The Missouri Review

 In this Missouri Review podcast, we are pleased to present the wonderfully varied range of the second, third, and fourth runners-up from the Voice-Only poetry category of our 2007 Audio Competition. These are “The Golden Lesson” by Susan Somers-Willet, “Taking Tickets” by Eric Torgersen, and “Women in Strange Trousers” by Josh McDonald.

With “The Golden Lesson,” second runner-up Susan Somers-Willet gives an engaging performance of a poem rich in painterly image and metaphor, a poem both complex in its ideas, and visceral in its textures. Her poems have appeared in a number of periodicals including the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, Verse Daily, and Painted Bride Quarterly. Somers-Willet is the author of a book of poetry, Roam, published as part of the Crab Orchard Award Series Open Competition in 2006, as well as a second forthcoming collection of poetry, Quiver.

The third runner-up of the Voice-Only Poetry category is Eric Torgersen with “Taking Tickets.” The poem defies easy classification-but we’re sure you’ll find this voice-driven poem, with its quirky character, entertaining. Torgersen is Professor of English at Central Michigan University. He has published two chapbooks and three full-length books of poetry, a novella, and the biographical/critical study Dear Friend: Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker (Northwestern University Press).

And we conclude with the fourth runner-up, Josh McDonald’s “Women in Strange Trousers,” a prose poem about females attired in an assortment of odd apparel. McDonald is a writer, musician, and storyteller, currently writing his third novel.

 You can listen to this podcast directly here.