This is the second of the spring semester poetry editions of Liberal Arts Voices featuring this year’s Penn State Laureate, poet and Professor of English and Womens’ Studies, Robin Becker. Throughout the spring, Liberal Arts Voices will be collaborating with Penn State Live to cover the poems and work of Professor Becker.
In this podcast Professor Becker joins Dean Long; English major Natalie Kovak; and English graduate students Leah Huizar and William Woolfit to discuss Professor Becker’s poem “The Children’s Concert.” You can read the full version of ” The Children’s Concert “ on Penn State Live.
Professor Becker begins the podcast by describing her motivation for the poem. Specifically, she talks about how the poem takes the perspective of the present looking back on a memory of a childhood experience of two sisters attending a Children’s Concert at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. The group discusses a variety of themes evoked by the poem including: regret, memory, childhood development, loss, and more.
We invite you to respond to this poem or to the question that Professor Becker asks at the conclusion of her poem: Do you recall a childhood experience you now regret? How does your distance in time from the event reframe your telling of it today?
Liberal Arts Voices: Robin Becker’s “The Children’s Concert”
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To watch a video of Professor Becker reading this poem or to read the actual poem, visit Penn State Live.
We encourage all of our listeners to write to us with comments, questions, or suggestions at laus@la.psu.edu. We may even respond to these comments on the next episode of Liberal Arts Voices.