The Evergreen Wildflower: Exploring Nature Poetry

Mark
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Arts
  • Updated Monthly

A monthly podcast that explores various elements and themes of nature in international poetry to inspire, educate, heal, and strengthen our connection to the natural world.

  1. Peak Speak

    05/31/2025

    Peak Speak

    Selections for this episode are read in the following order: John Ruskin, “Modern Painters” Ivan Franko, "Hutsul Fairy Tales” “Kawaida Stories", various North American indigenous storytellers, recorded traditions Matsuo Bashō, 17th century haiku "Malay Folk Tales", various sources, collected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Rainer Maria Rilke Wang Wei, “Deer Enclosure” Kalidasa, “Meghadūta” William Wordsworth, “The Prelude” Fulani epic, paraphrased, West African oral tradition Alexander Pope, “The Hermit” "Korean Folk Songs", various periods, oral tradition, translated by various scholars Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” Jack London, "The Call of the Wild" Rabindranath Tagore, “The Approaching Storm” "The Kalevala", compiled 19th century from oral tradition, translated by Eino Friberg "The Bushman's Dream", Southern Africa recorded oral tradition "The Epic of Manas", Kyrgyzstan oral epic, translated by various scholars Sei Shōnagon, "The Pillow Book" Cao Xueqin, "The Dream of the Red Chamber" "The Tale of the Heike", translated by Hiroshi Kitagawa and Bruce T. Tsuchida Ivan Franko, "The Iron Age"

    9 min
  2. Spring Blossoming

    04/23/2025

    Spring Blossoming

    Selections for this episode are read in the following order: Homer, “The Odyssey” Rabindranath Tagore, "Spring's Whisper" Dante Alighieri, “The Divine Comedy” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Faust, Part One”  John Burroughs, “Wake-Robin” Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace” “One Thousand and One Nights”, Translated by Richard Burton Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Locksley Hall" Murasaki Shikibu, “The Tale of Genji” “Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali” - Mali oral tradition Christina Rossetti, "Spring" Matsuo Bashō Yosa Buson Du Fu, "Spring View" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Early Spring Feeling" Gabriela Mistral, "Spring" Rubén Darío, "Spring Song" Olive Tilford Dargan, “Call Home the Heart” Anacreon, "Ode XVI" Rumi, Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi Kalidasa, "Ritusamhara" Lady Murasaki Shikibu, "The Tale of Genji" Sei Shōnagon, "The Pillow Book" Hans Christian Andersen, "The Nightingale" Frédéric Mistral, (Mirèio) Lady Sarashina, "The Sarashina Diary" Mikhail Lermontov, "A Hero of Our Time" Zane Grey, "Riders of the Purple Sage" Kobayashi Issa Władysław Reymont, "The Peasants" Knut Hamsun, "Growth of the Soil" Sigrid Undset, "Kristin Lavransdatter" Emily Dickinson, "A Light Exists in Spring" William Blake, "To Spring" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "An April Day" William Wordsworth, "Lines Written in Early Spring" John Clare, "Early Spring" Rudyard Kipling, "In Springtime" Christina Rossetti, "Spring" Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring" Thomas Nashe, "Spring" Jalal al-Din Rumi, "The Festival of Spring" Meng Haoran, "Spring Dawn" Su Shi, "Spring Night" Matsuo Bashō, "Spring" Hafez, "Spring" José Martí, "Spring" Gabriela Mistral, "Spring" Rainer Maria Rilke, "Spring"

    7 min
  3. Waterfall Call

    03/12/2025

    Waterfall Call

    References read in the following order: Swahili Proverb, “The Wisdom of Water” Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Waterfall’s Song” Matsuo Bashō, “Haiku on Waterfalls” Rabindranath Tagore, “The Waterfall’s Song” Paul Verlaine, “Tears of the Waterfall” José Martí, “Isla de Oro” Pablo Neruda, “The Great Waterfall” Su Shi (Su Dongpo), “Ode to the Red Cliff” Omar Khayyam, “Rubáiyát” Leopold Senghor, “The Falls of the Sine River” Māori Oral Tradition, “The Tears of Hine-nui-te-pō” Saigyō, “A Mountain Waterfall” Avvaiyar, “Waterfall’s Wisdom” Mikhail Lermontov, “Waterfall of the Caucasus” Victor Hugo, “Tristesse d'Olympio” Korean Buddhist Poem, “Cascading Wisdom” Bhartrihari, “Reflections by the Waterfall” Buson, “Waterfall in the Deep Mountains” Popol Vuh, “The Birth of the Rivers” John Ruskin, “Modern Painters, Volume I” Henry David Thoreau, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” Li Bai (Li Po), “Viewing a Waterfall at Mount Lu” Alexander von Humboldt, “Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America” Mary Wollstonecraft, “Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark” William Wordsworth, “The Waterfall and the Eglantine” Subandhu, “Vasavadatta” John Clare, “The Cataract” Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces, “La Cascada” Wang Wei, “Waterfall in Sunlight” Bashō, “The Waterfall’s Voice” Kalidasa, “Meghaduta” Issa, “Listening to the Falls” Yi Saek, “The White Cascade” Birago Diop, “Viens voir” Kofi Awoonor, “Waterfalls of the Volta” Jeong Cheol, “Watching the Falls” Hawaiian Chant, “Mele of the Waterfall” José Hernández, “The Falls of Misiones” Tao Yuanming, “Drinking Wine by the Waterfall” Laozi, “Dao De Jing” Jalal al-Din Rumi, “The Water’s Journey”

    8 min
  4. Nature's Verses

    09/12/2024

    Nature's Verses

    Selections for this episode are read in the following order: Rabindranath Tagore, “Gitanjali” Wang Wei (Tang Dynasty) Eino Leino Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet” Fyodor Tyutchev, “Silentium!” Nguyễn Du, “The Tale of Kiều” Kabir Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Essays: Second Series” Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” Vincent van Gogh John Keats, “On the Grasshopper and the Cricket” Buddha Pythagoras Whakataukī Proverb John Muir, “John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir” Aristotle Lord Byron, “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage” Anne Frank, “Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl” Rainer Maria Rilke, “Book of Hours” William Blake, “The Letters of William Blake” Thomas Pringle, "Afar in the Desert" Mihai Eminescu, "Evening Star" Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, “Rimas”

    6 min
  5. Desert Versed

    08/13/2024

    Desert Versed

    References of the literary works read in the following order: Mary Hunter Austin, "The Land of Little Rain"  Arthur Mangin, "The Desert World"  Zane Grey, “The Heritage of the Desert” In the Desert by Stephen Crane Victor Hugo, Les Misérables Mary Hunter Austin, "The Land of Little Rain” Olive Schreiner, “Dreams” Zane Grey, “Wanderer of the Wasteland” Rumi Robert Frost, “Desert Places” Emily Dickinson, “With thee, in the Desert” Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias” Murasaki Shikibu, Murasaki Shikibu Diary (1008-1010)  Andrew Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’. Bertrand N. O. Walker, “A Desert Memory” Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”  Honore De Balzac, “A Passion in the Desert” Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam” Rabindranath Tagore, “Stray Birds” Podcast listener submission, “Desert Wash”

    14 min
  6. Alpine Lines

    07/14/2024

    Alpine Lines

    References of the literary works read in the following order: John Muir, Letter to His Sister [1873] Po-Chü-i, “A Dream of Mountaineering” Hanshan, “Cold Mountain” Annette Wynne, “God Made the Mountain Very High” Tao Yuanming, “Drinking Wine” T’ao Ch’ien [365-427 CE] Edgar Allan Poe, “Dream-Land” Robert Frost, “The Mountain” William Wordsworth, “The Prelude” Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mont Blanc” Emily Brontë, “Loud without the Wind was Roaring” James Russell Lowell, “The Green Mountains” Emily Dickinson, “The Mountain sat upon the Plain” D. H. Lawrence, “Meeting among the Mountains” Hilda Conkling, “Snow-Capped Mountain” Tao-yün, “Climbing a Mountain” Hamlin Garland, “The Mountains Are a Lonely Folk” Iris Tree, “The Mountain Is an Emperor” Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Attraction” Robert William Service, “The Mountain and the Lake” Lucy Larcom, “The Distant Mountain-range” Sir Walter Scott, “Scotch Mountain Scenery” D’Arcy McNickle, “The Mountains” Annette Wynne, “The Mountain May Seem Very High” Emily Dickinson, “In lands I never saw, they say” Francis Parkman, Jr., “The Oregon Trail” Jessie Belle Rittenhouse, “Unveiled” Katherine F. Stone Cook, “Mountain Tops” James E. Pickering, “The Call of the Mountains and other Poems” Li Bai, “Why I Live in the Green Mountains” Li Po, “Alone Looking at the Mountain”

    15 min
  7. Cumuli Versify

    06/19/2024

    Cumuli Versify

    References of the literary works read in the following order: William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Sima You [1091 jinshi] Paul Laurence Dunbar, “By the Stream” Annette Wynne, “One Little Cloud Is Out To-day” John Wilson, “The Cloud” Hans Christian Andersen, "The Cloud" William Cullen Bryant, “To a Cloud” John B. Tabb, “A Legacy” Chen Xunzhi, “Cantos on Pacing the Void at Nine Locks, with a Prelude” Ruby Archer, “A Little Cloud” Frank Dempster Sherman, “Clouds” Rabindranath Tagore, “Stray Birds” Victor Hugo, “The Vanished City” Charles Baudelaire, “The Stranger” Alexander Pushkin, “The Cloud” Murasaki Shikibu, "The Tale of Genji" Li Po Rabindranath Tagore, “Gitanjali 18” "The Mabinogion", Wales c. 1350–1410 Omar Khayyám, "The Rubáiyát” Cao Zhi, "The Lonely Cloud" Su Shi, "Remembering the Hermit": Mikhail Lermontov, “The Cloud” Aristophanes, "The Clouds" Adam Mickiewic, "Clouds Over the Hills" Maurice Maeterlinck, "The Life of the Bee" Kalidasa, "The Cloud Messenger" Elias Lönnrot, "Kalevala" Berthold Auerbach, "On the Heights"  A poem composed by Prince Ōtsu, weeping, at Iware Pond, when he was due to die [MAN'YŌSHŪ MYS III: 416] Osip Mandelstam, "Poems of Osip Mandelstam" “From a poetry contest at Sadafumi’s house” [Uta’Awase 19] Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Cloud"

    11 min
  8. Lake Escape

    05/17/2024

    Lake Escape

    References of the literary works read in the following order: William Stanley Braithwaite, “By an Inland Lake” Robert Southey, “The Cataract of Lodore” W. B. Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” John Pagen White, “Lays and Legends of the English Lake Country” Wang Wei, “Adrift on the Lake” Ellen P. Allerton, “Morning View of Lake Michigan” John Muir, “Steep Trails” Edgar Allan Poe, “To The Lake” Abram Joseph Ryan, “Lake Como” Meng Hao-jan, “Looking for Mei, Master of Way” Fannie Isabelle Sherrick, “The Lake” Fujiwara no Norinaga, GOSHŪISHŪ GSIS VII: 456 George Moore, “The Lake” Sir John Collings Squire, “The Lake”

    12 min
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A monthly podcast that explores various elements and themes of nature in international poetry to inspire, educate, heal, and strengthen our connection to the natural world.

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