Versecraft

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...

Text of poem here   Topics discussed in this episode include:   -Romanticism, Modernism, and The Lyric -Defining ourselves against the vices of our age -Historical problems with Lyric -Modernism as pharmakon -T.S. Eliot's essay, Andrew Marvell -T.S. Eliot's essay, The Metaphysical Poets -Marvell's Horatian Ode -Marvell's Country House poem, Upon Appleton House -Marvell's &...

Text of poem here   Topics discussed in this episode include: - The Stafford Challenge -The Kiowa people -Frederick Goddard Tuckerman -Winters and Bowers -"The Death Of Sitting Bear" -"House Made Of Dawn" -"The Way To Rainy Mountain" -The Native American Renaissance -Mixed meter, mixed KINDS of meter -Remember, catalexis = without final unaccented syllable (opposite o...

Text of poem here  Mea culpa: When I said "fearful," I meant "fearsome" L'esprit d'escalier: "Above the boneyard burn its golden eyes" has a similar euphony to Donne's famous: "A bracelet of bright hair about the bone."   Topics discussed in this episode include: -Anthony Hecht's new Collected Poems , edited by Philip Hoy -David Yezzi&apo...

Text of poem here . Mea culpa: Please read "tercets" for "triplets"   Topics discussed in this episode include:   -J.V. Cunningham (see my episode on him here ) -The Tribe of Ben (Jonson) -Check out Dan's books here! - The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets -Accentual or Accentual-Syllabic? -Macro-rhythmic modulation -The soul of wit? - My episode on Emily Dickinson -...

Text of poem here   Topics mentioned in this episode include:   -Jungenstil, The Vienna Secession, The Belle Epoque -Leonie Adams (see my episode on her here ) -The hard-hearted bravado of early 20th century American poetry by women -The double twist of the hybrid sonnet -Spondees and dactyls -Theodore Roethke (see my episode on him here ) - "Ode On The Death Of Pius XII" by A.D. Hope -S...