Episode 16: Traci Brimhall
Mycocosmic
Big show today! We have the Kansas State Poet Laureate in conversation. Traci Brimhall’s new book, Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon), her fifth book of poems, has recently been published, and we get into that book, along with looking back into her first book, with its aubades, the music of poetry, and her new side gig as the 2025 artist in residence at the Guggenheim! Love Prodigal is a book richly imagined, full of the comings and goings of love, and how we live life in its abundance and absence.
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Traci Brimhall’s previous books of poetry include Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod, Saudade, Our Lady of the Ruins, and Rookery. She is a university distinguished professor of creative writing and narrative medicine at Kansas State University, as well as the 2025 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her nonfiction debut, The Grief Artist, will be published by Sarabande Books in 2026.
Brimhall’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Orion, The New Republic, Poetry, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. Through fellowships with the National Endowment of the Arts, National Park Service, and Academy of American Poets she’s taught writing workshops in farm schools, art museums, libraries, medical communities, and the outdoors.
Pick up a copy of Love Prodigal here.
Read more about Brimhall here.
Some notes:
Here is where you can find Traci Brimhall’s “Diary of Fires” book arts project information: https://tracibrimhallpoet.com/works/
I couldn’t find a link to the Oliver de la Paz poem Traci Brimhall mentions, but here is one of his own aubades: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57670/aubade-with-bread-for-the-sparrows
Coming Up: Next we’ll talk to Sandra Marchetti about her new book, Diorama, in time for its drop date! And Jenny George and Matt Donovan’s erasure of Walden is just down the road.
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About your host: Jason Gray is the author of the poetry books Radiation King (Idaho Prize for Poetry) and Photographing Eden (Hollis Summers Prize), and his poems and reviews have appeared in Poetry, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, American Poetry Review, and Image. His career in publishing has brought him to the university presses of Ohio State and Wisconsin, and Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, and he now works as a freelance writer and editor.
A note on the podcast title. I am an unabashed fan of The Simpsons, and in Season 8, Episode 9 “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer),” Marge attempts to stop Homer from going to the local chili cook-off, because, as she says, every time he does, he “get[s] drunk as a poet on payday.” And that has made me laugh for decades now.
I in no way endorse getting oneself overserved and behaving like a jackass, poetic or otherwise. And if you or anyone you know is struggling with alcohol, there are resources for you: Alcoholics Anonymous Al-Anon