No Good Poetry

On long weekend nights after going to a show and a diner and talking wide awake about everything you loved about the night you sit and listen to two friends talk about poetry- they make little remarks and laugh and talk about their adventures and it all relates to art made from language and you're sitting on a sofa in a kitchen in New Orleans and someone reads this poem by a poet you havent heard before and makes a short joke and starts talking about a poet they met in Montevideo and that poet walks in the building and sits down and reads a poem and you just never want it to end. That's The No Good Poetry Podcast.

What a great find! Looking forward to this podcasts golden nuggets of the future. The hosts voice is absolutely mesmerizing and I thoroughly enjoy the content so far! Easy to listen to, very funny and fresh podcast that is so needed in the world of podcasts! Cheers!

The two Josephs on No Good Poetry invite real talk about poetry in each episode. Poetry should be as integral and ordinary to life as morning coffee, putting on your socks and remembering to tell the people you love you love them. No Good Poetry brings this feeling to the forefront with its casual approach to introducing poetry concepts in casual conversations, bringing to light little known poets with a sense of adventure and having an all around laughing, good time getting down with the funky and funny sides to poetry live from the Big Easy, a city deeply in love with poetry and its poets.

I first listened to the episode in which Bienvenu and Makkos discuss Matthew Zapruder's essay in the NY Times "Understanding Poetry Is More Straightforward Than You Think". In this episode, they both provide well-informed, fair, and thoughtful commentary about how poetry is taught in schools. As an English teacher and poet myself, it was helpful to hear different perspectives on how we frame poetry for students to give them both a critical and joyful experience. Both Makkos and Bienvenu are serious readers and writers (and, I believe, translators and archivists) who can speak clearly and interestingly on a wide range of poetry, providing historical basis and contemporary examples for their thoughts. I look forward to listening to more episodes.