Episode #164 Elegy - Aracelis Girmay

Close Talking: A Poetry Podcast

Connor and Jack explore Aracelis Girmay's poem "Elegy" from her 2011 collection Kingdom Animalia. They talk through the opening line's call to community and the ways it resonates with Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese," they get scientific while discussing the nature imagery in the poem, and they delve into the poem's pandemic-era relevance. Elegy By: Aracelis Girmay What to do with this knowledge that our living is not guaranteed? Perhaps one day you touch the young branch of something beautiful. & it grows & grows despite your birthdays & the death certificate, & it one day shades the heads of something beautiful or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out of your house, then, believing in this. Nothing else matters. All above us is the touching of strangers & parrots, some of them human, some of them not human. Listen to me. I am telling you a true thing. This is the only kingdom. The kingdom of touching; the touches of the disappearing, things. Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at [e-mail].