The Poetry Fix

“The right of the strongest is always the greatest,” La Fontaine writes in “The Wolf and the Lamb,” a disturbing fable about the overthrow of justice by a powerful and malicious entity. Is this really all Fontaine wants to tell us, though? Join Erika Kyba to investigate the subtler insights which our poet leaves us with.

Do you seek out change, or view it as a destructive force? Edmund Spencer, in “Mutabilitie,” imagines change as tyrannizing over the lives of men to gain glory for herself. Join Erika Kyba to learn why Spencer takes this angle.

Is it dangerous to cling to the departed, when it is time for them to pass into the afterlife? The folk poet of “The Wife of Usher’s Well” seems to think so. Join Erika Kyba for the full episode and analysis.

If you've completed high school English, it's likely you've heard of the standard "invocation of the muse" invoked by epic poets such as Homer and Virgil. What would happen if a poet used this invocation to frame a poem about a wedding, rather than adventure and war? Spencer's "Epithalamion" accomplishes just that; join Erika Kyba to encounter this love ballad.

Does absence make the heart grow fonder? John Donne, our poet who believes so strongly in the united souls of lovers, asks himself what happens to this harmony when the lovers are separated. Join Erika Kyba for a reading and analysis of this epic love poem.

When you love someone, do you love them with your soul, mind, or body? Is love by one of the faculties superior to that of the others? John Donne meditates on this theme in "The Ecstasy." Join Erika Kyba for a reading and analysis of this poem.

Is it possible to have enough love to be content? Can a Christian be content with God's love, being that God is infinite, or will he always crave more of God? And what relationship does God's love for us have with our love for others? John Donne wrestles with all these questions and more in "Since She Whom I Lov'd Hath Paid Her Last Debt." Tune in for Erika Kyba's reading of this complex poem.

Can you know others without knowing yourself? This is the question which David Whyte interrogates in "Start Close In," as he examines what it means to cross over into the unknown territory of The Other. Join Erika Kyba to delve into sound advice...with a poetic twist. 

We tend to think of beauty in terms of purity and proportion, but Hopkins upends those conventional ideas in "Pied Beauty." Instead, he proposes that God "fathers-forth" his beauty in the irregular and variable. Join Erika Kyba for her reading of why Hopkins celebrates sublimity in the strange.

In today's episode of The Poetry Fix, tune in for further musings from George Herbert on the Eucharist, Christ's sacrifice, and man's orientation towards his Creator. Join Erika Kyba as she analyzes the themes of Herbert's "The Banquet" and reads it aloud.

“Do you want to know?” That’s the question that undergirds George Herbert’s “The Agony.” Join Erika Kyba to encounter this poem, in which George Herbert explores the metaphysics of sin and love.

Do you seek beauty, or do you fear it? In "Kubla Khan," Coleridge places most of humanity on the second side of that equation; tune in to hear Erika Kyba's analysis and find out why.

Have you ever enjoyed a time in your life (or lived through a period of history) marked by prosperity, abundance, and opulence—yet felt a certain unease, especially when reminded of chaotic forces that could upset the bliss you find yourself in? Samuel Taylor Coleridge might have something to say about that. Tune in for Erika Kyba's analysis of Coleridge's psychedelic, fairy-tale-poem: Kubla Khan.

How do you imagine God in relation to yourself? Is He a distant entity, to be admired from without? Or does He seek to be with you, making His way into your inner soul? Tune in to hear George Herbert's answer to this question in "The Holy Communion," read and analyzed by Erika Kyba.

Perhaps you've encountered YouTube videos appearing on your feed to tell you to get off YouTube. In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to encounter the poetic version of this phenomenon in Wordsworth's "The Tables Turned." Wordsworth seems to exhort the student to do away with his books, seeking nature instead...but is this all that our poet has to say?

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba for another bilingual episode. She reads La Fontaine's famous "The Grasshopper and the Ant" in French and English. Tune in to discover a new twist on the moral that you might have thought you knew.

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba for a bilingual episode. She reads La Fontaine's "The Oak and the Reed" in French and English, exploring a poem-parable that discusses the fall of the mighty and the survival of the humble.

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read Emily Dickinson's "I Taste a Liquour Never Brewed." It's a poem about getting drunk on the beauty of the universe...which the poet believes has fundamental, eschatological importance.

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read Galway Kinnell's "How Many Nights," the work of a modern existentialist poet. We all remember our childhood fears of the dark, and how they dissipated with the sunrise. What are we to do, though, with a more adult, existential version of this experience?

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read Emily Dickinson's "Nobody Knows This Little Rose." It's a deceptively simple little poem, in which the poet wrestles with one of the most profound human tragedies.

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read the continuation of Comus and the Lady's first encounter. We have already seen that our heroine has a very high view of her own powers of virtue and discernment...but her naiveté is exposed in this episode, as she blindly puts her faith in the flattering Comus.

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read the continuation of Comus and the Lady's first encounter. We have already seen that our heroine has a very high view of her own powers of virtue and discernment...but her naiveté is exposed in this episode, as she blindly puts her faith in the flattering Comus.

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read the excerpt of Milton's "Comus" in which Comus and the Lady are united for the first time. Erika finds that Comus's reaction to the Lady's song parallels one of Milton's most famous scenes in Paradise Lost...

In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba in the journey through Milton’s Comus as the leading lady makes her first appearance. The lady presents herself as a courageous paragon of virtue, but the poet opens up her view of morality to some questions.

Join Erika Kyba to encounter the rising action of Milton's Comus, as the wicked spirit Comus hears the approach of a noble lady and plots to seduce her by passing himself off as a harmless shepherd. The lady enters, not finding Comus at first, but wary of the sounds of revelry that she heard from this part of the forest. Erika analyzes the spiritual drama that is afoot under the trappings of an at...