Better late than never
April 29th, 2008 . by laurieJust today, April 29, 2008, I discovered podcasts. Don’t get me wrong — I knew podcasts existed long before today, but I didn’t really get them. I didn’t understand why I would want one. My life is busy enough, so why would I go to all the trouble of downloading some program on my iPod to listen to? I don’t even make time to watch TV, let alone listen to things.
But then I heard on NPR on the way to pick up my daughter from school that they were going to have a show about a new Elizabeth Bishop collection that was being put together (or had been put together–I missed some of the details.) I was interested and knew I wouldn’t be in the car when the show was on, and in the car is the only time I actually listen to things. So I went on the NPR site to see if I could figure out this newfangled podcast dealio and download the program. Heh. An hour and a half later, my iPod was overflowing its waistband with poetry podcasts. Everything from Poetry Magazine to NPR/PoetryFoundation to Houghton Mifflin and more. There was WAY more than I could even download. I literally don’t have enough space on my iPhone (which I’m using as an iPod these days because I’m an admitted Apple/Mac whore.)
So the first podcast I listened to was on the subject of Sylvia Plath’s poem “Fever 103.” Not only was there a great discussion of the poem, virtually line-by-line, but they had an audio recording of Plath herself reading it the year she died. Oh. My. God. I hate to be a cliche, but I got literal chills. (In case you were curious, Sylvia Plath sounds exactly like Gwyneth Paltrow, partial English accent and all.) All I can say is WOW. And that little nugget of gold will be living on my iPhone forever and ever. You know, for when I’m feeling all dark and angsty.
If I wasn’t really the last person on earth to have discovered the joys of podcasts and someone reading this hasn’t seen the light, I urge you to go to iTunes as quickly as your nimble fingers will take you and search under Podcasts for some of the poetry programming. If nothing else, get the Sylvia Plath podcast and listen to her hair-raising reading. It’s on iTunes under: Arts->Literature->NPR->alt.NPR Poetry Off the Shelf.
[...] Laurie Junkins wrote an interesting post today on Better late than neverHere’s a quick excerptAn hour and a half later, my iPod was overflowing its waistband with poetry podcasts….I literally don’t have enough space on my iPhone (which I’m using as an iPod these days because I’m an admitted Apple/Mac whore….My life is busy enough, so why would I go to all the trouble of downloading some program on my iPod to listen to?… [...]