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51. Poetry readings: The Reader | 221 | 02:26 | |
52. Poetry readings: For C | 494 | 03:17 | |
53. Poetry readings: C minor | 207 | 02:13 | |
54. Poetry readings: A Late Aubade | 795 | 02:15 | |
55. Poetry readings: opposites poems and playful poems | 448 | 04:49 | |
56. Poetry readings: Digging for China | 1 | 257 | 02:01 |
57. Introduction to The Writer | 191 | 00:41 | |
58. Poetry readings: The Writer | 233 | 02:08 | |
59. Poetry readings: Blackberries for Amelia | 504 | 02:10 | |
60. Poetry readings: Lying | 3 | 216 | 06:12 |
This is a relatively new poem of mine, and it's called Blackberries For Amelia. Amelia is my granddaughter, and with her I did at one time or another a good deal of berry-picking. She's now off at college so we pick berries not quite so often, but this looks back at it.
Blackberries for Amelia
Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,
Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaves reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year's canes.
They have their flowers too, it being June,
And here or there in brambles dark and light
Are small five-petaled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn
As the far stars, of which we now are told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that a night may come in which some say,
We shall have only blackness to behold.
I have no time for any change so great,
but I shall see the August weather spur
Berries to ripen where the flowers were-
Dark berries, savage sweet, and worth the wait-
And there will come the moment to be quick
And save some from the birds, and I shall need
Two pails, old clothes in which to stain and bleed,
And a grandchild to talk with while we pick.
Well, that's a poem about my grandchild and berries. For certain it's also a poem which has to do with the territory around here, with the bushes which come up every year in Cummington Massachusetts.
Acclaimed US poet Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) published many books and was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He was less well known for creating a musical version of Voltaire's “Candide” with Bernstein and Hellman which is still produced throughout the world today.
Title: Poetry readings: "Blackberries for Amelia"
Listeners: David Sofield
David Sofield is the Samuel Williston Professor of English at Amherst College, where he has taught the reading and writing of poetry since 1965. He is the co-editor and a contributor to Under Criticism (1998) and the author of a book of poems, Light Disguise (2003).
Tags: Blackberries For Amelia, Massachusetts
Duration: 2 minutes, 10 seconds
Date story recorded: April 2005
Date story went live: 29 September 2010