Poetic License

Transcript

OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:

We're going to go real highbrow now for a game titled Poetic License. Please welcome our contestants Molly Balikov and John Sherman.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: OK. Molly, John, this is a poetry-themed game. And not only that, but we asked our good friend former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky to read the clues to this game. So before I go any further, I need you to tell me what is your poetry cred that makes you worthy of a game with a Poet Laureate? John.

JOHN SHERMAN: I feel about poetry the way feel about music. Like, I like a lot of it. I like what I know, but I don't know a great deal of it.

EISENBERG: OK. So you're setting the bar low is what you're trying to say.

(LAUGHTER)

SHERMAN: Yeah. I'm trying to lower everyone's expectations.

EISENBERG: OK. Got it, no expectations, cool. Molly?

MOLLY BALIKOV: When I was in high school, I had a cassette tape of Anne Sexton reading her own poetry.

(LAUGHTER)

BALIKOV: Does that count?

EISENBERG: That certainly counts. And do you read poetry other than that?

BALIKOV: No, I do. Occasionally.

EISENBERG: Yeah? OK, so this will work. Now you may have noticed in your travels that many book titles have a nice poetic ring to them, and that's often because the titles are actually taken from poems. So in this game, we're going to read you passages from famous poems replacing the book title with a clue and you have to tell us the name of the book. So let's give it a shot. This is from Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."

ROBERT PINSKY: Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the first novel by George R. R. Martin.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: John?

SHERMAN: "Dying Of The Light"?

EISENBERG: That is correct, yes.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: That is a line of poetry, and that is the name of George R. R. Martin's first novel, yeah. Now, Molly, are you clear? Are you OK? You look puzzled.

BALIKOV: Yes. I was confused by the George R. R. Martin. I thought it was going to be a "Game Of Thrones" thing, but I'm good now. I'm good.

EISENBERG: Because you went there, and then you were like, why am I back here in a poem?

BALIKOV: Correct.

EISENBERG: Yes, I understand. OK. This is from William Butler Yeats. "The Second Coming."

PINSKY: Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Chinua Achebe's debut novel, the centre cannot hold.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: John?

SHERMAN: "Things Fall Apart."

EISENBERG: That is correct.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: From Robert Burns's "To A Mouse."

PINSKY: But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane - in proving foresight may be vain. The best laid schemes of a John Steinbeck novella about a pair of migrant laborers.

EISENBERG: Molly?

BALIKOV: "Of Mice And Men."

EISENBERG: That is perfectly correct.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: I mean, you know, we did go from "Umbrella" to this. It is quite a...

JONATHAN COULTON, BYLINE: No, I know. Wide range. There are definitely people who have been listening to the radio all this time who right now are like, oh, thank God.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: From Lord Tennyson's "Locksley Hall."

PINSKY: Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range. Colum McCann's National Book Award winner, for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Molly?

BALIKOV: "Let The Great World Spin."

EISENBERG: Yes.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Beautiful. This is your very last clue from Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Sympathy."

PINSKY: When he beats his bars and he would be free, it is not a carol of joy or glee, but a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, but a plea, that upward to heaven he flings the first volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Molly?

BALIKOV: "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings."

EISENBERG: You got it. That is correct.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Great game. John, I knew that you knew the answer to that one, too, because you rang and then just went ah. Puzzle guru Art Chung, how did these amazing contestants do?

ART CHUNG, BYLINE: It went down to the buzzer, but, Molly, congratulations. You're moving on.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Coming up, we'll see if our VIPs Jonathan Groff and Raul Castillo can replicate their on-screen chemistry in a game about TV couples, so stick around. I'm Ophira Eisenberg, and this is ASK ME ANOTHER from NPR.

(APPLAUSE) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.