vigil in Lebanon

Pastor John Unger - Can the teachings of Jesus help unite rather than divide religions?

 

 

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

Hosts: Karen Valentine, John Case

Pastor John Unger is ordained as an ELCA Lutheran pastor, and serves the congregations of St. John Lutheran Church, St. John's Episcopal Church, and Bolivar United Methodist Church in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.^[6] In addition, he is a chaplain for the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office.^[7]He is also a former Democratic leader in the West Virginia Senate. 

He joins us to  recount his trip to Lebanon during the Gaza War. A prayer gathering of many faiths for peace.

This Episode Recorded October 17, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Last Stop Cafe: Will Trump Invade Canada?

 

Enlighten Radio Presents

The Last Stop Cafe: Will Trump Invade Canada?

What Happens If the Blue Jays Win the World Series?

 

 

Thursdays, 10 AM on www.enlightenradio.org

Hosts: Mike Cuccherini, John Case, James Boyd

Mike's sports and entertainment review runs headlong into the world war that could result from the Blue Jays winning the World Series. True, the Dodgers look supreme. But, just think how it will unhinge our pouty little emperor.

This Episode Recorded Oct 16, 2025 at the Red Caboose Studio, Harpers Ferry, WV

 

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The Poetry Show: Jack Frost

Enlighten Radio Presents

Early Frost, first frost, jack frost. How can your words DO an early winter frost?

 

 

...creeping softly underneath The door
when all the lights are out, Jack Frost
takes every breath you breathe,
And knows the things you think about.

 

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

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded Oct 15, 2025

Jack Frost

"famous poet" -- Gabriel Setoun

The door was shut, as doors should be,
Before you went to bed last night;
Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see,
And left your window silver white.

He must have waited till you slept;
And not a single word he spoke,
But pencilled o'er the panes and crept
Away again before you woke.

And now you cannot see the hills
Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane;
But there are fairer things than these
His fingers traced on every pane.

Rocks and castles towering high;
Hills and dales, and streams and fields;
And knights in armor riding by,
With nodding plumes and shining shields.

And here are little boats, and there
Big ships with sails spread to the breeze;
And yonder, palm trees waving fair
On islands set in silver seas,

And butterflies with gauzy wings;
And herds of cows and flocks of sheep;
And fruit and flowers and all the things
You see when you are sound asleep.

For, creeping softly underneath
The door when all the lights are out,
Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe,
And knows the things you think about.

He paints them on the window-pane
In fairy lines with frozen steam;
And when you wake you see again
The lovely things you saw in dream.

(© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes)

 

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The Poetry Show: October Country

Enlighten Radio Presents

Harvest or Pestilence?

Janet visits October country -- again -- Carl Sandburg, Joy Ladin, William Blake, Omar Khayam, Philip Larkin, Robert Herrick, Lucy Larcom

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

Hosts: Janet Harrison, John Case

This Episode Recorded Oct 8, 2025

Time Passes

by Joy Ladin

Time too is afraid of passing, is riddled with holes
through which time feels itself leaking.
Time sweats in the middle of the night
when all the other dimensions are sleeping.
Time has lost every picture of itself as a child.
Now time is old, leathery and slow.
Can't sneak up on anyone anymore,
Can't hide in the grass, can't run, cant catch.
Can't figure out how not to trample
what it means to bless.

 

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