Versecraft

Read this essay (and see the poems) on Substack! Poems discussed: "The Rhodora" by Ralph Waldo Emerson "In the Desert" by Herman Melville ( my Melville essay ) "Lucifer in Starlight" by George Meredith "Cold-Blooded Creatures" by Elinor Wylie "The Animals" by Edwin Muir "Sunt Leones" by Stevie Smith ( Fayne's essay ) "Beyond the...

Read this essay at The Sonneteer!  Sonnet types discussed: The Sicilian: ABAB ABAB, CDC DCD The Italian: ABBA ABBA, CDC DCD The English: ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG The French: ABAB, CDCD, EEF, GGF The Spenserian: ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, EE The Miltonic: Italian, with enjambment, delayed volta, and non-courtly/erotic content The Meredithian: ABBA, CDDC, EFFE, GHHG The Pushkin: aBaB, ccDD, eFFe, GG The Hilberti...

-Read this essay on Substack!  -What is meter? -10 Reasons to write in meter -Kinds of meter (Accentual, Syllabic, Parellelist, Quantitative, Accentual-Syllabic) -Kinds of feet (Iamb, Trochee, Anapest, Amphibrach, Dactyl) -“Junk” by Richard Wilbur -“Considering the Snail” by Thom Gunn -KJV Psalm 23 -Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare -“The Tyger” by William Blake -“The Destruction of Sennacherib” by Lord By...

Read this essay on Substack! Topics discussed: -Disco Demolition Night -Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death"  -See Matthew's great episode on the above -Alice's essay, "On Fear" -My essay, "The Iron Lyre" -The Sleerickets episode "This Was Poetry" Support the show VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE. BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE . VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTAC...

-Read the poems on my Substack! -If there is a “West,” all Semites and Aryans are part of it -Arab Classicism and the House of Wisdom -Al Ma’arri -Afzaladdin -Moses Ibn Ezra -Sehnsucht -Ibn Iyad -Manjik -Dick Davis -Samuel Johnson’s “Rasselas” -Proto-Imagism -My long road to appreciating haiku -Zen in the Art of Archery -Matsuo Basho -Ethan McGuire -Kireji, Kigo, Jisei -Minamoto no Shitago -Howard...

Read this essay (and view the poems) on Substack! Topics discussed include: The Monumentalist Manifesto The Iron Lyre Bright Soft Things (Crashaw Essay) The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse trans. Christopher Childers Asclepiades 6 Zonas 9 Argentarius 26 Martial 5.73, 1.73, 3.65 "Prayer" by George Herbert "Cold Turkey" by Joshua Mehigan "Upon the Body of Our Ble...

Read this episode on Substack! Text of the poem here. Mea culpa: Yes, in the heat of the moment, I mispronounced mise en scene. A la guillotine!  Topics discussed include: -Some po-biz kvetching -Morri Creech!  -The telos of Versecraft -The "ghost" of pentameter -The Stevensian cosmovision and the metaphysics of metaphor -The axis mundi -Nicholas of Cusa and coincidentia oppositorum -The...

Read this episode on Substack and subscribe! Text of poem Topics discussed include: -Plato's "Ion" -The Muses and Schizophrenia -Poets must be weirdos -The normies are the willing slaves of the mad -Lewis's trilemma -The American Confessionals and the French Decadents -The Wild 18th century -Go read William Cowper's "The Task!" -Samuel Johnson, Richard Savage, Wi...

Read this episode (and the poem) on Substack! Topics discussed include: -Going to Oaxaca! -"Poetry and Music" and "Rhyme's Reason" by John Hollander - My Nemerov episode - My Donaghy episode -Jacques Lacan and the "mirror phase" -The nightmare of the self vs. the nightmare of the unconscious -The survival of Romanticism  Support the show VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE. BU...

Read this essay on Substack!  Read the poems: "The Early Purges" and "Limbo." Topics mentioned: -Poetry careerism in the 21st century - "The Iron Lyre" -The perennial appeal of the Gentleman Farmer Poet - Heaney's bog poems -The value of exposure to death -Rural vs. Urban morality - "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things" by Robert Frost -Piscine C...

Read this essay and support the show on Substack!  Topics discussed in this episode include: R.S. Thomas's poems: -Mediations -Kneeling -Via Negativa -The Absence -Revision - Ernest Hilbert -Alexander Fayne's essay on R.S. Thomas -Pascal's "Night of Fire" -Apophatic theology  -John Scotus Erigena, Philo, Pseudo-Dionysius, Weil, etc.  -Keats's "Ode On A Grecian Ur...

Read this episode in essay form here!  Topics discussed in this episode include: -The Cambridge Three: Dick Davis , Robert Wells, Clive Wilmer - My Interview with Dick Davis -The Stanford Poets: Thom Gunn, Edgar Bowers, Yvor Winters, etc. -Virgil's Georgics -The Idylls of Theocritus -Wells poems discussed: "A Caution," "Deus Loci," "The Unnamed Pool," "The B...

Read the poem here. Topics discussed in this episode include: -Transcending the smallness of one's time - The Flaming Terrapin -The Voorslag Affair -Campbell against the world, i.e. punching Steve Spender in the face -Ambivalent stanzas -The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot -"Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens -"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge -"The Whiteness of...

Read the episode on Substack here Poems discussed in this episode: "Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee" by Emily Bronte "Cargoes" by John Masefield "From Stone to Steel" by E.J. Pratt "The Hill" by Rupert Brooke "When the Ecstatic Body Grips" by E.R. Dodds "For My Daughter" by Weldon Kees "Poetry and Religion" by Les Murray "...

-Read the poem... by pre-ordering Forester’s new collection here!  - Or here, on Substack!  -The Versecraft Substack -My annus mirabilis -Forester McClatchey!  -Frederick Goddard Tuckerman -Renovating the sonnet-house -Mycorrhizal intelligence -Is the pathos fallacious?  -A thinking cheese for the thinking man -The ents at the entmoot -My recent episode on Sleerickets with Alice -Cosmic double-con...

Text of the poem here. Read the transcript of this episode here! Topics discussed in this episode include: -My new website! -My Substack -The meaning and history of New Formalism -“Can Poetry Matter?” by Dana Gioia -The Big Read and Poetry Out Loud - “The Catholic Writer Today” by Dana Gioia -“Poetry as Enchantment” by Dana Gioia -Boris Dralyuk on Noir Poetry -The Noir hero -Christopher Marlowe an...

Topics discussed in this episode: -Read this show on substack!  - My new website!! - My conversation with David and Matthew on Age of Muses -My new post at Literary Matters - My French translation episode on Heredia - My Spanish translation episode on Lope -Metaphrase and paraphrase -Germany's view of Goethe -Magister Christopher Childers -From Sturm und Drang to Spit on that Thang (sorry) -W...

Topics discussed in this episode include: Read the polished transcript of this episode on Substack!  My lecture on The Grand Style in English My poem, "Spelunker," in New Verse Review The 2025 ALSCW Conference Cameron’s substack Ethan’s substack Poetry’s psychological effect and moral charge The burden of genius Poetry vs. Philosophy Maimonides and Augustine The decadence of the academy...

Topics discussed in this episode include: Read the polished transcript of this episode here!  Cameron’s substack Ethan’s substack "The World as Will and Representation" by Arthur Schopenhauer Why you Kant do metaphysics anymore Matter, Phenomena, Representation, Maya vs. Form, Noumena, Will, Nirvana Terrains of flesh French vs. English gardens From Schopenhauer to Freud Perception vs Ref...

Topics discussed in this episode include: -My recent class at the Frost Farm Conference -My trip to Europe -Come to the ALSCW Conference ! - Part I and Part II of my essay on French poetry in Marginalia Review of Books -New poems and translations of mine in the latest issue of Literary Matters -My essays The Iron Lyre and The Monumentalist Manifesto - The most recent SLEERICKETS -The Romantic with...

Topics mentioned in this episode: -The use of the term “poetry” and the death of the genuine article -Building metrical literacy -My essay “The Iron Lyre” -Modern small-souledness -My essay “The Poisoned Well: Melville and Gnosticism” -My essay “The Monumentalist Manifesto” -“Science, Politics, and Gnosticism” by Eric Voegelin -“The Whiteness of the Whale” in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” -“The Gn...

Text of poem  here Soundtrack to this episode  Topics discussed in this episode:  -The University of St. Thomas, Houston  -"The Flaming Heart" by Mario Praz -Giambattista Marino -Metaphysical vs. Baroque -The poetry of rapture -The Greek Anthology -Laudianism  -Crashaw's Teresa poems -Mixed meter and phantom beats -"Venus and Adonis" by Billy Shakes -The saintly grief in y...

Topics discussed in this episode include: - The MFA Program at the University of St. Thomas - My episode on Ryan’s poem “Disobedience” - "How to Think Like a Poet" by Ryan Wilson - Wiseblood Books -New editions of Dryden and Pope soon come! - “The Catholic Writer Today” by Dana Gioia -David Rothman - New Verse Review’s St. Thomas issue -“A Season in Hell” by Arthur Rimbaud -“Pure and Imp...

Topics discussed in this episode include: Wiseblood Books The University of St. Thomas MFA Program My episode on James Matthew Wilson "The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking" by James Matthew Wilson " The Wayward Thomist " by James Matthew Wilson The Complete Essays of J.V. Cunningham Jacques Maritain "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky "La Vita Nuova&quot...

Topics discussed in this episode include: Matthew Buckley Smith over at SLEERICKETS Alice Allan over at Poetry Says and In Future Posts Ethan McGuire over at The Flummoxed Zina Gomez Liss over at The Beauty of Things Cameron Clark over at Minor Tiresias Rationalist, Socialist, Humanist, Bicameral Demo-Oligarchic Utopia? Ironkraft and Cheesecraft An incomplete list of people I envy: Kendrick Lamar,...