Soothing Stanzas - Gentle Verses for Quiet Nights

Florentino Ariza

Each episode of Soothing Stanzas offers a single poem — from a lovestruck scribe in ancient Egypt to Pablo Neruda, Tagore. Poets from the ages and here and now — savored slowly, with warmth and full attention. Together we'll sit with its wisdom, its joy, its ache. Because poetry holds all of it: love and loss, solitude and seasons, the small mysteries of being alive, the grandeur of this vast and wonderful cosmos. And somehow, it makes all of it better. New episodes every week. Best taken with some camomile tea, and a closed door.

  1. 1d ago

    Friend Zoned? Two poems to soothe you...

    Friendzoned? Yup - you didn't crash — you were handed a parachute and it was a soft landing. Here are two poets - Julian Brolaski and Mirza Ghalib - five centuries apart, on what it's like once you touch down in the friendzone. What to Say Upon Being Asked to Be FriendsBy Julian T. BrolaskiWhy speak of hate, when I do bleed for love?Not hate, my love, but Love doth bite my tongueTill I taste stuff that makes my rhyming roughSo flatter I my fever for the oneFor whom I inly mourn, though seem to shun.A rose is arrows is eros, so whatIf I confuse the shade that I’ve becomeWith winedark substance in a lover’s cup?But stop my tonguely wound, I’ve bled enough.If I be fair, or false, or freaked with fearIf I my tongue in lockèd box immureBlame not me, for I am sick with love.Yet would I be your friend most willinglySince friendship would infect me killingly. and the ghazal... No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved.... by Mirza Ghalib No, I wasn't meant to love and be loved If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer. Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry. Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy. Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too, so easily do they break. You are a laconic marksman. You leave me not dead but perpetually dying. I want my friends to heal me, succor me. Instead, I get analysis. Conflagrations that would make stones drip blood are campfires compared to my anguish. Two-headed, inescapable anguish!—Love’s anguish or the anguish of time. Another dark, severing, incommunicable night. Death would be fine, if I only died once. I would have liked a solitary death, not this lavish funeral, this grave anyone can visit. You are mystical, Ghalib, and, also, you speak beautifully. Are you a saint, or just drunk as usual?

    Friend Zoned? Two poems to soothe you...

  2. Aug 14

    Losing It Slowly, Losing It All at Once...

    Every love starts with a spark. Few stay magical forever. Poets Lang Leav and Tishani Doshi trace the beginning, the middle, and the end — sometimes one-sided, sometimes over before it's ready to be. Three Questions - Lang Leav“What was it like to love him? Asked Gratitude.It was like being exhumed, I answered, and brought to life in a flash of brilliance.What was it like to be loved in return? Asked Joy.It was like being seen after a perpetual darkness, I replied. To be heard after a lifetime of silence.What was it like to lose him? Asked Sorrow. There was a long pause before I responded:It was like hearing every goodbye ever said to me—said all at once.” Love Poem - Tishani DoshiUltimately, we will lose each otherto something. I would hope for grandcircumstance — death or disaster.But it might not be that way at all.It might be that you walk outone morning after making loveto buy cigarettes, and never return,or I fall in love with another man.It might be a slow drift into indifference.Either way, we’ll have to learnto bear the weight of the eventualitythat we will lose each other to something.So why not begin now, while your headrests like a perfect moon in my lap,and the dogs on the beach are howling?Why not reach for the seam in this South Indiannight and tear it, just a little, so the fallingcan begin? Because later, when we crosseach other on the streets, and are forcedto look away, when we’ve thrownthe disregarded pieces of our togethernessinto bedroom drawers and the smellof our bodies is disappearing like the sweetdecay of lilies — what will we call it,when it’s no longer love?

    Losing It Slowly, Losing It All at Once...

  3. Aug 7

    The empty rooms of the heart - Two poems

    A room built and offered, a room that refuses to fill — two poets on the same ache of longing. Brionne Janae and Charles Bukowski, back to back, on Soothing Stanzas, Season 2: Love Unrequited. The Heart - Brionne Janaehas many rooms doors that open doors that don't. still a lock to pick a key to find or borrow or have carved by the right smith some doors only open when another shuts some never open the locks red with rust and glazed with spider's web sometimes I think I want no doors only arches or windows you have to scramble through when no one's watching you might think it was but it's not a storage space neither holding cell nor jail you have to let the light come and go as it pleases the heart can't be bought or owned it's terribly difficult but not impossible to lose sweet friend I found a room inside my heart I think could suit you a place I hope you will return you can turn the fire on or leave it cool you can shut the shades or leave them open write your poems on the wall or only lie on the floor dreaming No help for that - Charles Bukowski"there is a place in the heart thatwill never be filleda spaceand even during thebest momentsand the greatest timestimeswe will know itwe will know itmore thaneverthere is a place in the heart thatwill never be filledandwe will waitandwaitin that space."

    The empty rooms of the heart - Two poems

  4. Jul 31

    A Kind of Theft - Two poems and a common ache

    What does it feel like to want someone who doesn't really care much about you? In this Season Two opener, we read two poems that ache in different ways — Vikram Seth's "All You Who Sleep Tonight," a quiet, communal address to everyone lying awake missing someone, and Camonghne Felix's "Then, A Longing," a raw, interior poem about desire as a kind of theft. Two poets and one common ache we've all carried a...... Welcome to Soothing Stanzas Season Two : Love, Unrequited... All you who sleep tonight - Vikram SethFar from the ones you love,No hands to left or right,And emptiness above –Know that you aren’t alone.The whole world shares your tears,Some for two nights or one,And some for all their years. Then, A Longing - Camonghne FelixMy heart is the son of my body and it wants you.Do you know how much that aches? Like a salt bathfor the blistered. Like a cold that haunts the bone.It betrays me and I kneel to it; wouldn’t you call thata kind of theft? A kind of breaking-in? In any unspokenlanguage, shame is a palindrome that riddles me:through the holes, a blue moon whistles nearby,me and all your untouched desires gathering. At nightevery bell is your voice ringing my name. I am alreadywillingly of you, ungainly with consent. May I touchthe clouds of your chest with my fingers? Am I fatedto be the lover who begs?

    A Kind of Theft - Two poems and a common ache

  5. Jul 24

    Song of me and you - a poem by Guan Daosheng

    When a 12th-century painter learned her husband was considering a second wife, she didn't argue — instead, she wrote a poem about clay, earth and fire. Guan Daosheng's poem - Song of me and you (also called "Married Love") is a 700-year-old meditation on what it means to become inseparable from another person, made from the simplest material imaginable. In under 7 minutes: one love, one poem... captured in a quiet, extraordinary piece from ancient China. Song of me and you - Guan Daosheng You and IHave so much love,That itBurns like a fire, In which we bake a lump of clay. Molded into a figure of you,And a figure of me. Then we take both of them,And break them into pieces,And mix the pieces with water,And mold again a figure of you,And a figure of me. Now I am in youAs much as you are in me. In life we share a single quilt.In death we will share a single coffin. ....

    Song of me and you - a poem by Guan Daosheng

  6. Jul 17

    The loom of my mind - a poem by Kabir

    What do you do with love when your beloved isn't in the room? Kabir — the fifteenth-century weaver-poet answers with his own loom: weave their name into everything. Into ten thousand threads, into the day's work, into the long ordinary hours of waiting.In this episode, we hear Kabir's tender poem of devotion in absence — a love song for anyone who has ever knitted a shawl, or kneaded dough before dawn. And in closing, we follow the thread to where Kabir was really pointing: a love that makes no distinction between the beloved across the table and the Beloved behind the universe. A poem about how everything you do can be done for love. The Loom of My Mind: Kabir On the loom of my mind, I weave Your name,To make a garment for you come to me. My loom has ten thousand threads,And weaves a soul’s robe for You and only youThe Sun and Moon silently watch as I weave Your name;The Sun and Moon silently listen  as I count Your name.This is my wage, for all my labor of day and the night,This wage deposited  in the blooming lotus bank of my heart.On the loom of my mind,  I weave Your name.As I wash these ten thousand threads of my thoughts, making them soft and clean,As I comb the tangled to release my clinging desires.And no more do I weave a garment of pain...For you have come to me On the loom of my mind, I weave Your name....

    The loom of my mind - a poem by Kabir

  7. Jul 10

    Love Poem - Joseph Brodsky

    A Nobel Prize-winning poet who survived Soviet hard labour and Arctic exile sits down and writes the funniest love poem a Nobel Laureate may have ever written. A series of increasingly absurd hypotheticals — what he would do if she were drowning, a bird, Chinese, a mirror, a volcano — each one more devoted and more ridiculous than the last. And then the final couplet disguised as a punchline. Love Song by Joseph BrodskyIf you were drowning, I'd come to the rescue, wrap you in my blanket and pour hot tea. If I were a sheriff, I'd arrest you and keep you in the cell under lock and key.If you were a bird, I'd cut a record and listen all night long to your high-pitched trill. If I were a sergeant, you'd be my recruit, and boy I can assure you you'd love the drill.If you were Chinese, I'd learn the language, burn a lot of incense, wear funny clothes. If you were a mirror, I'd storm the Ladies, give you my red lipstick and puff your nose.If you loved volcanoes, I'd be lava relentlessly erupting from my hidden source. And if you were my wife, I'd be your lover because the church is firmly against divorce. XXX

    Love Poem - Joseph Brodsky

  8. Jul 3

    Against Dieting - a love poem by Blake Morrison

    A Yorkshire poet makes a patient, slightly exasperated, entirely heartfelt case against his partner's diet. He has read the books. He has jogged alongside her. He has eaten the 'cardboard' called crispbread. And now he wants to go on record: enough. In ten lines of warm domestic comedy, Morrison arrives at one of the simplest and most beautiful declarations. Just six words at the end that say everything love should say — I want not less but more of you.

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About

Each episode of Soothing Stanzas offers a single poem — from a lovestruck scribe in ancient Egypt to Pablo Neruda, Tagore. Poets from the ages and here and now — savored slowly, with warmth and full attention. Together we'll sit with its wisdom, its joy, its ache. Because poetry holds all of it: love and loss, solitude and seasons, the small mysteries of being alive, the grandeur of this vast and wonderful cosmos. And somehow, it makes all of it better. New episodes every week. Best taken with some camomile tea, and a closed door.

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