Lyric Life

Lyric Life

By Mark ScarbroughSociety & CultureEducationArtsBooksCourses
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Lyric Life episodes

  • Wallace Stevens, "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"
    Here's an early poem by Wallace Stevens, part of his HARMONIUM collection, "Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock." It's an imagistic poem about both the failure of the imagination and its success--and about why poetry matters (particularly after that last episode about Marianne Moore's "Poetry"). Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I dance with and around this short but complex poem by one of the United States' best poets.
    16 min
  • Marianne Moore, "Poetry"
    What more could anyone say about Moore's poetry? Especially about this poem, the bane of Literature 101--and a poem that's too often presented as far simpler than it is. Even the famous "definition" of poetry--"imaginary gardens with real toads in them"--isn't as obvious as it first seems. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I work my way through this seductive, elliptical poem by one of the United States' best modernist poets.
    27 min
  • William Blake, "The Lamb"
    Literature: so innocuous, right? Except it's not. On this episode of Lyric Life, I take on Blake's "The Lamb," a companion piece to his poem "The Tyger"--and a companion episode to the one on this podcast about that other poem. There, I told you a conversion narrative. Here, in a poem about innocence, I tell you some of the rest of my story: a descent into hell. Literature's not innocuous. It's dangerous. Every word of it.
    16 min
  • Stephen Dunn, "The Guardian Angel"
    Stephen Dunn's poem about a guardian angel who walks off the job--and then comes back--is a lyric poem for this moment, for a time when chaos rules, when the bad seems to overwhelm the good, when the question of why you do right when it doesn't seem to matter is a question that none of us can avoid. Join me, Mark Scarbrough, in this episode of Lyric Life for a lyric poem that's so true, it hurts--and it all the right ways.
    20 min
  • Molly Fisk, "Dark Rum & Tonic"
    Molly Fisk's gritty, honest poem, "Dark Rum & Tonic," is about what you get when you finally grow up, when you get older, when you've been through the wreck and come out the other side. You get invisibility. And much more. You get the chance to talk to yourself. To see yourself. And to write yourself. Join me for a gorgeously crafted poem about the losses we face--and the human ways we survive.
    19 min
  • Sylvia Plath, "Dream with Clam-Diggers"
    What happens when the picture you have doesn't match your beautiful frame? Or better yet, how can you come home, changed, holding the image of home in your head, only to find that you're nothing but a voyeur in the very place you're supposed to belong? Or not even a voyeur--someone in danger. Plath is at the top of her game in this gorgeous lyric poem about the dangers of innocence, the journey we all face, and the treachery of a place we used to call home.
    24 min
  • Denise Levertov, "Oblique Prayer"

    Denise Levertov's evocative, small, oblique prayer is an amazing piece of craft: an honest statement of the gray that is adulthood but also a wily little game in which she works us readers around and around and finally into the gray, almost without our knowing it. She gets us to the place of "I don't know" before we even know it and so accomplishes exactly what lyric poetry should: she surprises us with truth in language AND truth in form.

    17 min
  • William Blake, "The Tyger"
    Here's one of the most anthologized poems out there, almost a cliché by this point. Yet William Blake's "The Tyger" is my conversion story. I can locate the moment I ditched one life and started another right in these words. Because that's what words can do. Should do. Will do.
    17 min
  • Emily Dickinson, Poem #374 ("It will be Summer -- eventually")

    Poem #374 is in some ways a companion poem to the last poem on this podcast, #373, "This world is not Conclusion." They appear on facing pages of one of her hand-written booklets--but this poem is fuller, more visualized, a crazy world of fashion and flowers, the essence of summer. Which inevitably ends. And ends right where it should: in the poet's lap.

    19 min
  • Emily Dickinson, Poem #373 ("This World is not conclusion")
    Dickinson's magnificent poem "This World is not conclusion" stands as a statement of doubt in a world of faith, or of faith in a world of doubt, or of a different kind of faith in a world where everyone's so very certain. The poem is mostly a testament to her skill as a skilled writer of nuance, irony, and voice.
    19 min

About Lyric Life

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Join me, Mark Scarbrough, on this bookmarked journey through some of the best lyric poetry in English . I've got a passion for small, evocative poems. I'd like to share that with out--as well as those…