“This week on the Sewanee Review Podcast, managing editor and poetry editor Eric Smith catches up with Garrett Hongo, who received the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry in 2022. In this episode, Hongo breathes further life into a handful of his poems: ‘A Garland of Light’ details his relationship with Robert Hayden, and ‘Bugle Boys’ reckons with the terrible loss of his father’s hearing and the bittersweet memory of the two men assembling a radio for the last time. History has a habit of swallowing itself up, yet Hongo proves the power of a life’s story told in verse—the possibility of reconjuring the stories that once seemed lost to time. ‘Poetry is human culture,’ Hongo asserts, as both a plea and a prayer.”

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The Sewanee Review Podcast

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