Episode 070 Child Holding Potato - Rick Barot

Connor and Jack discuss the poignant, quiet poem "Child Holding Potato" by Rick Barot. They consider, in Barot's own words, the "limits of art to console," time's relentless march, and the power of stressed syllables. Jack may or may not muse about the one and only Bruce, and Connor may or may not rant about the state of iambic pentameter education.

Learn more about Barot, here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rick-barot Check out Barot's latest book here: www.sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/chord-rick-barot

Child Holding Potato
By: Rick Barot

When my sister got her diagnosis,
I bought an airplane ticket

but to another city, where I stared
at paintings that seemed victorious

in their relation to time.
The beech from two hundred years ago,

its trunk a palette of mud
and gilt. The man with olive-black

gloves, the sky behind him
a glacier of blue light. In their calm

landscapes, the saints. Still dripping
the garden’s dew, the bouquets.

Holding the rough gold orb
of a potato, the Child cradled

by the glowing Madonna. Then,
the paintings I looked at the longest:

the bowls of plums and peaches,
the lemons, the pomegranates

like red earths. In my mouth,
the raw starch. In my mouth, the dirt.