Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– The poem vaccine

– Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America's Poets Respond to the Pandemic 

– Sortes Vergilianae

– Poems are spells/Poetry is not magic

– Margarita Engle's essay "The Care and Feeding of Poetry"

– Snail sonnets are fine

– Natural child poetry geniuses

– Insulting tanka masters

– Katherine Dunn's short story "The Resident Poet"

– Kristen Roupenian's short story "Cat Person"

– Millenial jerks vs. Boomer jerks

– Naked poets in a thunderstorm

– Bad sex with bad poets

– The poetry lifestyle

– Randall Jarrell

– Plato's dialogue "Ion"

– Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren's textbook Understanding Poetry 

– Walt Whitman's poem "O Captain! My Captain!"

– "What is the author trying to say?" is a stupid question

– Mainstream poetry is free verse poetry

– Archibald MacLeish's poem "Ars Poetica"

– Gjertrud Schnackenberg's poem "Halloween"

– Philip Larkin's poem "An April Sunday"

– Front yard cemeteries

– A few real gods

– End rhymes aren't intrinsically evil

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Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith