In Memory of Radio
In Memory of Radio - meaning Summary
Radio-era Memory and Doubt
The poem evokes radio-era pop culture and childhood listening—Lamont Cranston, The Shadow, serialized dramas—to meditate on love, belief, and hidden darkness. The speaker mixes nostalgia with irony, naming cultural figures to contrast theatrical power with his own impotence. Love becomes ambiguous and threatening, rendered as an "evil" or backward "evol," while the radio’s shadowy refrain—"Who knows what evil lurks..." frames the poem’s uneasy blend of memory and suspicion.
Read Complete AnalysesWho has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston? (Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me. The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith, Or something equally unattractive.) What can I say? It is better to haved loved and lost Than to put linoleum in your living rooms? Am I a sage or something? Mandrake's hypnotic gesture of the week? (Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts... I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich! I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goddy Knight) & love is an evil word. Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean? An evol word. & besides who understands it? I certainly wouldn't like to go out on that kind of limb. Saturday mornings we listened to the Red Lantern & his undersea folk. At 11, Let's Pretend & we did & I, the poet, still do. Thank God! What was it he used to say (after the transformation when he was safe & invisible & the unbelievers couldn't throw stones?) 'Heh, heh, heh. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.' O, yes he does O, yes he does An evil word it is, This Love.
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