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Exploring the art of poetry through the craft of some of the world's best but most underrated poems.
107 Episodes
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Topics discussed in this episode: -Email me your questions!! -Cameron's substack, "Minor Tiresias" -My poem, "At Woodlawn" in Merion West -My poem, "Aztec Support" in Light -My episode on Learning the Secrets of English Verse -"Missing Measures" and "All the Fun's In How You Say A Thing"&n...
Soundtrack to this episode Text of poem here Send me your AMA questions for Versecraft 100! Topics discussed in this episode include: -Greatest Generation poets -"Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry" by Howard Nemerov -"De Anima" by Aristotle -On loose iambics -The ghost of Sapphics -A transexual volta -Life engenders the great romance of death -"Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins -The nature of empathy and tragedy -Orpheus and Eurydice and my Shane McCrae Episo...
Soundtrack to this episode Text of poem: Bird Watcher It returns to the same nest. The watcher lies beneath spring brushwood to await its coming– at watch so long he dreams himself becoming less than himself and more, the landscape’s eyes. Though far beyond his eyes, beyond the range of field-glasses, he knows it breaks no bonds: its instinct to his knowledge corresponds, riding the current of the season’s change. What is there in a small bird’s blood that learns to pl...
Topics discussed in this episode include: -Go buy Learning the Secrets of English Verse! -The Monumentalist Manifesto -My episode, The Idea Of A Poetry Conservatory -Poetry as skill -The Fitzgerald system of scansion -Parallelism, Syllabics, Loose Iambics, Stress-counting, rhyme-driving, sprung rhythm, oh my! -"All the Fun's In How You Say A Thing" by Timothy Steele -Sonnets don't cure polio, but they're pretty great. -Rhyme Royal, Ottava Rima, Spenserians, Onegin, oh my! -L'dor Vador Suppo...
Soundtrack to this episode Text of poem Topics discussed include: -Your host has an identity crisis -RIP POETRY SAYS! -Listen to Alice on Milton and with me. -Moira Egan! -My Pindar essay -My Melville essay -The Iron Lyre! -Matthew, Alice, and I argue about The Iron Lyre -THE ERN MALLEY HOAX -The New York School and the Generation of '68 -Read the entire text of The Darkening Ecliptic here. -A Primer of English Versification -Dickinson and Blake -The loneliness of love -The mysticism of lus...
Soundtrack to this episode Link to translations Topics discussed: -Alice tackles Milton on Poetry Says -Check out my Substack here! -My episode on Ryan Wilson -My episode on Geoffrey Hill -The long and short of a long fellow -Longfellow's Dante -The Monster of Literature -Romance languages and hendecasyllabics -Faithful to which fidelity? -Translational hijinks ensue -Mosaic rhymes! Support the show BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE. VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE. Please subscribe, r...
Soundtrack to this episode Note: My use of the phrase "men without chests" and Matthew's were completely coincidental! Text of poem: Lachrimae Antiquae Novae Crucified Lord, so naked to the world, you live unseen within that nakedness, consigned by proxy to the judas-kiss of our devotion, bowed beneath the gold, with re-enactments, penances foretold: scentings of love across a wilderness of retrospection, wild and objectless longings incarnate in the carnal child. Beautiful for themse...
Soundtrack to this episode Text of poem: Nor strange it is, to us who walk in bonds Of flesh and time, if virtue's self awhile Gleam dull like sunless ice; whilst graceful guile— Blood-flecked like hematite or diamonds With a red inward spark—to reconcile Beauty and evil seems and corresponds So well with good that the mind joys to have Full wider jet and scope nor swings and sleeps Forever in one cradle wearily: Like those vast weeds that off d'Acunha's isle Wash with the surf and flap t...
Soundtrack to this episode Read the text of the poem here Topics discussed in this episode include: The Iron Lyre: Poetry, Heavy Metal, and the New Sublime Alice and Elijah vs. The Abyss on SLEERICKETS Melissa Range! Aaron Baker! David Southward! "The Rhythms of English Poetry" by Derek Attridge My John Donne episode My George Herbert episode My Gerard Manley Hopkins episode My Mark Jarman episode Speech stress vs. meter Adventures in etymology What was accomplished on the cross? The Azte...
Soundtrack to this episode Text of poem Topics discussed in this episode include: -New Critical Rococo -The Changing Light at Sandover -The Ingram Merrill Foundation -Shape poems -My George Herbert episode -"Pindarick Odes" -"Intimations of Immortality" by William Wordsworth -"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold -"Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt -What do Christmas trees and dying men have in common? Support the show BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE. VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE. Plea...
Soundtrack to this episode Text of poem here Topics discussed in this episode include: -Sentimentality -National character -Philip Larkin, novelist: "Jill," and "A Girl in Winter" -"The Movement" movement -The Oxford Book of 20th Century English Verse -"Church-Going" by Philip Larkin -The blindness of historical consciousness -Temporal and generational erosion -"Miniver Cheevy" by E.A. Robinson -Last lines and legacies -But is it sentimental?? Support the show BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE....
Soundtrack to this episode Topics discussed in this episode include: -Listen to my talk on Melville here -Listen to my poetry reading with Dan Brown here -Outsider poetry -The Education of Henry Adams -Metrical hijinks -The inherent negations of blindness -"Durer: Insbrook, 1495" by Ern Malley -"Lycidas" by John Milton -Forging a new sensibility in identitarian poetry Text of poem: The Education of the Blind Poet; Or, Ars Poetica Ending with a Line from Milton When I was 9 they t...
Soundtrack to this episode Text of poem: The Last Act ‘Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, Now leaves him. It is too often only close to death, or utter failure, when the mind is held to truth, we see the outlines of the gods, those whom we loved but never realized. Above us in a void burnt-out and cold, at unfamiliar heights their forms return like ghosts to move across the final night, remote and unappeased in our collapse. There is no bitterness in facing them.&nbs...
Soundtrack to this episode Link to poems! Read the Classical Outlook poetry issue here! NEW MERCH HERE To receive a link to the Critical Path Symposium, follow the email link at the bottom right of this page Topics discussed in this episode include: -Philip Walsh and Rachel Hadas! -The Classical Outlook! -Classical Reception Studies -"44 Pastorals" by Rachel Hadas -Prosimetra/Haibun -"Prose of Departure" by James Merrill -"Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms" ed. by David Lehman -"Persona...
Mea culpa: "The Neural Lyre" was published in 1983, not 1994. Don't know why I said that! Read today's poem here Topics discussed in this episode include: -William Paley's watchmaker analogy -Problems with teleological arguments -Brandon Carter's Anthropic Principle -Multiverse/many worlds theory -John Archibald Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle -"It from bit" -George Berkeley's Idealism -Vedanta Hinduism -"The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" -Barrow and Tipler's ...
Mea culpa: Apologies for my faint audio in the beginning! Soundtrack to this episode Second soundtrack, because... I had to. Topics discussed in this episode include: -Thom Gunn and some of his literary interests (Henry James, George Macdonald, Saki, Ovid, etc.) -My episode on Thom Gunn -My episode on Timothy Steele -Read The Classical Outlook!! -Writing from experience vs. writing from ideas -"Missing Measures" by Timothy Steele -All the Fun's In How You Say a Thing, 2nd Edition! -Deser...
Soundtrack to this episode (it's Stephen Kampa!) Topics discussed in this episode include: -Go read New Verse Review! -Go listen to my talk on SLEERICKETS about Horace's Ars Poetica! -Go listen to the mighty Fer de Lance! -The Sleerickets Stephen Kampa episode -Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason -From Transcendental Idealism to Transcendentalism -Romanticism as post-Kantian reaction -Schelling, Schlegel, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Freud, Coleridge, Emerson, ...
Soundtrack to this episode Topics discussed in this episode include: -Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray -Portrait of the artist in a digital world -The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century -The decline and fall of poetry -Four paths to pecuniary stability -My episode on Amit Majmudar -"Patronage" by Amit Majmudar -Techno-feudalism -The linger of poetic mystique -Can Poetry Matter? by Dana Gioia -Commissions for Occasional poetry -From philanthropy to patrona...
Soundtrack to this episode Topics discussed in this episode include: -The Beatles -Beatles documentary "Get Back" -"The Other Frost" by Randall Jarrell -"Robert Frost: or, the Spiritual Drifter as Poet" by Yvor Winters -"The Other Other Frost" by William Logan -"The Themes of Robert Frost" by Robert Penn Warren -"A History of Modern Poetry" by David Perkins -Phalaecian hendacasyllabics -Catullus I -Plato's "Symposium" Frost poems mentioned/discussed: -The Road Not T...
Soundtrack to this episode For text of poem, please see episode transcript at versecraft.buzzsprout.com. Topics discussed in this episode include: -C'est Moi, MBS's response to my episode Giving the Devil His Due -My review of Matthew's book, "Midlife," entitled The Poet Laureate of Crushed Dreams -My episode on the Pathetic Fallacy with Matthew and Alice -"Of the Pathetic Fallacy" by John Ruskin -Who're you callin "pathetic?" -Pro and Contra -Figurative language vs. the fallacy -...
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