The Frank Skinner Show - Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast: Poetry Anthologies

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Frank celebrates the joys of wallowing in a big fat poetry anthology, in this case “A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025”. The poems referenced are “My Great-Grandmother’s Bible” by Spencer Reece and “How to Listen” by Major Jackson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to a brand new series of Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. I never talk to you that much about my general style of poetry reading. And what I mean is one of my great pleasures, I mean my deep, deep pleasures in life is to grab hold of a fat poetry anthology with lots of different poets, different poems, different poems. and just wade, just wallow, just marinade in it. It's a bit like when MTV was first invented, RIP, when MTV was first invented, I would think, oh, I'll just watch one more video.

Okay, I'll watch this one. Oh, I like this one. And pretty soon it was 4 a.m. That's how I am with the poetry anthology nowadays. Just one more page. one more poem. And so I just wanted to celebrate anthologies in general today, but specifically, I just received a century of poetry in the New Yorker, 1925 to 2025, edited by Kevin Young, the poet. The New Yorker, you must know, is an American magazine, and it regulars. And it regulars.

Prince poetry and it's been doing it for a hundred years and this big fat, beautiful book is absolutely loaded with it. So I turned to page 714. It's done in sections, but one of the things that it's not always great in an anthology is if it's just chronological. Because chronology can have a sort of wearing discipline that sort of, you think, you think, you're just chronological. You I think, okay, I've read a lot of Elizabethan sonnets. I wouldn't mind something a bit more free-form, 21st century. And the way that the New Yorker anthology deals with that is it does have chronological sections.

I'm going to be talking about two poems from a section called the a-U-G-H-T-S, open brackets 2000s to early 2010. but it also has sections like launch break or last train home where it puts a bunch of poems of just about a similar theme but from various periods of time together and that it just gives the whole thing a bit of life and excitement one of the great things about that wading through an anthology is finding poets you've never heard of. Obviously, you find poems you've never heard of, but it is like, I think I've used this analogy before, the Advent calendar. So you open a little door and there's a poet that you've never heard of and then you go away and read more of their poems

and you realize you love them and then you buy a couple of collections and you're off. So page 714, of a century of poetry in the New Yorker has got two poems. My Great Grandmother's Bible by Spencer Reese and How to Listen by Major Jackson. And I just want to talk about this is one page from a fat, fat anthology. And if you consider the joy and beauty and riches in this one page, imagine what the whole book is like. Can I say I am not getting any money from the New Yorker for this? I just want to spread the word. Okay, so the first poem I want to look at.

It's actually the lower one on the page, but it just feels, this feels like the right order to talk about them. It's by a poet called Spencer Reese, who I say, I hadn't heard of before. And he has written a poem called My Great Grandmother's Bible. It's a sonnet and it's in a classic sort of A, B, A, B rhyme scheme. So the first line rhymes with the third and the second rhyme rhymes with the fourth, the A and the A, the B and the B. And I'm just going to read you the first four lines.

And let me tell you before I do this, it is rich. It is so finely crafted with internal rhymes and... rhymes in general and the rhythms and etc etc here goes spencer reese is my great grandmother's bible faux leather bound and thick as an onion it flakes an heirloom from iowa my dead often read i opened the black flap to speak the spakes and quickly lose track of who wed who bred Oh, oh man, I love it. I love it. So it's called my great-grandmother's Bible, which is a slightly imposing title, I think. Not only is it going to be about a Bible, but it's going to be a really old one as well. And because it belongs to his great-grandmother, you anticipate a great deal of reverence. And you think, oh, wow. But the very first thing is faux-leather, Foe leather being a very modern term, I would say FOWAS in fake. So faux leather bound already is saying, yes, it's about my great grandmother's Bible,

but it's a modern world thing. This appeared in the New Yorker in 2009. So faux leather bound and thick as an onion. And again, this first line, Spencer Reese clearly wants to. to grab us early. We're surprised, I think, at faux leather being the first thing said in a poem called my great-grandmother's Bible, especially a sonnet, which again suggests a certain traditional aspect. Fow leather bound and then he comes up with a fabulous simile, thick as an onion. Who would ever use that? Thick as an onion? Is an onion thick? I suppose,

a Bible you could imagine being about an average size onion thick, but it's not a unit of measurement I normally reach for. Anyway, faux leather bound and thick as an onion. Why does he say that it's as thick as an onion? I think that if you look at an old Bible side on, it often has that gilted, gilt-edged pages, you know, when it's gold on the side. And that forms lines, it's sort of golden brown. And that is quite onion-like in appearance, onion skin. Golden-brown, you can see the lines, and it flakes. The gilt edge that flakes from the page when a Bible gets very old and an onion flakes. So I think it. it is. It's a good

comparison and even better because it's a surprising one. You could if you wanted to really push it say that an onion induces tears and this is a nostalgic look back at his

family history but I am not going to say that. Fole leather bound and thick as an onion it flakes. That's your first line. An air from Iowa, my dead often read. You're going to have balls to say my dead often read,

because that is really the sort of rhyme that you might expect in something like a comic poem. But Spencer Reese is clearly very confident, clearly very, very, very adept with language. And he just celebrates it. You'll see why in a minute, I think this is relevant to the subject matter. An heirloom from Iowa, I feel heirloom and Iowa have got a sort of a slant rhyme. They don't rhyme, but they've got something similar going on there, which is very satisfying. An heirloom from Iowa, my dead often read. So my family had this Bible, and it was often read in the way that Bibles perhaps aren't so often read now. I open the black flap to speak the spakes and quickly lose track of who wed, who bred. So we're getting, you can feel that echo of my dead often red, and then later on, who wed, who bred. It's really, really rich this sonny.

I open the black flap to speak the spakes. again brilliant internal neely rhyme slant rhyme is a phrase i use but you know what i mean speak and spake you've got the lovely alliteration of the spree and they almost rhyme they're just close and they work beautifully together so many consonants shared etc oh and spake by the way is you probably know, an archaic past tense of speak. And the word you'd expect to find in an old Bible. Okay. I open the black flap.

I suppose the obvious word to use would have been cover when you talk about a Bible. He could have said I opened the cover to speak the Spakes. But what I like about the black flap is that in the next line you get and quickly lose track. And the track is a track is a. another near rhyme with flap. I don't want to lose you in this. I want you to keep the rhythm and the rhymes. I think when you hear this,

I open the black flap to speak the spake. You think, or he's reading from the Bible now. And quickly lose track of who wed, who bred. You're thinking, oh, yes, there is a lot of that in the Bible. There's those genealogies where Melchizedek begat J.Peth and J.Peth begat Elohim. and those long, long family trees. It sounds like he's gone into one of those and has got lost, but that's not quite what's happening.

I want to read those first four lines again because they work so brilliantly together. And listen to that AB, AB rhyme and the internal rhymes. And it's got a sort of loose, I've talked to you before about iambic pentameter, which is 10 syllable lines with five stresses. So it goes on stress, stressed, on stress, stressed. Didom, didom, didom, didom, didom.

There's a lot of that going on, but he plays around with it. So some of the lines are a bit longer, but they still seem to, you can still feel it. Some of them, I open the black flap to speak the spakes and quickly lose track of who wed, who bred. That's pretty standard iambic pentameter. You can feel the didum, didom. didom, didom, didom, did on. But he messes around with that. There's such a lot going on in my great-grandmother's Bible by Spencer Reese.

Here comes the next four lines. Remember, he's talked about losing track of who wed, who bred. She taped our family register as it tore, her hands stuttering like a sewing machine, darning the blanks with farmers gone before. Ines Alvar Delbert Ermadine. Now, she taped a family register as it tore. What is a family register?

Well, in the early 19th century, which this Bible might be that old, it was very common in Protestant households, to embroider a piece of clobie. make it as I think the term is a sampler so it's it's finite embroidery and it would be a family tree it would be a genealogy it would be your family and when someone was born you'd go back to your family and you would embroider their name and their date of birth and if someone died you would put their death date in as well so it was this

beautiful, you can look them up on the internet, these beautiful embroidered things passed on through the family and they would put them in the Bible, as you could hear there. Let's just come back to the poem and now you know what that is. I think it makes a bit more sense. She taped our family register as it tore. So she mended it because it was so old. This is his great-grandmother, remember he's talking about.

I'm saying the speaker rather than Spencer Reese, as I always do. But the speaker has entitled the poem My Great Grandmother's Bible, so it's a great-grandchild who's speaking. She taped her family register as it tore, her hounds stuttering like a sewing machine, darning the blanks with farmers gone before, and these are then proper names, Ines Alvar, Delbert, Ermadine. So you can see that the mending on this family register,

her hand stuttering like a sewing machine, that is a brilliant line. And I'll tell you what I like, well, there's several things I like about it. First of all, to bring up a sewing machine, this is very much hand-sown. that was the family register way. But she's so old now that her hand is stuttering. It's shaking like a sewing machine. And the stuttering affects the line. So where, as afterwards, you've got a nice, neat biambic pantameter line,

darning the blanks with farmers gone before. Darning the blanks with farmers gone before, if you like. Her hand stuttering like a sewing machine, it makes the line stutter as well, which is fabulous. So she taped our family register as it tore, her hand stuttering like a sewing machine, darning the blanks with farmers gone before. So darning the blanks with farmers gone before is filling in some of the blanks that haven't been done with family members. They're clearly a farming family.

with family members that have died, such as Inez Alvar Delbert Ermadine. So she's gone through in the past and put these guys into the blanks that was waiting for them. Okay, four more lines, and then we'll go. Many sonnets, as you guys, I'm sure, now, end with a big killer copliet at the end.

This one is three blocks of four and then the killer coplitz. So we get now to the third block of four. Our undistinguished line she pressed in the heft between the Testaments with spaces to spare, smudged with mistakes or tears, her fingers left, a mounting watchfulness I find hard to bear. Okay. Our undistinguished line. So our family doesn't really compete with these genealogies that you get in the Bible, these massively significant genealogies. But we are in there now.

We've been inserted in there. Our undistinguished line, she pressed in the heft. So it's pushed into the body. Bible, the heft being the sort of whiteness, and it gives their family heft, because their family line is now alongside the lines of Abraham, whoever. Our wrong distinguished line she pressed in the heft between the Testaments. Now, Protestant Bibles, I think originally, had the apocrypha in between. You know, there are two Testaments in a Bible, the Old Testament. which is very much Hebrew, history, Moses, etc.

And the New Testament, which is mainly the life of Jesus and what happened after that. There is a book called the Apocrypha, which used to be in between those in Protestant Bibles. I say Protestant as opposed to Roman Catholic Bibles. The Apocrypha was books that the Protestant Church didn't recognize as properly qualifying to be in the Bible, but they put them in there for interest.

It was then discovered that that made the Bible's much more expensive to print, so they removed the Apocrypha. And there would often be a few blank pages between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and what great-grandma has done, she's taken that heft between the Testament. So you can imagine there's a lot of weight in the midst of the Bible, and there's blank pages, and that's where she's put their family register. Our own distinguished line she pressed in the heft between the Testaments with spaces to spare. So there's still space is left now for more burts and deaths from this family.

Smodged with mistakes or tears. So there are smodges on it, which could be that you write on it before you actually embroider and some of that. Maybe things have been changed or it could just be her tears falling on it. I think presumably suggesting that as she acknowledges as she records the death of a family member that she knows and loves, she may have shed tears. it may actually include her, not just her effort in the embroidery, but actually her, her tears. This is a deep, deep family object. Smudge with mistakes or tears.

Her fingers left, a mounting watchfulness I find hard to bear. And I think he means that he can feel in this. Her fingers left a mountain watchfulness I find hard to bear. She didn't fill in obviously lots of stuff, including her own death. And so her fingers left that, but there was a mounting watchfulness of that space, her watching the space that would mark the end of her life in this genealogy. and as he says her fingers left a mounting watchfulness i find hard to bear so she must have looked at that blank space a mounting watchfulness it increased it increased with age her anxiety as she looked at that empty space

waiting for her date of death that's what i think he's saying there okay so that third block of four again. Our undistinguished line she pressed in the heft between the Testaments with spaces to spare. Smudge with mistakes or tears, her fingers left, a mounting watchfulness I find hard to bear. And I think it's I find hard to bear after all that lovely stuff like spaces to spare and speak the spakes. and my dead often read, who wed, who bred, all that richness. That last phrase of the block there, the third block of four, I find hard to bear. His humanity now comes in, and the baroque richness of the poem

just suddenly becomes very simple and very sparse. If you hear it happen again, our own distinguished line, pressed in the heft between the Testaments with spaces to spare, smudge with mistakes or tears, her fingers left, a mountain watchfulness, I find hard to bear. And then we come to the last couplet. In a sonnet, which works 4442 like this, the couplet is usually a big finale. It usually either closes things down or opens them up to think about all the implications of the things that have been said before.

And here comes that last copy. Remember, he's been talking about this family register that his great-grandmother, probably amongst others, but certainly that his great-grandmother embroidered and mended and filled in and kept up to date and probably even wept on. That's what we've been talking about. its significance, its sense of community and love. And then the last coplip.

When I saw the AIDS quilt spread out in acres, it was stitched with similar scripts by similar makers. Few. Now the AIDS quill, I don't know if you know, is an enormous, enormous quilt, an enormous embroidered quilt. It began in San Francisco in 1985, which was when the AIDS epidemic was taking many, many, many lives.

And it's got, I don't know how many, thousands and thousands of panels. I think they're three foot by six foot. They're hand-stitched by the people who loved all these victims of AIDS and related illnesses. I think there's a hundred thousand names on there or more. You should look at a picture of it. It is gobsmacking. And it could have failed this. It could have been, oh, he's gone from his great-grandmother to AIDS.

It's a big leap. But I think it works perfectly because this is all about love and loss this family register. And wanting to make those people continuing. in some way wanting to memorialise them, but also to immortalise them by putting them in the Bible, your family members, amongst all this other history, or by adding their name to the AIDS quilt. When I saw the AIDS quilt spread out in Acres, and it is enormous, it was stitched with similar scripts by similar makers. There's something about the fact that for the first time, the rhymes are two-syllable words, achers and makers.

It has a beautiful, sounded ending. But also it's that continuance of love and memorial and craft and folk art and all that coming together. And also I think it's important that the Christian, church at the time said some pretty rough stuff about this being sent by God, this epidemic, not as an official voice, but that there were people on the right who said stuff like that. And I think this shows that love is sort of, it fits into the Bible, it fits into Christian belief, it fits into mourning of this terrible thing that happened to human.

Oh, I got quite emotion at the end. I mean, you could say that this sonnet is, in a way, it's like a massive simile in that the first 12 lines say, this is my family register that was embroidered with love and care, and it's like the AIDS quilt. But obviously, it does a bit more than that. But it's a brilliant poem. I really love it. And it's gloriously ornate.

And that makes absolute sense, because this is about embroidery. It's about ornamentation. Often those family registers, they weren't just like a ledger book with birds and deaths. They would have biblical quotations and leaves and birds and everything else embroidered on. They were a beautiful thing, as is the AIDS quilt.

And so it feels right that this poem should be very ornay and very detailed and very overtly crafted. The second poem on this page is a poem called How to Listen, and it's written by someone called Major Jackson. Again, I'm not giving you, I normally give you some biography on the poet that I'm discussing, but as I didn't know either of these, I want you to come to them as I did, discovering them as new ground. And then if you like what you're hearing, you can go away and find more. Okay, so this is a poem that appeared in the New Yorker in 2000 by Major Jackson.

How to Listen, okay? I'm going to read you the first few lines. It's quite different, considering they're just like nine years apart when they appeared in the magazine, and considering that they're on the same page in this fabulous anthology, they are really quite different. Obviously, they also have things in common. But this how to listen is not fabulously or not. it's a much more, I don't want to tell you too much about it,

but it's a poem that nearly enters through the prose gate rather than the poetry gate, if you know what I mean. He's not showing off. He's not embroidering Major Jackson the way Spencer Reese did, but we know why Spencer Reese was embroidering a poem about embroidery. Let's hear what Major Jackson's got to say in how to live, Listen. I am going to cock my head tonight like a dog in front of McClintch's tavern on locust. I am going to stand beside the man who works all day combing, his thatch of grey hair, corkscrewed in every direction.

I am going to pay attention to our lives on raveling between the forks of his fine-toothed combing. So McClintch's Tavern on Locust is a pub, a bar, McGlinch's Tavern. Locust, they're both, Locust is a street in Philadelphia. So McClintch's Tavern on Locust is a real bar, I don't think it exists anymore, but a real bar on a real street in Philadelphia. I don't know what that does when you get a very direct reference. like that. It sort of gives the poem a certain sort of journalistic authenticity, if you like, that real place thing. That's how it, what it does to me, it sort of feels already like he's pulling the poetic carpet from under himself.

I'm going to tell you something real now. It's not going to be finely crafted. It's going to be about the true. If one wanted to be very simplistic, one could say that Spencer Reese is my great grandmother's Bible, is all head, and Major Jackson's out of listen is all heart. But I think that would be wrong, but I would understand why someone, if they wanted to really simplify it, might think that. I'm going to cock my head tonight like a dog in front of McGlinch's tavern on locust. You know when you talk to a dog and they cock their head to one side, it's a sign of listening. They're giving you their attention. They're listening, even though they don't know what the words are. Some of you may dispute that.

They certainly know the tone of your voice. So when a dog cocks its head to one side, you feel, again, I don't want to be disparaging to dog. but you feel that there's nothing else in there, really, other than this moment and this sound that they're hearing. And the speaker is saying, I'm going to do that. It's called How to Listen the poem, and he's saying, I'm going to listen like a dog listens. There won't be anything else in my head.

I'm going to simulate that sort of simuling. focus listening of a dog when it cocks its head. I'm going to cock my head tonight like a dog in front of McGlinch's tavern on locust. And already, it's about listening this poem. We're told that in the title, but why are you in front of a bar? What are you going to listen to out there? I'm going to stand beside the man who works all day, combing his thatch of grey hair, corkscrewed in every direction. Wow, are you? You're going to stand beside the man.

So that, to me, stand beside, suggests a certain amount of unity, if you like. I'm going to stand beside the man who works all day. Now, that's a phrase that you've heard in a million blue songs. But he works all day combing his that's that of grey hair. and you think what is going? This man stands outside a bar all day combing his grey hair. So he must be old, we think, if he's got grey hair. He works all day.

It sort of suggests that he doesn't work all day, that what he does all day is this combing. And then I think we're starting to think that this is a man of the street, an old man who stands. outside a bar just combing, combing, combing his hair. His hair, which is described, his thatch of grey hair, corkscrewed in every direction. So it's not doing a great job, the combing. I'm thinking a big grey afro, but I don't know where I'm really getting that from. I'm going to stand beside the man who works all day, combing his that's at aft of,

of grey hair, corkscrewed in every direction. Already I'm on the side of the speaker, because if this is that kind of man that you see on the street who's old and has this tick of combing, combing, often your instinct is not to stand by that man, not to be in support, not to get close to that man, but to slightly avoid them perhaps. But the speaker is saying,

that's what I am going to do. I'm going to stand beside the man who works all day combing his stature of grey hair, corkscrewed in every direction. He goes on, I am going to pay attention to our lives. That is a single line it ends there and you think, where did that come from? Our lives, I thought you were going to watch this old guy combing. What's that got to do with our lives? But that is the thing I've spoken of many times on these podcasts, the difference between a line break and the end of a sentence. So that's only halfway through the sentence. But usually a poet breaks a line because it wants that part of the sentence to operate as a unit of meaning in its own right. And that's what's happening here.

I think he says I'm going to pay attention to our lives end of line. because he wants us to think, but what have our lives got to do with this old man? But it goes on the whole sentence, I am going to pay attention to our lives on raveling between the forks of his fine-toothed comb. So you think, wow, well, clearly now he's gone into a heavy metaphor, heavy symbolism. I'm going to pay attention to our lives unraveling. And our lives, of course, do unravel. I think when we talk about stuff unraveling, we might imagine that's something going wrong. But our life inevitably, as we move towards death, unravels it. And so I don't think

anything's going wrong. He's not saying there's somewhat terrible happening with our lives. I'm going to pay attention to our lives unraveling between the forks of his fire. tooth comb. This perpetual combing seems to be some sort of marker of time. I suppose because it's going through grey hair, time is already forefronted, time and aging. And this comb, it's almost like a clock ticking, this perpetual combing. I'm going to pay attention to our lives on raveling between the forks of his fine-tooth comb. Okay, now, the poem is called How to Listen. We haven't really been confronted with much listening at the moment.

He said how he's going to stand. I'm going to cop my head like a dog. So we know what his posture will be. I'm going to stand beside the man who works all day. So we know where he's going to be. And he says, I'm going to pay attention to our lives. unraveling between the forks, etc. We know what he's going,

but what's he listening to? He's looking at a man combing his hair. Where is the how to listen? The whole thing is about resolutions, this section I've read out. I am going to cut my head. I am going to stand beside. I am going to pay attention.

This is not a poem that looks back like Spencer Reese's poem. This is looking forward. None of this has happened. This is all resolution. This is what I'm going to do. And I think that makes sense with the title, how to listen.

I don't know about you. I am not a great listener because, well, how can I put this? Generally speaking, I feel I've got something more interesting to say than the person speaking. and also I am of an age now where if I don't say quick, I'll forget it and it will be lost forever. And that won't just be my loss, it'll be theirs, is the way I see.

So I am inclined to interrupt and I am inclined while they are speaking to be thinking very much of what I'm going to say next. That is a fault in me. Consequently, my New Year's resolution this very year was to listen more. So this is a good poem for me. I felt that help had come when I opened page 714 in a century of poetry in the New Yorker, and there was a poem called How to Listen. When I listen, the only way I can pull it off, and as I say, it was a New Year's resolution, just as these are resolutions, I'm going to, I am going to, I am going to, I have to make my mind up before.

I have to be very conscious. I have to remind myself that it's not about me. I'm going to listen to them. And that is what he's doing in these first six lines that I've just read you. And that's why this poem is about how to listen. You have to work out your posture. You have to work out where you're going to be. You have to work out what is the centre of your focus.

You have to get all that established with the resolution that I am going to listen. Here comes the remaining five lines of the poem. You will be thinking, well, where are the rhymes? This is a more of a blank verse, free-form poem. And that works because it's not about embroidery. It's about something much more unusual, I think. What I like about this poem in particular is, the way he talks about things. Poetry is ultimately about seeing things differently. And to describe

combing your hair all day as working very early on makes you think this is a different world view I'm dealing with here. So there is something deeply poetic, I think, about a familiar event clearly he knows this guy is going to be here. And there's something very poetic about saying, tonight I'm going to see it again, probably for the hundredth time, but you know what? I'm going to see it differently. And he looks forward to a new take on a familiar event,

a new way of seeing. And that, to me, is one of the main forces of poetry. It's about a new way of seeing things. So it might not feel this poem as obviously poetic as Spencer Reese's very ornate, very intricate, sonnet. But I think the whole thrust of it is poetic about seeing the familiar in a new way and turning a minor incident into something, well, you'll see something quite cosmic. Here he goes. For once we won't talk about the end of the world or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes.

He's still talking about this guy who does the combing, I think. For once we won't talk about the end of the world or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes. For once I am going to ignore the profanity and the dancing and the jute box. so I can hear his head crackle beneath the sky's stretch of faint stars. Right. So, for once, that is the repeated refrain here.

Remember it was, I am going to, I am going to, I am going to, and now we've got two for once. So this is a one-off. I'm not making any major declarations of life-changing. force, but here goes. It's realistic, one night only. For once, we won't talk about the end of the world or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes. Now, one can imagine this is the thing, if you ever have conversations with old homeless men, you're likely to get stuff like the end of the world. Vietnam's long gone when this poem is set as far as I can tell. But, but there's,

this will be a continued theme, just like the continued combing, a man who perhaps has got into a set routine of thinking and talking. For once we won't talk about the end of the world or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes. I have to say, again, I warm to the speaker from when he said I am going to stand beside the man and then describe the man, but also he clearly does converse with this man on a regular basis, even though they're always the same topics. We won't talk about the end of the world or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes.

I think exquisite paper shoes, I don't think this old homeless guy, and that's what I'm viewing him as is where I'm feeling he is. I don't think he's going to be literally wearing paper shoes. what I suspect is the case. He could be. It would be a further eccentricity to go alongside constantly talking about the end of the world or the Vietnam War. I think what he means is when shoes get lots and lots of holes in, you can patch them with paper.

And there's lots of that stuff in, when you read about the Great Depression in America, there's people with shoes that become sort of ornate accidentally, with the New York Times and whatever, all stock inside, operating as a new soul, operating as a new inner, operating as a patch for various holes till the shoes almost become paper themselves. They become more paper than the previous leather that they were. Can I share, this is a kind of a sidebar, and I would be shocked to find that Major Jackson was directly referring to this.

But I just love this story and I'm glad of an excuse to tell it. You may know it. There is a sort of iconic picture from the Great Depression. Well, it's from 1935 and it's of a kid who is wearing paper shoes. They've been sort of made from Isopua and he's going to school. and his mother, I understand from the backstory, has made these paper shoes and told him, you know, not to stand in any puddles for obvious reasons.

And they found this kid much later and asked him about, you know, the incident. And he said his mom had made him these shoes. And on rainy days, the kids from school, if there was any puddles you couldn't get around, they would lift him up and carry him across the puddles so his paper shoes wouldn't disintegrate. And I think he was an old man when he was interviewed and they asked him about how terrible the depression was and asked him about that specific incident.

I mean, one could feel humiliated, if you like, that his school friends were carrying him across the puddles. And what he said was, this is a direct quote, I never felt poor. I felt carried. And man, I love that. And I love the way poetry can sometimes bleed into everyday conversation. But, and I say, I'm not suggesting that Major Jackson is referring to that, but it makes me think of it.

And as I've said to you many times in the past, poetry is a two-way street and some of the things it triggers are quite emotional and big things for you. And it almost becomes part of the poem for you. Okay, I've said it. Oh, and I know that we're not talking about Great Depression. I'm sorry, just that the patching of shoes with paper set me off on a bit of a retro sidebar. We're nearly there, don't worry.

For once we won't talk about the end of the world or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes. For once, I am going to ignore the profanity and the dancing and the dukewarm. So what he's saying is, I'm not going to let him get me on to his usual talk. So for a poem that's called How to Listen, this is the first real listening he started to talk about, and it's non-listening. So I don't want to get into all that. We won't talk about the end of the world or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes. That's just some things I'm not going to listen to tonight.

So that's not part of the How to Listen. And although I suppose part of the technique of how to listen is to know what you want to listen to and what you don't want to listen to. So, for once, we won't talk about the end of the world or Vietnam where his exquisite paper shoes. For once I'm going to ignore the profanity and the dancing and the jute box.

Remember he's standing outside. The plan is he will see this man who stands outside McClintch's tavern on locust and they're outside a tavern. there's going to be profanity and dancing and the duke box. But tonight, just like that dog that doesn't seem to have anything else in its head, its cocked head, other than this noise that's coming from the person that's speaking, he is going to be like that.

He's getting rid of the extraneous chat that he used he has with this old combing man. He's going to get rid of the extraneous noise. Again, it's a declaration for once, I am. going to ignore the profanity and the dancing and the jukebox. It's another resolution. The only way I can hear what I want to hear tonight is by getting rid of all the other stuff and being in the right place and the right posture and the right attitude. And here it comes. I'm going to ignore the profanity and the dancing and the jukebox so I can hear his head crackle beneath his. the sky's stretch of faint stars.

Right. So that's how to listen. What he wants to listen to is this man's head crackling, the hair, the static electricity in his combed hair. The comb going through. I'm thinking of it as a grey afro, as I said. So, you know, it's not that easy to slide through. and that's what he wants to hear.

Why does he want to hear that? I don't understand. It seems really important to him. You know, the title is how to listen. And there's no, as I said, no baroque distractions in this poem. It doesn't have a lot of internal rhymes or rhymes. That's my front door, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't have any rhymes or internal rhymes or fine structure going on.

It's all about let's get all the noise out the way. We don't want the chat about the end of the world. We don't want the jukebox. I want to hear this crackle. And it's his real intent listening. It's not a loud sound to be trying to hear it outside a tavern with a man who talks. a lot. It's a real challenge. It's a bit like a thing I call gallery looking in that when you look at paintings or sculptures in a gallery, it's not like looking at the car that's coming down the road

so you don't get run over or looking at someone's house front. It's looking with a capital L. It's an intense looking. And that's why I think after 40 minutes in a museum or art gallery, I need a cup of tea, basically. It's work. It is work, just like combing is work for this old man. So he's going to do that. He's going to really, really listen.

And I think the sound of this hair being comb, this crackle becomes like a, It's a device. It's a meditative device. It's something that you listen to and you think, as he said before, I'm going to pay attention to our lives unraveling between the forks of his fine tooth comb. It's going to be a monument to the importance of listening and soaking in and absorbing this exercise to put all this big, loud, colourful noise to one side and listen to the crackle of a man combing his hair. This what seems to be this sort of tick. This again, I feel homeless man has got.

That's what he's come to listen to. And let's hear that end bit again. So I can hear his head crackle beneath the sky's stretch of faint stars. and that's what I mean when I said this becomes cosmic, I think I said that. This man becomes, it's almost like a constellation amid these stars. He becomes significant. And they are the sky's stretch of faint stars is almost like the stretch of hair being combed. The crackle, the static electricity, you can imagine sparks becoming stars.

There's something very major and beautiful happening here. And he's walked past it a thousand times, but tonight he's made his mind up that it's going to be the center of his attention so much that galaxies become slightly background. I can hear his head crackle beneath the sky's stretch of faint stars. I think they are faint, possible. because they're in Philadelphia, the city lights, the light pollution, but also they are backdrop to this incredible crackling, combing hair. That is the centrepiece. That's why he's

gone out this night. And I think it's about, well, seeing people, first of all, there are a lot are people that we don't see. I may have said on this podcast before, I think there was a Denise Leffatoff poem about seeing a man in the street. We often go past people like they are specters on a ghost train and they're gone and we don't think about it anymore. But sometimes poetry says, no, no, no, no, look at this person. Don't just look at him.

Don't just note the combing. Don't just listen to his regular conversation topics. Actually listen to the crackle of his hair being combed. That's the kind of attention everyone deserves, just like those pictures in the gallery, looking with a capital L. This poem, I think, it drips love. And I don't think it's right to say this poem's all about heart

and my great-grandmother's Bible is all about head because it's so cleverly crafted because there's a great deal of heart and a great deal of love. And I think a great deal of crafting in how to listen, it's not as overt. But all those resolutions, all this great rehearsal for listening,

and then what he finally listens to is something that most of us would feel is not worth the bother, but he convinced us, I think, that it is. So that was page 714 of a century of poetry in the New Yorker 1925 to 2025 to 2025. It's a big book, it's not a cheap book, but I tell you, I mean, I have continued to read it since I read 714. That's the other good thing about poetry anthology. You don't have to start at the beginning.

You can drop it in anywhere. It's an absolute joy. And I mean joy to just turn the pages. There's something so fantastic every time you turn. But if you don't get it, if it's too much money, just get a poetry anthology and try that thing of just keep going. A new poem, a new poet. It is, oh, it's like, um, it's like, um,

a motorway services for the soul. Thank you so much for listening to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. Don't forget to follow and then you'll never miss an episode. See you next week.