There's a Poem in That

Phillip's new US citizenship status is the celebratory focus of this episode of TAPIT. It's a celebration 30 years in the making, and it ends in a custom poem worthy of an inauguration. Join us on the journey of a lifetime, as Phillip overcomes rage, discovers love, changes careers, adopts a new name, and learns to see the beauty in his own immigration story.  Host Todd Boss traces Phillip's path of self-authorship from Vegas to Baja to Mexico City to Texas to Hollywood, and back to Vegas, in a tale filled with setbacks and surprises... then taps President Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural poet Richard Blanco to guest write an extraordinary poem of rejoicing and recognition, that elicits a tear for every step along the way. 

Chapters in this episode: 

1. What's in a name?
2. How a place makes (and unmakes and remakes) a person
3. Phillip finds himself in fiction and film
4. The intricacies of immigration and the Texas/Mexico divide
5. Learning and loving in Las Vegas
6. Carving a path to citizenship and the truth about timing
7. Taking the law into his own hands
8. Bringing in Blanco
9. The poem, Your Name :: My Name
10. A wordless reaction says it all

This episode is dedicated to Phillip's mother, Olivia de Lourdes Meneses Moguel, and to mothers everywhere who read to their children.

Join the conversation and get bonus content at poeminthat.com ... or become a listener supporter by pitching in monthly to help us make TAPIT magic, here.

Do you think there's a poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

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Inspired by a poem of Todd’s in Poetry Magazine, “The Hush of the Very Good” in 2007, Connie became Todd’s very first private commission. The project ended with an unforgettable encounter in the snow-filled forests of northern Wisconsin. In this special holiday episode of TAPIT, Todd reaches back out to Connie after all these years, to revisit the magic they made together. 

Chapters in this episode:

1. How Todd came to take commissions
2. A blossoming friendship
3. Modeling a relationship & making a family
4. Rosamond's resilience
5. A poet's breakthrough
6. The poem: A Deer

Join the conversation and get bonus content at poeminthat.com ... or become a listener supporter by pitching in monthly to help us make TAPIT magic, here.

Do you think there's a poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

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Host Todd Boss converses with Holly about the tragic loss of her son Killian. Her changing relationship and communion with God and His will for her life inspire a graceful, grateful hymn.

Chapters in this episode:

1. Holly catalogs her losses
2. A bit of background
3. Killian's silence
4. Finding peace in a new place
5. A shifting sense of identity and God
6. Telling the truth about grief
7. The poem: Hymn

Join the conversation and get bonus content at poeminthat.com ... or become a listener supporter by pitching in monthly to help us make TAPIT magic, here.

Do you think there's a poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

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Host Todd Boss enlists the help of Indigenous poet Sasha LaPointe to  motivate Bonnie on her journey of healing and exploration, through the inspiring Skagit Valley landscape.  

Chapters in this episode:

1. One more great feat
2. Pain, glory, and a conservative church
3. Two worlds: Transformation is real
4. Skagit Valley and its heritage
5. However: Two worlds
6. Bonnie meets Sasha
7. Sasha LaPointe reads "Cycles"
8. A circle of fir trees in prayer

Join the conversation and get bonus content at poeminthat.com ... or become a listener supporter by pitching in monthly to help us make TAPIT magic, here.

Do you think there's a poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

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The image of an adult on a tricycle — precarious and uncertain — became the driving force behind the poem Ken needed for his wife Sue's memorial service. 

Chapters in this episode:

1. Introduction at the cabin
2. A couple of loons on tricycles
3. Ken and Sue take on the world together
4. Swiss miss, cuckoo clocks, and finding a home in one another
5. Sue’s diagnosis, surgery, complications, and passing
6. Lost time and post-life letters
7. The poem: “It Was a Lark”

Join the conversation and get bonus content at poeminthat.com ... or become a listener supporter by pitching in monthly to help us make TAPIT magic, here.

Do you think there's a poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

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Jon's wife Christy got pancreatic cancer ten years ago, but Jon still carries the fear of losing her. It's a long hallway from diagnostics to recovery, but Jon's found the right doctor: Todd helps him stop over-intellectualizing, cutting through the voices in his head, until only sweet remission (from the Latin "to relax,") colors the horizon. Revealed to Jon on the eve of Thanksgiving, 2022, Todd's tongue-in-cheek poem is written in the talky après-dinner-party style of Tony Hoagland, and features candid, ad-libbed cameos by Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Czesław Miłosz, and Raymond Carver, who, like all of us, just wants to be loved. From sorrow to joy and back again, this story lets Christy have the final word, and has Jon breathing a sigh of relief.

Todd's poem for Jon, "Thanksgiving," quotes a stanza of Tony Hoagland's "Among the Intellectuals," from his posthumous collection, Turn Up The Ocean (Graywolf Press). Used with permission.

Chapters in this episode:

1. I contain multitudes
2. Cancer for Christmas
3. Trying to figure things out
4. Deconstructing prayer
5. Recovery: "She really is okay."
6. Humility is an honest self-assessment
7. The poem: "Thanksgiving."

Join the conversation and get bonus content at poeminthat.com ... or become a listener supporter by pitching in monthly to help us make TAPIT magic, here.

Do you think there's a poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

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Todd helps Joan, a vocalist, make connections between the loss of her singing voice, three miscarriages, and her survival of a historic Amtrak train wreck. Along the way, we meet her daughters, learn how Indian ashrams and silent meditation retreats have been as important to Joan as her music, and discover the redeeming power of laughter. Todd's (three!) poems for Joan support her in her grief, affirm her choice to evolve her career as a composer, and present her with a surprising award. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you might even break out in song.

Chapters in this episode: 

1. Amtrak, Conrail, and Joan's fifth-car "wall"
2. Three boys lost in the second trimester
3. A dream choir and an expiration date
4. Daughters, mothers, and a lineage of strong women
5. Voice, meditation, and silence
6. The poem: "A Trophy"

Audio clip: 1987 Amtrak 20/20 Newsreel
Guest Joan Johnson Drewes website

Join the conversation and get bonus content at poeminthat.com ... or become a listener supporter by pitching in monthly to help us make TAPIT magic, here.

Do you think there's a poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

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New in March 2023! There's a Poem in That is a podcast in which award-winning poet Todd Boss helps strangers discover the poetry in their most intimate stories.  Each episode ends with the reveal of a custom poem written expressly for a guest stranger. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll  want a poem of your very own.

Join the conversation and get bonus content at poeminthat.com ... or become a listener supporter by pitching in monthly to help us make TAPIT magic, here.

Do you think there's a poem in your story? Leave Todd a voicemail on our Haiku, Hawaii, listener line: 808-300-0449.

Follow us on Facebook.