This is poetry moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment.
No matter your political convictions, there’s a lot riding on the 2024 presidential election. Voting is essential, particularly in battleground states like Pennsylvania. In today’s poem, “You’ve Got a Friend In. . .,” Grace Bauer plays with our state motto to describe the nation’s 2020 focus on PA.
Grace Bauer has published six books of poems—most recently Unholy Heart: New and Selected Poems. She also co-edited the anthology Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. After living and teaching in Lincoln, NE for more than 25 years, she has recently returned to her native Pennsylvania. She lives in Philadelphia.
In an already divisive environment, each political ad threatens to deepen the country’s anxiety. Candidate signs pop up daily across neighborhood lawns. Television promotions jostle for attention. In “You’ve Got a Friend In . . . ,” Grace Bauer describes the tense 2020 election as a type of drowning—and, to her, a fortuitous rescue.
Here’s “You’ve Got a Friend In. . .” by Grace Bauer
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It’s not often the eyes of the world
are laser focused on the state I was born in,
but for days its name was chanted like a mantra:
Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania—
until its syllables became a kind of song
summing up a nation’s hope and rage.
Oh, Quaker State now Swing State!
Oh, Keystone State now key!
Oh, State of Independence
so much was depending upon—
for days, a week, the world waited, pondering
the purple conundrum of your melting pot
like a coven of witches trying to read the future
in your roiling reds and simmering blues.
And I waited along with everyone else,
while you counted, and counted, and I recalled
this one time when I was a kid, and found myself
in the middle of the Lehigh, treading water
in a panic, and some boy I didn’t even know
swam out, grabbed my hand, and dragged me back
towards the bank, until my feet could touch bottom again.
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That was “You’ve Got a Friend In. . . ” by Grace Bauer. Thanks for listening.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
