merritt's Musings

Jason Merritt
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Education

I am an experienced English teacher who loves poetry, literature and education. Hear my thoughts on my favorite poems, as well as tips and tricks for how to help students learn. And thoughts about my dogs.I'd love to hear your thoughts on this podcast and any suggestions you may have for topics/poems for me to muse about. Please email me at svahatao@yahoo.com.

  1. 06/30/2025

    "Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

    Send us Fan Mail The Second ComingBy William Butler Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.    The darkness drops again; but now I know    That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

    "Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

  2. 06/23/2025

    "In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver

    Send us Fan Mail “In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. https://allpoetry.com/poem/15374219-In-Blackwater-woods-by-Mary-J-Oliver

    "In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver

  3. 06/03/2022

    "God Says Yes to Me" by Kaylin Huaght

    Send us Fan Mail God Says Yes to Me By Kaylin Huaght I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic and she said yes I asked her if it was okay to be short and she said it sure is I asked her if I could wear nail polish or not wear nail polish and she said honey she calls me that sometimes she said you can do just exactly what you want to Thanks God I said And is it even okay if I don't paragraph my letters Sweetcakes God said who knows where she picked that up what I'm telling you is Yes Yes Yes https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/poetry-180/all-poems/item/poetry-180-126/god-says-yes-to-me/

    "God Says Yes to Me" by Kaylin Huaght

  4. 03/23/2022

    "The Cure of Troy" by Seamus Heaney

    Send us Fan Mail The Cure of Troy by Seamus Heaney Human beings suffer.  They torture one another.  They get hurt and get hard.  No poem or play or song  Can fully right a wrong  Inflicted and endured.  History says, Don’t hope  On the side of the grave,’  But then, once in a lifetime  The longed-for tidal wave  Of justice can rise up  And hope and history rhyme.  So hope for a great sea- change  On the far side of revenge.  Believe that a further shore  Is reachable from here.  Believe in miracles.  And cures and healing wells.  Call miracle self-healing,  The utter self revealing  Double-take of feeling.  If there’s fire on the mountain  And lightening and storm  And a god speaks from the sky  That means someone is hearing  The outcry and the birth-cry Of new life at its term.  It means once in a lifetime That justice can rise up  And hope and history rhyme.

    "The Cure of Troy" by Seamus Heaney

  5. 02/17/2022

    "I am not I" by Jimenez

    Send us Fan Mail “I Am Not I” BY JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ I am not I.                    I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see, whom at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget; who remains calm and silent while I talk, and forgives, gently, when I hate, who walks where I am not, who will remain standing when I die. Contact me via email:   svahatao@yahoo.com or message me on Facebook.

    "I am not I" by Jimenez

  6. 07/09/2021

    "I Want to Age Like Seaglass" by Bernadette Noll

    Send us Fan Mail I want to age like sea glass By Bernadette Noll I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass—made not weak but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out. When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next. Not stuck—just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause. And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be. I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along—just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born. I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina. Neither flashy nor dull, just a perfect luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to this very here and now. And we’ll both feel lucky to be in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time. I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.

    "I Want to Age Like Seaglass" by Bernadette Noll

  7. 06/21/2021

    "For a Dead Kitten" by Sarah Henderson Hay

    Send us Fan Mail For a Dead Kitten       by Sara Henderson Hay Put the rubber mouse away, Pick the spools up from the floor, What was velvet shod, and gay, Will not want them, any more. What was warm, is strangely cold. Whence dissolved the little breath? How could this small body hold So immense a thing as Death?

    "For a Dead Kitten" by Sarah Henderson Hay

  8. 06/06/2021

    "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Whitman

    Send us Fan Mail When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer  BY WALT WHITMAN When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

    "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Whitman
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About

I am an experienced English teacher who loves poetry, literature and education. Hear my thoughts on my favorite poems, as well as tips and tricks for how to help students learn. And thoughts about my dogs.I'd love to hear your thoughts on this podcast and any suggestions you may have for topics/poems for me to muse about. Please email me at svahatao@yahoo.com.

Information

  • Creator
    Jason Merritt
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2025
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 merritt's Musings
  • Show Website
    merritt's Musings