In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Maiya and Joe celebrate Valentine’s Day with a sweeping journey through love poetry across more than two thousand years.

Beginning with Sappho’s ‘Hymn to Aphrodite,’ Joe traces the devotional roots of romantic verse, where love is bound up with gods, ritual, and longing. From there, the hosts move through Robert Burns’s ‘A Red, Red Rose,’ exploring how symbols like the red rose and vows that last “till the seas gang dry” helped shape the language of romance we still use today.

Emily Dickinson’s ‘Why Do I Love You, Sir?’ introduces a quieter, more instinctive love, rooted in nature and inevitability rather than spectacle. W. B. Yeats’s ‘When You Are Old’ follows, shifting the focus from youthful beauty to spiritual connection and the endurance of feeling beyond time. Maiya and Joe reflect on how Yeats reimagines devotion, asking what remains when appearance fades.

The conversation then turns to Pablo Neruda, whose ‘Sonnet 17’ rejects traditional romantic clichés in favor of intimacy and shadow, while ‘Sonnet 11’ burns with hunger and urgency. Federico García Lorca’s ‘Gacela of Unforeseen Love’ brings a darker intensity, confronting desire, repression, and the pain of love that cannot be freely lived. Finally, John Cooper Clarke’s ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ offers a playful, modern twist, turning domestic objects into declarations of devotion and reminding listeners that love can live in everyday acts.

Maiya and Joe close by reflecting on what unites these poems. Across centuries, styles, and cultures, love poetry remains a form of devotion—sometimes sacred, sometimes comic, sometimes aching, but always human.

Featured Poets PDFs:

• Sappho
• Robert Burns
• Emily Dickinson
• W. B. Yeats
• Pablo Neruda
• Federico García Lorca
• John

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In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Maiya and Joe close Season Three with a special Q&A from their listeners.

After nearly forty episodes, they pause to look back on their journey, answer community questions, and talk about what’s next for the show. The first question comes from Chandra, asking if a fourth season is coming and whether they’ll take on an epic like the ‘Ramayana’. Joe and Maiya share their excitement about exploring epics and how such poems might need a multi-episode format, similar to their World War I series.

They also reflect on favorite moments from the season. Joe mentions the ode episode and their discussion of Langston Hughes, while Maiya recalls how ‘Our Casuarina Tree’ by Toru Dutt and ‘The Man with the Saxophone’ by Ai expanded her research and deepened her love for discovering new poets.

A question from the community sparks a thoughtful discussion on modern poetry. Joe talks about diversity, access, and the dominance of free verse, while Maiya considers how social media has both opened and complicated poetry’s world. They agree that poetry remains powerful because it connects people, comforts them, and helps them understand life’s most complex moments.

Things take a playful turn with a quick-fire poet quiz. From Shakespeare to Heaney, Joe is forced to make impossible choices, ending with Seamus Heaney as his final pick.

As they wrap up the season, the hosts thank listeners from more than 195 countries and invite everyone to keep sharing ideas on the PoemAnalysis.com community. With Season Four already in the works, they promise more poems, more voices, and the same thoughtful conversation that’s made the show a global favorite.

Featured Mentions (PDF Guides for each):

• Toru Dutt
• Ai
• Langston Hughes

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In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Maiya and Joe discuss Ai’s ‘The Man with the Saxophone’, a city poem that captures connection in the quiet streets of New York before sunrise.

After Maiya’s reading, they talk about Ai’s background and her remarkable voice as a poet. Born Florence Anthony in 1947 in Texas, she later chose the name Ai, meaning “love” in Japanese. With ancestry that included Japanese, Native American, Black, and Irish roots, she wrote with honesty about identity and humanity. Her major works include Cruelty, Sin, and Vice, which won the National Book Award in 1999.

Joe and Maiya describe how the poem begins at 5 in the morning. The city is silent, the sidewalks empty, and the speaker walks down Fifth Avenue until meeting a homeless saxophonist. This brief encounter becomes a moment of shared stillness and warmth in a cold and lonely setting. Through music, two people who might never meet again find a kind of wordless understanding.

They also reflect on Ai’s portrayal of New York as fragile and human rather than grand or glamorous. Snow is described as brittle, the city compared to an old man with a white beard, and the towering Empire State Building becomes a quiet backdrop instead of a symbol of power. The hosts consider how Ai turns the city into a space of reflection, where loneliness and beauty coexist.

The saxophone itself becomes a powerful image. It represents art, memory, and survival. The man plays not for money but because the music itself gives life meaning. Jazz, deeply tied to African American history, becomes a language of resilience. For the speaker, listening to that sound brings freedom and breath, a way to feel alive again.

Maiya and Joe look closely at the closing image: “each note, a black flower opening into the unforgiving new day.” The flower becomes a sign of hope pushing through the cold, a moment of grace that refuses despair. When the speaker imagines rising like a bird and then falling back to the ground, Ai shows the balance between freedom and reality, dream and endurance.

The episode ends with reflection on how Ai reclaims the city as belonging to those often unseen. Her poem listens to what happens in the quiet, reminding us that art can give voice to those who seem forgotten.

Get exclusive PDFs on Ai and her poetry, available to Poetry+ users:

• ‘The Man with the Saxophone’ PDFs:
  • Full PDF Guides
  • Poetry Snapshot PDFs
• Ai PDF Guide

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As always, for the ultimate poetry experience, join Poetry+ and explore all things poetry at PoemAnalysis.com.