Whose Words These Are Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Open Source with Christopher Lydon

THIS WEEK'S SHOW: August 6, 2026

A "blockbuster version of Moby-Dick" with "moral qualms about the whaling industry."

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, 2010

Whose Words These Are (25): Fabienne Casseus’ Broken Haiti

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Fabienne Casseus (16 min, 7 mb mp3) Fabienne Casseus is a 17-year-old poet of young Haiti, broken Haiti, corpse-like Haiti, where she witnesses...

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, 2010

Whose Words These Are (24): Eli Marienthal’s Spoken-Word Haiti

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Eli Marienthal (15 min, 7 mb mp3) Eli Marienthal’s Haiti story is about a little-boy obsession with his Haitian twin, met on the...

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, 2010

Whose Words These Are (23): Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell’s Haiti

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell (24 min mp3) “Looking in” by Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell is an oil almost six feet wide, in the collection of Partners in...

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, 2010

Whose Words These Are (22): Peace-Poet Fred Marchant

Fred Marchant approaches the unspeakable horror and loss of life in the Haiti earthquake with a gingerly air of obligation. It’s the poet’s job, he says, to find words and...

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, 2010

Whose Words These Are (21): Afaa Michael Weaver on Haiti

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Afaa Michael Weaver (20 min, 9 mb mp3) Afaa Michael Weaver leads off a week of poets’ reflections on the catastrophe in Haiti....

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, 2009

Whose Words These Are (20): Rick Benjamin

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Rick Benjamin. (38 minutes, 18 meg mp3) Rick Benjamin says the threshold instruction of most good poems is: slow down, be alert, wake...

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, 2009

Whose Words These Are (19): Andrew Motion

Sir Andrew Motion succeeded Dryden, Wordsworth, Tennyson and, immediately, Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. He can sound like the elegist of rural old imperial England,...

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, 2009

Whose Words These Are (18): Keith Waldrop

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Keith Waldrop. (23 minutes, 11 meg mp3) Keith Waldrop, who just won the National Book Award in poetry for his Transcendental Studies, is...

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, 2009

Whose Words These Are (17): Henri Cole

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Henri Cole. (42 minutes, 19 mb mp3) The poet Henri Cole got his French first name from his Armenian mother. From his father,...

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, 2009

Whose Words These Are (16): Nick Baker’s Chowder

Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Nicholson Baker. (49 minutes, 23 mb mp3) Nicholson Baker bursts into our poetry series with a passion for form, a longing for four-beat...

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, 2009

Whose Words These Are (15): Bloom’s Hart Crane

We’re in the “living labyrinth” of Harold Bloom’s astonishing memory here. The great sage of New Haven is walking us through the dark, dense maze of his first and favorite...

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, 2009

Whose Words These Are (14): C.D. Wright

Prompted by last weekend’s Massachusetts Poetry Festival, the question has been: where does poetry come from these days? And where is it going? Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with...

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, 2009

Whose Words These Are (13): Michael Ansara

In anticipation of the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival, which pops into full bloom tomorrow (Saturday) in the city of Lowell, the question has been: where does poetry come from these...

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Whose Words These Are (12): Teresa Cader

In anticipation of the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival, where does poetry come from these days? And where is it going? Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Teresa Cader. (33...

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, 2009

Whose Words These Are (11): Lloyd Schwartz

In anticipation of the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival, the question has been: where does poetry come from these days? And where is it going? Click to listen to Chris’s conversation...