Versecraft

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 -&...

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...

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...

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&q...

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...

Soundtrack to this episode Topics discussed in this episode include: -"The Roots of Romanticism" by Isaiah Berlin -The Jena Set and the Schlegels -"Rousseau and Romanticism" by Irving Babbitt -Harold Bloom -"Science, Politics, and Gnosticism" by Eric Voegelin -"Classic, Romantic, and Modern" by Jacques Barzun -Inferno IV and XXVI -Prometheus Bound (probably...

Soundtrack to this episode Text of poem Topics discussed in this episode: -My sojourn in Gaul - ITER! - Atomic Fusion -The contemptible STEM/Humanities divide - Amit Majmudar! - Sleerickets Episode 144 -Amphibrachic hexameter -"The Birth of Tragedy" by Friedrich Nietzsche -The Solar Cycle -Apollo, the inverse Romantic -Homer's Odyssey -The myth of Daphne -Rage or Oblivion? -Come see...

COME OUT TO CLEVELAND June 13th to hear David, Matthew, and Ryan read!    Soundtrack to this episode   Topics discussed in this episode include:   -Au revoir until June!  -"The Birth of Tragedy" by Friederich Nietzsche -"The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde -"Pere Goriot" by Honore de Balzac -The aesthetic parasite - "And Which of Them In Time Would Be Betr...

Soundtrack to today's episode Topics discussed in this episode include: - "On Portents" by Robert Graves -"The White Goddess" by Robert Graves - "Life With The Real White Goddess" by Louis Simpson -Poetry Messiah Witch Cult -The Fugitives -Misadventures in polyamory -"A Survey of Modernist Poetry" by Riding & Graves - "The Cool Web" by Rob...

The soundtrack to today's episode   Topics discussed in this episode: - Norman Finkelstein and Restless Messengers  - Formal Poet Voltron At Loganberry Books!! Get over here!  -Three great things: Literary Matters , 32 Poems , SLEERICKETS - Ma! I'm On Sleerickets! -Pre-12th century Medieval heroic poetry  -Chivalry vs. Courtly Love -Slammin the canon -Dante is a sad, strange little man ...

Topics discussed in this episode include:   -That famous soliliquy -"The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus -Inferno Canto XIII -"Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton -The Catechism of the Catholic Church -Prayopavesa -Martyrs, Berserkers, Stoics and Samurai -" The Right To Die" by Paul Laurence Dunbar - "No" by A.M. Juster - "Resume" by Dorothy Parker Sup...

Poems discussed on this episode include:   "Are They Shadows" by Samuel Daniel "To Heaven" by Ben Jonson "The Kraken" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson "Aspecta Medusa" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Sonnet VII by George Santayana "Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers "What Are Years" by Marianne Moore "My Son, My Executioner" by Donald Hall &q...

Mea culpa: Sorry about the little skip in the concluding reading-- don't know why that happened.  Text of the poem here.   Topics discussed in this episode include:   -"In Defense of Reason" by Yvor Winters - "A Winters Tale" on SLEERICKETS - "The Seriousness of Yvor Winters" by David Yezzi - "The Absolutist: Yvor Winters" by Jan Schreiber - "What...

Topics discussed in this episode include: -RIP N. Scott Momaday -Gather ye old buds while ye may - 32 Poems -David's new collection, Newly Not Eternal -"Iscariot's Psalm" by George David Clark -Read the earlier version of "Shiversong" here -The 'ol feminine-acephalous combo (we need a real name for this) -Not rhythmic, but METRICAL modulation - "The Snow Man...

Text of poem here (Note: this is an older version, and some lines have changed).    Topics discussed in this episode include:    -My Ryan Wilson episode -My Mark Jarman episode -Ryan's corrections and very gracious explanation - The Contemporary Poetry Review - Jan's wonderfully kooky website  - THINK Journal's Critical Path Symposium -The aquastentialist poem - "The Slow Pacif...

Text of poem here .   Topics discussed in this episode include:  - Literary Matters - "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot -Buy Ryan's books, including his new collection, "In Ghostlight,"  here -"L'Estraneo" by Ryan Wilson - "On A Baroque Wall Fountain in the Villa Sciarra" by Richard Wilbur - "The Gardens of the Villa D'E...

Topics discussed in this episode include:   - "A Retrospect" and "A Few Don'ts By An Imagiste" by Ezra Pound -A ruinous misunderstanding of meter and music -"Intellectual-emotional complex" and unified sensibility -"The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" by Ernest Fenollosa -The ideogrammatic method -Kiru, Wabi-Sabi, and Mono no Aware ( s...

Mea culpa: Yes, I know "Sailing to Byzantium" was written like 20 years after "Conversion." By the time I realized my anachronism, it was too late. Something something Borges retroactive influence...  Topics discussed in this episode include:   -Mary Renault's "The King Must Die."  -Decadence begets Primitivism -Gauguin, Picasso, Stravinsky -Gustave Kahn and vers...

Topics discussed in this episode include:   -What is Modernism? -Various dichotomies -The French origins of Modernism -Charles Baudelaire and the Decadent movement -Stephane Mallarme and Symbolism/Impressionism -Eliot, Laforgue, Corbiere, and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" -Hugo vs. Baudelaire -Edgar Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition" and "On the Poetic Prin...

Topics discussed in this episode include: -Order George David Clark's new book, Newly Not Eternal here! -Order John Wall Barger's new book, The Elephant of Silence here!  -On the necessity of verse translation, feat. Bob and Paul  -Metaphrase and Paraphrase -The Blumov Method of translation -Jacques Barzun's An Essay On French Verse - Romanticism in Realism's clothing -The tyra...

Text of poem here.   Topics discussed in this episode include: - Midlife by Matthew Buckley Smith - The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse by Christopher Childers - Khosrow and Shirin by Dick Davis - In Ghostlight by Ryan Wilson - A Gaze Hound That Hunteth By The Eye by Penelope Pelizzon - The Nature of Things Fragile by Peter Vertacnik -My poem Tlaloc on E-Verse Radio -SLEERICKETS and Ve...

Mea culpa re line 8: I confusedly combined both possible readings-- this is either acephalous hexameter or first foot anapest iambic pentameter.   Topics discussed in this episode include:   -Write to me about classes!  - The Error by Don Paterson -Idealism, Nominalism, Transcendental critique -Plato, Plotinus, Ockham, Kant -Paterson's band, Lammas -His many books - Michael Donaghy - Blank Ve...

Mea culpa: Several times I refer to "Sunlight" as "Sunshine." Blame it on the LSD (which was called "Orange Sunshine").  Text of poem here   Topics discussed in this episode include:    -Let me know what you think I should teach! - On The Morning Of Christ's Nativity by John Milton - The Gas Poker by Thom Gunn -The Movement -Syllabics as gateway drug -Lucy In the...

Text of poem here. Topics discussed in this episode include: -The universecraft  -Shout out to the Aussies! -Tim Tams SLAM, y'all -Alice Allan, Poetry Says, and our episode on Gwen Harwood -The Australian Augustans: Hope, McAuley, Stewart -Paul Valery's "Le Cimitiere Marin" -Tertius paeon reviewed -The ocean motif, and my episodes on JMW's Through the Water and Yezzi'...

Songs discussed in The Rainbow Mythos include:   Tarot Woman (lyrics here ) Rainbow Eyes (lyrics here ) Catch The Rainbow (lyrics here ) The Man On The Silver Mountain (lyrics here ) The Temple Of The King (lyrics here ) Stargazer (lyrics here ) A Light In The Black (lyrics here )   Topics discussed include: Brian Brodeur's new book, Some Problems With Autobiography Katie Hartsock's new...