Versecraft

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...

Read our four poems here . (Note: The file may take a while to load!) Topics mentioned in this episode include: - My David Yezzi episode - Ryan Wilson -Three kinds of formal poets: puzzle solvers, natural rhymers, aesthetes -Paul Celan - Literary Matters -John Berryman's "Dream Songs" - Wait Until Dark -Object Permanence ( here's Matthew's poem on the subject! ) -"The...

Read our four poems here!  (Note: It may take a little while to load!)   Topics discussed in this episode include: - Sleerickets - Poetry Says - Matthew Buckley Smith - Alice Allan - Cameron Clark - Primordial - My Robert Bridges episode -Robert Fagles - Shane McCrae - Parallelism - "The Truly Great" by Stephen Spender -"Paradise Lost" by John Milton -Three approaches to poetic...

Topics discussed in this episode include:   -Autobiographical vs. Confessional  -"Poetry As Confession" by M.L. Rosenthal -"Life Studies" and "The Dolphin" by Robert Lowell -"Genesis" by Delmore Schwartz -"The Dream Songs" by John Berryman -Other Confessional pioneers: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, W.D. Snodgrass -Functions of Confessionalism: Therapy...

Topics discussed in this episode include:   - The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize!  -Regional pronunciations -The Israel-Gaza War ("Avenge, O Lord, Thy Slaughtered Saints....") -Who Is A Jew? -Judaism: Ethnic, Social, Ritualistic, Theological, Artistic -Maimonides' 13 Articles of Faith -The Cosmological Argument -Life's Will-To-Order -The meaning of "Follow Nature." -We ar...

Text of poem here   Topics discussed in this episode include: -My experience in New York's formalist bohemia - James Matthew Wilson and his books -Jacques Maritain & Etienne Gilson -The iambic decameter effect -Broken-backed lines - "The Castle of Thorns" by Yvor Winters - "The Slow Pacific Swell" by Yvor Winters - "Mother Carey's Hen" by David Yezzi -My...

Text of poem HERE No more Versecraft until October! Sorry :(  BUY SHIRTS   Topics discussed in this episode include:   -Matthew comes for my prosodic neck (mea culpa: his reading was first foot trochee, feminine ending). - Rabbi Neil Blumofe brings up Pirkei Avot - Susan Spear and Catherine Chandler - David Yezzi! -Yezzi's new Anthony Hecht biography, Late Romance -Matthew interviews David he...

Text of poem here .  Order Versecraft merch here !    Topics discussed in this episode include:   -Matthew's new book, Midlife !  - Joshua Mehigan and his books, The Optimist and Accepting the Disaster -Josh's interview on SLEERICKETS -American Naturalism -Josh's poem Down In the Valley -Sponges 101 -Parapraxis, aka "The Freudian slip" - Venice by Herman Melville  -The gan...

Topics discussed in this episode include:   E.M. Forster “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” by Edward Fitzgerald Thomas Hardy W.H. Auden “Troilus and Criseyde” by Geoffrey Chaucer “Vis and Ramin” by Gorgani “Wisdom and Wilderness” by Dick Davis Thom Gunn Yvor Winters Fulke Greville Edgar Bowers Mozart vs. Haydn “The Creation” by Joseph Haydn “Requiem” by W.A. Mozart “Symphony 9” by Franz Schubert “Req...

Buy Versecraft merch HERE Read text of poem HERE Topics discussed in this episode include:    -No Versecraft next week! :( - R.S. Gwynn -On late-bloomers in poetry -What Krishna meant -The life-changing power of the unicorn tapestries - The Amy Clampitt Residency Program and Virginia Konchan   -The "Tails To Heads" Maneuver. -"The Eumenides" by Aeschylus -We're gonna need...

Order Versecraft merch HERE   Topics discussed in this episode include:   -Varieties of Modernism: The Big Six -Formalism and Cosmic Rebellion -Wilbur's audacious sanity -The Idea Of Literary Celebrity At Key West -Accent vs. Stress  -Measuring my stress levels  -And isn't it ionic... don't you think?  -The temptation to see ourselves in Nature - "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud&q...

Get Versecraft merch HERE !    Topics discussed in this episode include:   -"T.S. Eliot: The Illusion of Reaction" by Yvor Winters -Les poetes maudites Tristan Corbiere et Jules Laforgue -When Eliot was taken to Pound town -The objective correlative and its problems - This is basically what East Coker is -The "Logic" of Imagery (Crane: "Well, one of us is going to have to...

Topics discussed in this episode include:   -Encountering the phantom of Crane -VERSECRAFT HAS SHIRTS NOW!! BUY HERE -The lamentable pedigree of the poete maudit -Life Savers!  -Why isn't there a movie yet about Harry Crosby?   -Nothing says Guggenheim fellowship like some tropical adultery -Neo-Romantics revisited  -The "Logic of Metaphor" and Logonautics -Poets as caretakers of la...

The missing word at 23:18 is "ironically" Topics discussed in this episode include:   -My thanks to Heights Arts for the feature!  -Hopkins and Bridges: name a more iconic duo. -Sprung Rhythm vs. Syllabics -Bridges' whacky work of logometry, Milton's Prosody -18th century in the streets, 19th century in the sheets -Iambic tetrameter couplets and the Hallmark effect -No more unq...

Topics discussed in this episode include: -Fallout from last week -The poetry-prose spectrum, and those pesky in-betweeners -Amphibrachs for days -Parallelism, and how to sound "biblical" -The universal accessibility of beauty -Rain on a sunny day is called WHAT? -The feminization of landscape -Hopefully the only time I'll mention Kanye on this show. -Hopkins cameo! -Totally tubular...

Apologies for the sirens around the thirteen minute mark. I should've stopped up my mic with wax!  Topics discussed in this episode include: -Welcome back everyone!! -A litany of my recent international escapades -Spoiler: Poetry is Versecraft (cue flame war) -Problem 1: Non-metrical gatekeeping -Problem 2: The mystical word-sorcerors want their poetry back  -Descriptive vs. Prescriptive defi...

Topics discussed in this episode include: -Versecraft will be on hiatus in June. See you again in July!  -The wonderful educational resources available to Classical musicians -The not-so-wonderful educational resources available to poets -Why MFA programs don't cut it -If creative writing "can't be taught" then poetic education becomes a joke -No standards = total subjectivity...

Topics discussed in this episode include: -Matthew's episode A Winter's Tale Pt. 2   -Alice's episode Grilling Elijah Blumov   -Why Metal is NOT Rock  -" Black Sabbath " by Black Sabbath -" Mars, The Bringer of War " by Gustav Holst -Neoclassical Metal and Symphonic Metal -Portrait of the Artist As A Young Dork -" Stand Up And Fight " by Turisas -"...

Tech woes: Audio cuts out briefly at 11:56. Sorry!  Topics discussed in this episode include:  -Please send all your John Forbes and Jane Kenyon hate mail to Alice at poetrysayspod@gmail.com  -My upcoming Poetry Says episode on Gwen Harwood and my role as the prosodic gadfly/mustache-twirling villain of contemporary poetry.  -Read my poem "The Virtue of Corinthian Columns" here . -Read m...

Tech woes: There's some static at 10:36 where I say "end rhyme." Sorry! Topics discussed in this episode include: -Wonderful exchanges with David, Robert , Quartez , Jack , Cameron , and Kevin . -The Iowa Writer's Workshop -Philip Levine's The Bread of Time -Rhythmic modulations (a spondee it ain't!) -This is the literary device. This is the moment. This is anaphora....

Mea culpa: Line 9 also differs from lines 2 and 13 by containing a first foot trochaic substitution.  Topics discussed in this episode include: -Listen to my new episode with Matthew here !  -Check out Ethan McGuire's work here and here . -Check out Brian Brodeur's work here . -The Black Arts Movement -Brooks vs. Hayden -ANOTHER hybrid sonnet?? (No!) -Rhythmic motifs -William Cowper&apos...