In this episode, our podcast host Elizabeth Renker introduces Stephanie Burt to her own favorite poem of Sarah’s, “Mock Diamonds,” one of her great poems of the Reconstruction period immediately following the U.S. Civil War. Elizabeth reads the poem aloud and tells us about the historical background. She and Stephanie break the poem down stanza by stanza, exploring how Sarah created an appealing surface for general readers and a simultaneous deeper layer that scrutinizes white nostalgia for the Old South, the emergent Lost Cause ideology, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Stephanie calls “Mock Diamonds” “a poem for our time.”
Interview date: 26 September 2025
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