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In this episode, poet Michael Mark joins us to talk about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'Little Champion' by Tony Hoagland.

Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, which won the 2022 Rattle Chapbook prize. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Copper Nickel, The New York Times, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Southern Review, The Sun, 32 Poems, and The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry. His two books of stories are Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). michaeljmark.com 

We are hugely grateful to Michael for visiting The Poetry Exchange and talking so openly and eloquently about his connection with 'Little Champion.'

You can find 'Little Champion' in Tony Hogland's collection 'Application for Release from the Dream', published by Graywolf Press (2015). Many thanks to Grawywolf Press for their support.

Michael Mark is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Andrea Witzke Slot and John Prebble.

The 'gift' reading of 'Little Champion' is by John Prebble.

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Little Champion

by Tony Hoagland

When I get hopeless about human life,

which quite frankly is far too difficult for me,

I like to remember that in the desert there is

a little butterfly that lives by drinking urine.

And when I have to take the bus to work on Saturday,

or spend an hour opening the mail,

deciding what to keep and what to throw away,

one piece at a time,

I think of the butterfly following its animal around

through the morning and the night,

fluttering, weaving sideways through

the cactus and the rocks.

And when I have to meet all Tuesday afternoon

with the committee to discuss new bylaws,

or listen to the dinner guest explain his recipe for German beer,

or hear the scholar tell, again,

about her campaign to destroy, once and for all,

the cult of heteronormativity,

I think of that tough little champion

with orange and black markings on its wings,

resting in the shade beneath a ledge of rock

while its animal sleeps nearby;

and I see how the droplets hang and gleam among

the thorns and drab green leaves of desert plants

and how the butterfly alights and drinks from them

deeply, with a stillness of utter concentration.

Published in The Sun Magazine, November 2014 and in the collection, 'Application for Release from the Dream' (Graywolf Press, 2015).

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