Our friend, the prolific writer and co-owner of Burke’s Book Store, Corey Mesler, is being feted on the October 2015 podcast from Poetry Magazine. His poem, “Let the Light Stand,” is featured in the recent issue of the magazine and editor Don Share, assistant editor Lindsay Garbutt, and consulting editor Christina Pugh have gathered to discuss it.
The trio jumps right into the fun at the 00:38 mark with Pugh reading. But first, Share shares that he grew up in Memphis and, while he doesn’t know Mesler personally, he “grew up going to Burke’s Book Store, which was pretty much the only place you could see real books like poetry books when I was a kid, so I’m very fond of Burke’s.”
You can listen to the podcast here.
Pugh says beforehand, “I really liked the mood of this poem, it’s very upbeat and playful.” After reading, she calls it a poem “in the litany tradition” and compares it to the English poetic tradition while pointing out that it isn’t religious but, instead, a celebration of the body.
Share, however, points out that, “It is suffused with something spiritual enough to raise us above and outside that lovely world he outlines . . .”
“I think it has sort of a plain-spoken sexiness about it,” Garbutt adds.
“One of the things I really like about the poem,” Pugh says, “is the way it does this kind of interesting dance with metaphor, wanting to resist it and yet letting it in, almost against its own will in certain ways, and I like the push/pull aspect of it.”
Mesler is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks and novels, most recently Memphis Movie.
