The First Page

The First Page offers poetry for the everyday. This is not a lesson or a lecture—we're here to carve out a small space for delight, for reflection, for good attention. Each episode, writer and poet Hailey Gaunt chooses a poem to read and explore, drawing listeners further into a poem through insights and anecdotes. But, as usual, poetry is its own explanation:

The poem is not the world.
It isn't the first page of the world.

But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.
It knows that much.

It wants to open itself,
like the door of a little temple,
so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,
and less yourself than part of everything.

—from "Flare" by Mary Oliver