Topics mentioned in this episode include:

-The antitheses of Emily Dickinson

-White = Infinity in 19th century American Lit.

-Fascicles!

-The Modernist, Feminist, and Queer claims on Emily

-Magnificent and trending writer Virginia Woolf

-A secular Memento Mori

-Ballad Stanzas and Common Meter

-The Amazing Grace phenomenon

-Why Ballad Stanzas sound so ballad-y

-Slant rhyme revisited

-Matthew's podcast Sleerickets! 

-Why Big Pun and Robert Pinsky use slant rhyme differently.

-Slant rhyme modulation!

-How to stack ambiguities like a pro (it involves big puns)

-Original sin and the birth of Death

-Did you just gender my soul???

-God as Plural: Jewish and Christian takes

-The morbidity of Keats and Dickinson, compared

-The Aghori 

-One more pun as a nightcap before eternal sleep

Text of poem:

I read my sentence steadily,
Reviewed it with my eyes,
To see that I made no mistake
In its extremest clause, --

The date, and manner of the shame;
And then the pious form
That "God have mercy" on the soul
The jury voted him.

I made my soul familiar
With her extremity,
That at the last it should not be
A novel agony,

But she and Death, acquainted,
Meet tranquilly as friends,
Salute and pass without a hint --
And there the matter ends.  

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)