Step into the world of poetry with Ann Beebe, Ph.D., UT Tyler English professor and host of the podcast “A Verse Reaction.” Each episode shines a contemporary light on the timeless works of literary giants. The conversation explores Emily Dickinson’s musings and Langston Hughes’ jazz-infused rhythms, as Beebe unveils the intimate connections between their lives, their art and the culture that shaped them.
Beebe also discusses how a grounding in literature not only sharpens students’ minds but also equips them to navigate life’s deeper questions. It’s a testament to the value of these studies, fostering critical thinkers and leaders.
TRANSCRIPT
LANDESS:
She’s written a book about Emily Dickinson and has created an active campaign to bring 21st century relevance to a university degree in literature. I’m UT Tyler Radio News Director Mike Landess, and I’m talking about Dr. Ann Beebe, who has now branched out with her own podcast titled “A Verse Reaction.” How’s it going so far?
BEEBE:
It’s going great, and I need to thank KVUT for the title because I was stuck. And you guys brainstormed a bunch of different options, and I loved that. I love “A Verse Reaction.”
LANDESS:
Well, we love working with you, and there’s no question about that. I understand the first series that you’ve done deals with poetry from everyone, including Emily Dickinson to Langston Hughes. Tell us more.
BEEBE:
Of course, I had to have Emily Dickinson. I wanted well, you say first series, and I hope it’s the first series. I hope there’s a series two, series three, but if this was my only shot, I wanted to make it as representative as possible. So the eight episodes that deal with individual poets run from 1650 to Mary Oliver, the last poet, who died in 2019. And poets who represent American literature and many different threads of American literature. I wanted to be as representative as possible. And so, of course, I’d have Emily Dickinson, Anne Bradstreet. I already mentioned Mary Oliver, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost and Robert Lowell. Phyllis Wheatley and Lucille Clifton are the eight poets in series one.
LANDESS:
And exactly how do you, are you reading from their work, or are you talking about their story? How does it work?
BEEBE:
A little of everything.
LANDESS:
OK.
BEEBE:
So each episode has three parts. Part one — and it’s not that the podcast is not intended necessarily for students’ literature, people who have any background in poetry, it’s just people who are looking for a good podcast to listen to. I love podcasts. I just want a podcast to listen to. The podcast is not a replacement for a university class. So it’s very much a podcast, and it’s in three parts. And the first part just grounds the listener in that particular poet with a little biography, and in that particular poet’s work: What was so important about it?What was so distinctive about that particular poetic voice? Part two is devoted to an interview with a special guest, because I very much believe that when we read poetry, we read it first for enjoyment, just the wow factor, love it. But if we’re going to analyze it, and if we’re going to ask smart questions of it, we need to have some sort of foundations, some sort of grounding. And so for a different poem, there are different contexts that are particularly appropriate. So I picked four poems that then in part three that I read and talk about, hopefully from that context. But I picked, asked experts here from UT Tyler to come in and answer some questions about a particular context. So for Emily Dickinson, 1800 poets, hundreds of contexts that I could approach the poems. I asked Dr. Matt Stith from the History department to talk to me, answer some questions about the Civil War home front, because I picked four poems from 1863 that I think are very representative or could be richly read from that background. So yes, each episode does have a little background, does have work with four particular poems. But part two is, I think, some really great interviews with eight faculty members here at UT Tyler talking about their area of expertise.
LANDESS:
Well, now, one of these experts that you talked to is Sarah Roberts, who’s done an amazing job as an interim (director) working in the music department. What was the author that you worked with with her? How did that work?
BEEBE:
That’s episode six, and Langston Hughes. And again with Langston Hughes, with his body of work, there are so many different contexts that you could bring an informed reading of the text. But I focused on some of his earlier works and particular works that are definitively influenced by jazz music, both in terms of the tempo, the pace, but also the characters and the feel of the poems. And so before I started, as a literary scholar, going to the poems and making claims about how jazz influenced those poems, I wanted to talk to a jazz expert. So Dr. Sarah Roberts, and I thought she did a fabulous job, answered some questions about jazz, about the history of it, about its influence in the United States, and then, from that knowledge, we then turned to four poems of Langston Hughes and read them through that lens of jazz music.
LANDESS:
She is quite remarkable. She does a jazz camp for students here in the Tyler area, well, actually throughout East Texas they come. And she’s an incredible musician on her own — saxophonist. And I was also interested in Dr. Sarah Roberts from the standpoint that she brings that history of the music. And did she give you any insights perhaps that you didn’t have before the interview?
BEEBE:
So of course, I’ve read Langston Hughes poetry, I’ve taught classes on Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance, but I am not myself a jazz musician. And while I’ve said that the PBS special on jazz right, that’s multi part, I watched that years ago, but I’m not a specialist. And so I wanted very much to have someone very specifically before I turned to those poems by Langston Hughes, very specifically give a background, give a sense of — I asked her specifically about how lyrics, right, jazz music, we sort of tend to have more of an image of it being instrumental, but how it might impact the creation of lyrics, poetry.
LANDESS:
Well, Sarah Vaughn and so many amazing artists, and the writing and the performance of those.
BEEBE:
Right. And so I thought she did, and it’s. Each of the interviews are 10 to 15 minutes, and I sent all of our experts four questions before, a month, before I asked them to sit down, so they had plenty of time to think about what they were going to say. And so they all came very prepared, very clear answers, and they knew what poet their their interview was being used to contextualize particular poems, and so I thought that just all, Sarah Roberts and everyone, did a fabulous job.
LANDESS:
I sought some insight from the gospel, according to Google, as it has to do with poetry. This is what I came up with: “Poetry is a form of creative writing that exists in cultures around the world. It’s important to the literary and cultural landscape of humanity and can be a powerful teaching tool helping students improve their literacy.” How’d Google do? Is that close?
BEEBE:
Good, but it sort of seems sort of dry and emotionless.
LANDESS: But that’s Google.
BEEBE: And I love this Google. But in terms of the podcast, and why create it, why create a poetry podcast very specifically? I have found teaching poetry for many, many years that students sort of almost now come to the class, even English majors, with a fear of, they’re intimidated by poetry, and I don’t think they should be. I think it, when done well, there’s just so much bad poetry out there. But when poetry is done well, it can and should be the most approachable, the most emotional and intimate reading experience. So I wanted, I created this podcast for students to try hopefully, if high schoolers are listening to this before they get to college, they gain a little bit more confidence in their ability to read and discuss poetry. But just for the general everyday person, poetry is just simply, I think, necessary for human existence, necessary for the enjoyment of human existence. And in episode one, I talk about some of the medical and psychological studies that have been done that talk about how poetry enriches our lives. It can reduce stress, most certainly helps with mental acuity, helps with vocabulary. It’s just such an approachable, when done well, such an approachable genre, and it can enrich life so much. So episode one is called, “Who Gave you a Podcast?” Well, pretty much the Dean said, “We have a podcast studio, and you can sign up for it.”
LANDESS:
Exactly, and we’re glad to have you.
BEEBE:
And I said I want to do a poetry one, because I think, I mean, it’s somewhat simple, but I just simply think the world would be a better place if people read poetry more often, good poetry, more often.
LANDESS:
Let me throw a wild card into this.
BEEBE: Oh, dear.
LANDESS: Hold on, buckle your seat belt. The thing, and put your tray table up and lock it in the lock position. The thing I’m thinking about are rock poets. I saw an interview with Bob Dylan just recently, and he was talking about in his early days, where this stuff was just pouring out of him, all of these songs and the subjects that he took on. And some of them were a little crazy and then some of them were amazingly right on the money. I wonder if we will look back on someone like that from the 1960s and ’70s and ’80s and say, wow, what a remarkable guy. Will it be strictly within the venue of music, or will that be, is there such a thing as rock poetry?
BEEBE:
Yes, yes, again, there are good poems, bad poems. There are good songs and bad songs, right? And one of the things that takes a song out and makes it great would be the lyrics, the quality of the lyrics. And when I say poetry is the genre that can be the most intimate, that means that can connect with and share an idea and emotion and experience with the reader, songs, with the listener, right? And so, yes, most certainly there can be and there will continue to be, classes and studies that very specifically look at the lyrics of songs and analyze them as you would a poem. Songwriters, overall, most certainly, I think we can and should read the great ones, read the great lyrics with awareness of context, and that might sometimes be biography, be time period, as I said, but generational right, might be some reaction to some event of the time period. Reading, and not necessarily, you know, because we all want to become literary scholars, although, again, I think the world would be a better place if we were all trained in literary scholarship, but because it simply makes the experience of understanding and working with that particular poem or lyrics, makes that experience so much richer, because you’re experiencing it and understanding it on multiple levels, as opposed to the first initial, emotional reaction, which is itself valuable. But we can get so much more from good, great poetry, good great songs, if we are willing to put the work in and actually ask good, smart, informed questions of the text.
LANDESS:
Now, I used the word “relevance” in the introduction to our conversation. You’ve made it a personal and professional mission to reestablish that perception and potential applications in the minds of students and even potential employers down the road. How is that going? What kind of response have you gotten to that? I’m thinking about the way in which you use social media like LinkedIn, and you put a number of articles written by other people, some by you, specifically saying this is why this is important. This is the application, the practical application of what we’re talking about here. How’s that going?
BEEBE:
I hope it’s going well. I mean, I’m going to continue doing it, and no one’s told me to stop. And no one, I haven’t been trolled by anyone on social media, LinkedIn saying, “Why do you post these things? These things are all wrong.” No, they’re not. The value of training your mind to think critically, to look closely at the written word, and to see how that’s applicable to any career: law, medicine, business, anything, because that is how we communicate as humans. We communicate with words. Sometimes those words are spoken, sometimes those words are written down, and so to have people who are trained in actually understanding human communication, how we put words together, what they mean, what they don’t mean too, is equally important, is invaluable for someone who’s going into the legal field, for someone who’s going into medicine. My goodness, in communication in medicine is so important for someone who’s going into any area of business. It’s, and that is why, for so many years, when you said someone got a college degree, what they got was a classical degree. They got a classical liberal arts degree, and that is what trained them and gave them the adaptability of mind and flexibility in order to then go out and venture into all these fields and create all these wonderful things — for hundreds of years that was university education. But pulling away from that and not getting that firm foundation in the liberal arts, at the worst what it does is it limits the marketable skills of every single person. So why are liberal arts so important? Why is the core at the university so important? Because it gives you those critical thinking skills, and it trains your mind to actually be able to look, notice, ask questions and then articulate your ideas. In my opinion.
LANDESS:
Give us a little sample of what we might find if we listen to “A Verse Reaction.”
BEEBE:
Thanks, thank you very much. Well in, I brought with me Mary Oliver’s collection. I’m holding it, waving it, hoping he would take the cue and let me read a poem.
LANDESS:
I can take a cue.
BEEBE:
So I, in that last episode, we had the wonderful Jess Coleman in to answer some questions about birds, because I picked four poems from (Oliver’s) collection, all titled after birds. And so you could just say good, birds in general, OK, the title of it is “Swan,” whatever. So no, no, no. If you think about swans more specifically, and you think about their size, you think about their beauty. You think about their sometimes aggressiveness, protectiveness. And you think about how symbolically they’ve been important in literature, in ballet and in Western and Eastern culture, there’s a reason why that this particular poem we’re about to read is given the title, “Swan,” and that’s one. As we read the poem and just appreciate the poem, but then we want to debate it, we start looking more closely. OK, what is it about the swan and everything that we know about a swan that engendered these thoughts? This is “Swan” by Mary Oliver.
“Did you two see it drifting all night on the Black River? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air and armful of white blossoms, a perfect commotion of silk and linen, as it leaned into the bondage of its wings? A snowbank, a bank of lilies, biting the air with its black beak. Did you hear it fluting and whistling? A shrill, dark whistle, like the rain pelting the trees like a waterfall, knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds, a white cross streaming across the sky? It’s feet like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river. And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for, and have you changed your life?” That’s “Swan” by Mary Oliver.
LANDESS:
That is lovely. The first thing that comes to mind for me about swans is that they mate for life. That is a, that is a tough one in our society these days. We mate for 5, 6, 7 years and then we go off and move somewhere else. It seems as though, I mean, statistically that happens. That is a lovely, lovely, lovely poem.
BEEBE:
It’s a poem question. And it’s a poem. You get asked one, you see its beauty. Everyone has a sort of a pop culture. You know what a swan is, but you stop and think about a swan. And why, looking at a swan, would it engender these sort of large, existential questions about life and their applicability to you, the speaker, you the listener of this poem?
LANDESS:
And that’s really the purpose of a verse.
BEEBE:
Yes. Yes, I agree completely, and again, now I’m not saying we should do this all the time, and that’s all we should do–read poetry. But the world would be a better place, in my opinion, if people would stop every now and again from the rush of their lives, from the demands of everything, from all the noise coming from the pop culture world and everything, and that’s wonderful, and there’s so many wonderful things going on in that world. But every now and again, just stop to pause and read a poem. And maybe this poem didn’t do it for you, but there are millions of good poems out there. There’s a poet out there for you; there are poems out there for you that will just make you stop, reset and think more clearly about who you are and what it is you want to achieve in this world.
LANDESS:
Thanks for listening as UT Tyler Radio Connects with Dr. Anne Beebe. To share, listen again or for a transcript of this interview, visit our website, uttylerradio.org. To be notified about future episodes, subscribe to UT Tyler Radio Connects on your favorite podcast platform. For UT Tyler Radio News, I’m Mike Landess.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
