Lyric Life

Dungy's magnificent poem, "Let me," published just this month in The New Yorker (April, 2021) is a terrifying glimpse into the problem of living in the United States: everything's real and everything's a metaphor. And when you're in that spot, the house can only catch on fire. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I slow-walk through this terrific poem that seems so suited for this moment in U. S. history--and seems to explore the very thing so much of us can't comprehend: how can the dream and the reality, the metaphor and the story, exist at the same moment? The poem is based on a technique as old as Homer: ring structure. It's playing with time to ring the moments and deepen them. But it does more than I could ever do. I'm a writer of narrative. I can make sediments. It takes poets to turn them into granite.