Close Readings

Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the lives and works of Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, close friends and leading lights of the New York School, who sought to create an anti-academic, hedonistic poetry, freeing themselves from the puritan American tradition.

To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

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In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings

Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

Further reading on O'Hara and Ashbery in the LRB:

C.K. Stead: https://lrb.me/steadashberypod

John Bayley: https://lrb.me/bayleyashberypod

Stephanie Burt: https://lrb.me/burtashberypod

John Kerrigan: https://lrb.me/kerriganashberypod

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Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at the life and work of Charlotte Mew, who brought the Victorian art of dramatic monologue into the 20th century, and whose difficult experiences are often refracted through her damaged and marginalised characters.

To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading on Mew in the LRB:

Matthew Bevis: https://lrb.me/bevismewpod

Penelope Fitzgerald: https://lrb.me/fitzgeraldmewpod

Susannah Clapp: https://lrb.me/clappmewpod

Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

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Seamus Perry and Mark Ford continue their series with a look at the life and work of W.B. Yeats, from his early quest for a mythological Irish culture, to his shift towards the Modernist experiment, and preoccupation with the ‘murderousness of the world’.

To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings

Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

Read more in the LRB:

Seamus Deane: https://lrb.me/deaneyeatspod

Michael Wood: https://lrb.me/woodyeatspod

Colm Tóibín: https://lrb.me/toibinyeatspod

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Seamus Perry, Mark Ford and Joanne O’Leary discuss the life and work of Emily Dickinson—her dashes, death instinct and obliquity.

To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings

Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

This episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in June 2021.

Further reading on Dickinson in the LRB:

Joanne O'Leary: https://lrb.me/olearydickinsonpod

Mark Ford: https://lrb.me/forddickinsonpod

Danny Karlin: https://lrb.me/karlindickinsonpod

Tom Paulin: https://lrb.me/paulindickinsonpod

Susan Eilenberg: https://lrb.me/eilenbergdickinsonpod

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Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the life and work of the Saint Lucian Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, the island poet and playwright surrounded by an oceanic consciousness, whose writing recognises at once the terrible gulfs between peoples and our common predicament.

To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings

Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

This episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in March 2021.

Further reading on and by Walcott in the LRB:

'Militia' by Derek Walcott: https://lrb.me/walcottmilitiapod

Ian Sansom: https://lrb.me/sansomwalcottpod

Nicholas Everett: https://lrb.me/everettwalcottpod

Stephen Brook: https://lrb.me/brookwalcottpod

Blake Morrison: https://lrb.me/morrisonwalcottpod

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Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the life and work of Louis MacNeice, the Irish poet of psychic divisions and authoritative fretfulness, in the fourth episode of series two of Modern-ish Poets.

To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings

Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

This episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in November 2020.

Further reading on MacNiece in the LRB:

Ian Hamilton: https://lrb.me/hamiltonmacneicepod

John Kerrigan: https://lrb.me/kerriganmacneicepod

Marilyn Butler: https://lrb.me/butlermacneicepod

Nick Laird: https://lrb.me/lairdmacneicepod

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In the third episode of their second series of Modern-ish Poets, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford turn to the life and work of Adrienne Rich, in whose poems the personal becomes not only political, but epic.

To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings

Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

This episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in September 2020.

Further reading on Rich in the LRB:

Jacqueline Rose

https://lrb.me/roserichpod

Stephanie Burt

https://lrb.me/burtrichpod

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Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at the life and work of Robert Frost, the great American poet of fences and dark woods. They discuss Frost’s difficult early life as an occasional poultry farmer and teacher, his arrival in England in 1912 amid the flowering of Georgian poetry, and his emergence as the first 20th-century professional poet, whose version of the American wilderness myth, full of mischief and foreboding, took him to packed concert halls and a presidential inauguration.

To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings

Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

This episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in August 2020.

Further reading on Frost in the LRB:

Leo Marx: https://lrb.me/marxfrostpod

Helen Vendler: https://lrb.me/vendlerfrostpod

Peter Howarth: https://lrb.me/howarthfrostpod

Matthew Bevis: https://lrb.me/bevisfrostpod

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In the first episode of their second series of Modern-ish Poets, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford take on Gerard Manley Hopkins: Victorian literature’s only anti-modern proto-modernist queer-ecologist Jesuit priest.

To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and to this series ad free, and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings

Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

Further reading on Hopkins in the LRB:

Helen Vendler: https://lrb.me/vendlerhopkinspod

Patricia Beer: https://lrb.me/beerhopkinspod

John Bayley: https://lrb.me/bayleyhopkinspod

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In the fourth and final episode in their miniseries, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley look at the life and work of pilgrim, entrepreneur and visionary mystic Margery Kempe, who dictated what is thought to be the first autobiography in English.

To listen to Mary and Irina's series, Medieval Beginnings, and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading in the LRB:

Barbara Newman

Susan Brigden

Tom Shippey

This episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in November 2021.

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