Poets are truthtellers. We need more of those.
The Melody or Witchcraft podcast conversations begin with a love for poetry, its craft, and a major literary ancestor: Emily Dickinson. The two poems you’ll hear each episode are chosen by the guests: a Dickinson poem and one of their own. Amongst the poem-talk and new discoveries around our 19th Century sister, we do our best to follow an organic flow of dialogue that moves us around a poet’s POV on the real life challenges of the 21st Century and the particular interests of the guest.
I’m your host, Kathryn Petruccelli, a poet, workshop leader, Substacker, & former guide for the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. I’m interested in things like the sources of creative inspiration, time & how the past influences the present, challenging cultural norms, social justice, and poetry as a tool for survival. The poets I select to interview are people whose work I love and admire. I have yet to fail to fall further in love with each of them after our conversations.
Non-poets & poetry skeptics: you are very welcome here!!
Things you are at risk of as a listener:
Learning new ways to understand poetry.
Filling up your “new writers/books to read” dance card.
Finding healing and companionship around the stress of living.
In Episode 14, Evie Shockley & I talk about an inviolate interior, the traditions of experimental poetry, our changing relationship with death as we age, Gwendolyn Brooks, and how some Poets of Color might reconcile with Dickinson’s choice to avoid (or blunder) the discussion of race.
Poet & scholar Evie Shockley thinks, creates, and writes with her eye on a Black feminist horizon. Her books of poetry include suddenly we (NAACP Image Award; National Book Award Finalist), semiautomatic (Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Pulitzer Prize finalist), and the new black (Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). Her literary criticism includes Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry and numerous essays. Most recently, she is editor of the Norton Library edition of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Among the honors for her body of work in poetry are the Academy Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, and the Stephen Henderson Award. Her joys include participating in poetry communities such as Cave Canem and collaborating with artists working in various media. Shockley is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.
If you’re reading this somewhere other than Substack, these notes may be abridged and photos will not appear. Join the Ask the Poet Substack (kathrynpetruccelli.substack.com) for complete show notes with images, links, correct poetry formatting, and regular notices of new episodes.
Evie’s choice of Dickinson poem:
The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —
Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —
I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —
Fascicle 20, Sheet 4, c. autumn 1862 (Fr 409, J303)
[proximity to death]
Evie Shockley
proximity to death—
when recognized—
shellacs steel upon the skin
sets cement behind the eyes—
even at a distance
if looking death’s way
dark thunder stuns the ear
and drowns out day—
mortality of beloveds
upends a brimming heart—
but the end of self—
contemplated—
stills the brain in its path—
as if medusa loosed her hair
and the mind’s eye gazed
upon what cannot be—but is—
without shield – even of gauze
People & concepts named in the conversation:
Gwendolyn Brooks & Brooks’ “Gay Chaps at the Bar”
Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press (these are two different links)
Black History of Amherst – website
Helen Hunt (Jackson) and her books, A Century of Dishonor & Ramona
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens
Books mentioned:
Virginia Jackson’s book Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading
Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson – (which includes Brigitte Fielder’s “Emily Dickinson’s Black Contexts” that I mention)
Fact check:
The collection of Dickinson’s poems that Evie refers to as “First Harvest” would be Thomas Johnson’s Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson’s Poems. It was published in 1961.
Recorded May 27, 2026
We’d love to hear your comments!!
