NB: I hesitated to release this one because I worried that the tone (and sound quality) at times comes off as a little harsh, but I think it’s a pretty fun episode, and I figure if you’ve listened this long, then you already have some idea of how prickly I am. So, fuck it. Enjoy!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– Baudelaire's mom

– Midlife malaise

– Ben Lerner's book The Hatred of Poetry and my in retrospect maybe overly mean review of same

– Object permanence

– Adam Kirsch's essay "On 'Getting' Poetry"

– Ryan Wilson's essay "How to Think like a Poet"

– Rupi Kaur

– Acquired vs. unacquired tastes

– The hermeneutic circle

– Sex vs. masturbation

– Modernism and its discontents

– T. S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (Yes, I realize that in this episode I deride the Poetry Foundation as basically useless and am now linking to an essay they helpfully posted on their website. I may have overstated my case.)

– Jorge Luis Borges' essay "Kafka and His Precursors"

– Vers libre vs. free verse vs. doggerel

– John Ashbery

– Fenton Johnson's poem "Tired"

– David Yezzi's essay, "These Are the Poems, Folks"

– Stephen Hawking's Penthouse subscription

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Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith