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Dr. Johnson: "A Sick Child" by Randall Jarell
The Troubadour Podcast
English - January 13, 2018 05:00 - 2 hours - 69.5 MBBooks Arts Health & Fitness poetry literature literature and life historical stories wisdom of the ages Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Previous Episode: Invictus by William Ernest Henley - With Guest Alex Hrin
How do you tell a child that he is dying?This poem terrified me. It made me never want to have a child. What if this were to happen to my child? Literature cannot solve all of our problems, but it can be a salve to many of them. In talking to my old high school friend, Dr. Lamar Johnson, about this emotional issue, I came to appreciate the grandiosity of life and our role in society. Dr Johnson is a pediatrician who has to think about how to deliver terrible news to people. How do you cope? How do you convey this experience? For me, it was a cathartic moment. That's poetry.Dr. Johnson and I conversed with the verse. And we also talked more broadly about life, philosophy, how to tell the truth, race relations, culture and oh so much more.