This is the third spring semester poetry edition 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 “Shopping.” You can read the full version of “Shopping” on Penn State Live.
Professor Becker begins the podcast by describing how the accumulation of concrete details creates a dense texture in the poem and suggests a kind of excess. The group discusses how after the demise of a relationship or some sort of disappointment in life, we often turn to material goods to fill the sense of loss. The group focuses on specific imagery used in the poem that explore issues of identity, control, and loss.
We invite you to respond to this poem or to the question that Professor Becker asks at the conclusion of her poem: Could you fashion a comic piece about your own shopping habits?
Liberal Arts Voices: Robin Becker’s “Shopping”
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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.