ZIP Code Poetry: Listener Spotlight
The Takeaway is teaming up with our friends at the O, Miami Poetry Festival and WLRN-Miami Herald. We're asking you to pay tribute to the least poetic definition of where you live: The ZIP Code. For more details about the project, listen back to The Takeaway's interview O Miami's Scott Cunningham.
All month The Takeaway will feature poems from listeners across the country-- like this one from Steve in Brooklyn (11232). Here's his ode:
It
seems
that many
people have been
buried here.
He explained that his poem is about living near one of New York's most famous cemeteries. "This poem is about the beautiful and historic Greenwod Cemetery," he said, "home of Leonard Bernstein, Jean Michel Basquiat, and other buried persons.”
Listener Laney in Plano, Texas (75093) shared this poem:
Where there were once ranches and fields
Now big box stores, subdivisions
Here between the humming tollway and newly ringed roads
crepe myrtles bloom
"My poem is about the beauty you can find in the landscape that at first glance seems spoiled by suburban sprawl,” she told The Takeaway.
Another Texas listener, Paul in Van Alstyne (75495), submitted this ode:
I can see urban sprawl a' comin'.
Up Highway 75 a' runnin'.
Where will I go?
No escapin' from these empty strip malls of woe.
But a new Starbucks ... somethin'!?
He said, "My poem is about the urban sprawl that we see heading our way from Dallas, Plano and McKinney. We live about 40 miles north of downtown Dallas and our tiny town of 3,000 is slowly starting to turn into something else.”
Amanda in St. Paul Minnesota (55108) wrote about her love for the Minnesota State Fair. "I love the fair so much that I moved to this neighborhood just to make it easier to go to several times every year," she said. Here's her ode:
State Fair on Labor Day,
best kind of summer heat
but
the five-month winter frosts over the memory.
An ode from Joan in Cottonwood, Arizona (86326) pays tribute to the beautiful Verde Valley of central Arizona:
Oak Creek cuts through red rock canyons where
a kestrel darts through azure skies,
dropping straight down
to catch
a tiny motion in the air.
One more poem celebrating natural beauty-- and commenting on its loss-- came from Erin in Seattle, Washington (98103). She wrote:
Soft rain drifts through forests, forming droplets upon whiskers
Once, an orca turned his eye toward mine.
Once,
there were starfish.
And in Charlottesville, Virginia (22903), Stephanie was inspired to write about her city's "strange confluence of climate and history." Here's her poem:
Magnolias grow
smaller on
mountainsides, where winds whip red bricks to red earth
vines reshape ruins
The ZIP Ode Poetry Contest was developed and designed by O, Miami and WLRN. Select ZIP Ode poets will be read on air by The Takeaway. For those living in Miami, area residents can enter locally to compete to become one of 20 finalists who will be invited to read their ode at an event on April 29 at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. For Miami area residents, click here to learn more.
Need some inspiration for your ZIP Odes? Listen to listener submissions above or visit WLRN's blog, zipodes.tumblr.com. Don't forget to fill out the submission form below to participate. And if you're in the Miami area, make sure you find out more from WLRN.
