Lifestyle
Bearing witness, celebrating strength: How poetry has changed lives for NPR's audience
The last photo Trisha Fountain took with her mother in May, 2006. Fountain’s mom died the week after her graduation. She said the poem “Epitaph” has helped offered her comfort.
Trisha Fountain
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Trisha Fountain
The last photo Trisha Fountain took with her mother in May, 2006. Fountain’s mom died the week after her graduation. She said the poem “Epitaph” has helped offered her comfort.
Trisha Fountain
Last month, we asked NPR readers what poetry means to them. We received nearly 500 responses, from lifelong poetry fans to those who have only recently come to enjoy the genre. From sparking the imagination to helping with mental health, listen to poems read by NPR readers and see how poetry has affected their lives.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Poetry to heal from grief
Trisha Fountain reads “Epitaph”
Dozens of readers shared stories of how poetry helped them process grief. Trisha Fountain of Ann Arbor, Mich., lost her mother to cancer the week after she graduated from college. “The months that followed were filled with feelings of confusion, anger, sadness, emptiness and lack of purpose,” she said.
Six months later, Fountain spent her first birthday without her mother at the funeral of her friend’s mother, who died of the same cancer. She heard Merrit Malloy’s “Epitaph” read at this funeral. Now 40 years old, Fountain still remembers the poem. “This poem allowed me to feel seen, held, directed and connected to my mom in a way that my grief didn’t allow me to process before that moment,” she said. “Throughout the last few decades, I have shared that poem with countless others during the loss of their loved ones as a way to ‘pay it forward’ and attempt to gift others with the same comfort and life affirmation it gave to me.
Melissa McNabb reads “One Art”
Many readers shared their love for “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop. Melissa McNabb of Michigan said it was the first poem that made her gasp aloud when reading it. Aerie Treska of Baltimore, Md., said the poem took her breath away, “both because of the rawness of the speaker’s grief and the poem’s deceptively simple, yet elegantly complex structure, rhythm, and diction.” Treska calls it a “master class in the power of poetry to bear witness.”
Poetry for mental health
Evan De Back reads “The Things I Didn’t Do”
For many readers, poetry has been a transformative force in their lives as they battle various mental health struggles.
“Poetry has been an outlet for my emotions in stressful times, most often while I was depressed,” said Evan De Back of Johnston City, Tenn. The 39-year-old sometimes feels like he can’t express himself to others because his emotions are too raw. “[Writing poetry] helps me process and move past emotions that would otherwise mire me in rumination.” De Back reads a poem he wrote called “The Things I Didn’t Do.”
Poetry to inspire confidence
Some readers said they always have a poem they reach for when they need a reminder of everything they are capable of achieving. “In poems, we readers see our mirrored reflection and gain new insight into ourselves,” Lara Cowell of Honolulu, Hawaii, said. Cowell read Kimberly Blaeser’s “About Standing (in Kinship), because of how it “celebrates our collective strength and power when we work in synergy, harmony and friendship.”
Evan Wang reads “Muse for Night”
Evan Wang of King of Prussia, Pa., said poetry helped both him and his community blossom. Once a self-described “timid student,” Wang now performs his poetry as a Youth Poet Laureate. “Poetry found me — a first-generation American living in the quiet suburbs — in this vastness, took my hand, and helped me find myself. He shares his poem, “Muse for Night.”
Poetry to rouse the imagination
Hayley Kelsey of Florida calls poetry the highest literary art. “It comes closer to rendering the world around us than any other,” she said. “It has opened my eyes and ears to the wonders of the world again and again: sound, images, perception.”
Many other readers agreed that poetry sparks their imagination and stimulates their senses. Coel Whitemab of Honolulu, Hawaii, believes “poems are for everyone and everything” because everyone will interpret a poem differently. “Poetry sets me free…to imagine my life as a bird soaring on the breeze of imagination and thoughtfulness,” he said.
Nina Laubach reads “Absence, Presence”
Nina Laubach of Lawrenceville, N.J., shares her favorite poem, “Absence, Presence,” by Luisa A. Igloria. “I love how this poem moves through time, seasons, and generations and also returns us to our present, daily mundane lives,” she said. “It is…as if imagination was not some alternate, secondary path, but rather the very essence of expressing the experience, memory and longing to be human.”
Lifestyle
In ‘No Other Choice,’ a loyal worker gets the ax — and starts chopping
Lee Byung-hun stars in No Other Choice.
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In an old Kids in the Hall comedy sketch called “Crazy Love,” two bros throatily proclaim their “love of all women” and declare their incredulity that anyone could possibly take issue with it:
Bro 1: It is in our very makeup; we cannot change who we are!
Bro 2: No! To change would mean … (beat) … to make an effort.
I thought about that particular exchange a lot, watching Park Chan-wook’s latest movie, a niftily nasty piece of work called No Other Choice. The film isn’t about the toxic lecherousness of boy-men, the way that KITH sketch is. But it is very much about men, and that last bit: the annoyed astonishment of learning that you’re expected to change something about yourself that you consider essential, and the extreme lengths you’ll go to avoid doing that hard work.
Many critics have noted No Other Choice‘s satirical, up-the-minute universality, given that it involves a faceless company screwing over a hardworking, loyal employee. As the film opens, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has been working at a paper factory for 25 years; he’s got the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect family — you see where this is going, right? (If you don’t, even after the end of the first scene, when Man-su calls his family over for a group hug while sighing, “I’ve got it all,” then I envy your blithe disinterest in how movies work. Never change, you beautiful blissful Pollyanna, you.)
He gets canned, and can’t seem to find another job in his beloved paper industry, despite going on a series of dehumanizing interviews. His resourceful wife Miri (Son Ye-jin) proves a hell of a lot more adaptable than he does, making practical changes to the family’s expenses to weather Man-su’s situation. But when foreclosure threatens, he resolves to eliminate the other candidates (Lee Sung-min, Cha Seung-won) for the job he wants at another paper factory — and, while he’s at it, maybe even the jerk (Park Hee-soon) to whom he’d be reporting.
So yes, No Other Choice is a scathing spoof of corporate culture. But the director’s true satirical eye is trained on the interpersonal — specifically the intractability of the male ego.
Again and again, the women in the film (both Son Ye-jin as Miri and the hilarious Yeom Hye-ran, who plays the wife of one of Man-su’s potential victims) entreat their husbands to think about doing something, anything else with their lives. But these men have come to equate their years of service with a pot-committed core identity as men and breadwinners; they cling to their old lives and seek only to claw their way back into them. Man-su, for example, unthinkingly channels the energy that he could devote to personal and professional growth into planning and executing a series of ludicrously sloppy murders.
It’s all satisfyingly pulpy stuff, loaded with showy, cinematic homages to old-school suspense cinematography and editing — cross-fades, reverse-angles and jump cuts that are deliberately and unapologetically Hitchcockian. That deliberateness turns out to be reassuring and crowd-pleasing; if you’re tired of tidy visual austerity, of films that look like TV, the lushness on display here will have you leaning back in your seat thinking, “This right here is cinema, goddammit.”
Narratively, the film is loaded with winking jokes and callbacks that reward repeat viewing. Count the number of times that various characters attempt to dodge personal responsibility by sprinkling the movie’s title into their dialogue. Wonder why one character invokes the peculiar image of a madwoman screaming in the woods and then, only a few scenes later, finds herself chasing someone through the woods, screaming. Marvel at Man-su’s family home, a beautifully ugly blend of traditional French-style architecture with lumpy Brutalist touches like exposed concrete balconies jutting out from every wall.
There’s a lot that’s charming about No Other Choice, which might seem an odd thing to note about such a blistering anti-capitalist screed. But the director is careful to remind us at all turns where the responsibility truly lies; say what you will about systemic economic pressure, the blood stays resolutely on Man-su’s hands (and face, and shirt, and pants, and shoes). The film repeatedly offers him the ability to opt out of the system, to abandon his resolve that he must return to the life he once knew, exactly as he knew it.
Man-su could do that, but he won’t, because to change would mean to make an effort — and ultimately men would rather embark upon a bloody murder spree than go to therapy.
Lifestyle
Austin airport to nearly double in size over next decade
AUSTIN, Texas – Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will nearly double in size over the next decade.
The airport currently has 34 gates. With the expansion projects, it will increase by another 32 gates.
What they’re saying:
Southwest, Delta, United, American, Alaska, FedEx, and UPS have signed 10-year use-and lease agreements, which outline how they operate at the airport, including with the expansion.
“This provides the financial foundation that will support our day-to-day operations and help us fund the expansion program that will reshape how millions of travelers experience AUS for decades to come,” Ghizlane Badawi, CEO of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, said.
Concourse B, which is in the design phase, will have 26 gates, estimated to open in the 2030s. Southwest Airlines will be the main tenant with 18 gates, United Airlines will have five gates, and three gates will be for common use. There will be a tunnel that connects to Concourse B.
“If you give us the gates, we will bring the planes,” Adam Decaire, senior VP of Network Planning & Network Operations Control at Southwest Airlines said.
“As part of growing the airport, you see that it’s not just us that’s bragging about the success we’re having. It’s the airlines that want to use this airport, and they see advantage in their business model of being part of this airport, and that’s why they’re growing the number of gates they’re using,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.
Dig deeper:
The airport will also redevelop the existing Barbara Jordan Terminal, including the ticket counters, security checkpoints, and baggage claim. Concourse A will be home to Delta Air Lines with 15 gates. American Airlines will have nine gates, and Alaska Airlines will have one gate. There will be eight common-use gates.
“Delta is making a long-term investment in Austin-Bergstrom that will transform travel for years to come,” Holden Shannon, senior VP for Corporate Real Estate at Delta Air Lines said.
The airport will also build Concourse M — six additional gates to increase capacity as early as 2027. There will be a shuttle between that and the Barbara Jordan Terminal. Concourse M will help with capacity during phases of construction.
There will also be a new Arrivals and Departures Hall, with more concessions and amenities. They’re also working to bring rideshare pickup closer to the terminal.
City officials say these projects will bring more jobs.
The expansion is estimated to cost $5 billion — none of which comes from taxpayer dollars. This comes from airport revenue, possible proceeds, and FAA grants.
“We’re seeing airlines really step up to ensure they are sharing in the infrastructure costs at no cost to Austin taxpayers, and so we’re very excited about that as well,” Council Member Vanessa Fuentes (District 2) said.
The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin’s Angela Shen
Lifestyle
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Wyle, who spent 11 seasons on ER, returns to the hospital in The Pitt. Now in Season 2, the HBO series has earned praise for its depiction of the medical field. Originally broadcast April 21, 2025.
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Television
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