The Power of Poetry

If you think poetry isn’t your thing, spend some time with David Keplinger.

David is the author of eight books of poetry and is a professor at American University, in Washington, DC. We got to know one another through a humanities workgroup that was looking at how curiosity might be more effectively woven into the fabric of life at AU. He was a warm and profoundly thoughtful participant in the group, one of my favorites.

His new book, Ice, starts with the melting permafrost in Siberia, which has begun to reveal the bodies of 40,000 year old animals, from the last Ice Age.

The poems about frozen animals segue into poems about our own bodies under “the ice of forgetting” and how the light of poetry, for him, melted that ice away and helped him remember.

“Poetry has been, for me, a well-worn groove to get to that place of curiosity and discovery.” ~ David Keplinger

Choose to be Curious is an independently-produced, weekly half-hour show all about curiosity. We talk about research and theory, but mostly it’s conversations about how curiosity shows up in work and life.

Choose to be Curious won the Alliance for Community Media’s Hometown Media Award for best information talk show series in 2021 and Arlington Magazine’s Editor’s Pick for best local podcast in 2020.