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This episode I'm joined once again by writer and occultist John Michael Greer, to discuss collapse, history, consciousness, cyclicity, and the work of Spengler and Toynbee.

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Text of poem here

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Romanticism, Modernism, and The Lyric

-Defining ourselves against the vices of our age

-Historical problems with Lyric

-Modernism as pharmakon

-T.S. Eliot's essay, Andrew Marvell

-T.S. Eliot's essay, The Metaphysical Poets

-Marvell's Horatian Ode

-Marvell's Country House poem, Upon Appleton House

-Marvell's "Collige, Virgo, Rosas" or "Carpe Diem" poem, To His Coy Mistress

-Paradise Lost 

-An anatomy of Marvell's style

-La Corona by John Donne (my episode on Donne here)

-A Wreath by George Herbert (my episode on Herbert here)

-Stichic vs. Strophic

-On Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost by Marvell

-The selfish heart of the artist

-The Faerie Queene 

-Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

-The terrifying prodigality of God

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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 (/ /)

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Go on. We dare you to reach across the gulf to Planet Poetry. This time you'll find Martyn Crucefix, reading poems from his Salt collection Between A Drowning Man. This ambitious, timely work depicts  the isolation and polarisation brought about by Brexit, Populism, social media and more.  A deep and subtle work that reflects these troubled times, and yearns towards empathy.  

Then let's delight in a poem from Clare Best’s new book Beyond The Gate   and gaze into the mutable future: reporting back from a first encounter with Changing by Richard Berengarten, a magnum opus inspired by a lifetime of association with the I Ching  --  the ancient Chinese text used for divination.

But there's one thing you can be 100% sure of: the usual banter from your pals Robin and Peter as they grasp another prickly poetic nettle.    

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Described by the Washington Post as "one of our greatest living novelists", Richard Flanagan has been writing for more than three decades. His 2013 novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North won the Booker Prize and his essays have been published across Australia and internationally. This week Michael heads to Tasmania to speak with Richard at his home in Hobart about his latest and most personal novel, Question 7.
Reading list:
Gould’s Book of Fish, Richard Flanagan, 2001The Narrow Road to the North, Richard Flanagan, 2013The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, Richard Flanagan, 2020Question 7, Richard Flanagan, 2023
The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells, 1898The World Set Free, H.G. Wells, 1914Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov, 1951
You can find these books and all the others we mentioned at your favourite independent book store. Or if you want to listen to them as audiobooks, you can head to the Read This reading room on Apple Books.
Socials: Stay in touch with Read This on Instagram and TwitterGuest: Richard Flanagan

From the 2023 shortlist, read by Emmet Farrell, in the words of the judges “a beautiful, exhilarating, and deeply touching story about an easily-led, bird-loving young fellow’s trip to the dark side”

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On Frankfurt's essay "The Importance of What We Care About" (1982), which distinguishes the question of what to value from ethical questions and explores the extent to which deciding what to care about is a free act.

Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and a supporter-exclusive Nightcap discussion getting more into bullshit, hypocrisy, and more.

Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth discuss the celebrated 1986 essay "On Bullshit."

Does bullshit necessarily involve lying? Frankfurt defines it as instead indifferent to truth, though still deceptive about what kind of speech act the audience is supposed to think that it is.

Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion.

Last fall, George Saunders published Liberation Day, his first short-story collection in nine years. This week, we return to our conversation with the beloved author.

At the top, we discuss his process creating the book (3:40), the influence of Chekhov and Gogol (4:56), and a timely passage on democracy from “Love Letter” (8:35). Then, we unpack how he builds stories (13:30), a guiding philosophy from our first talk (14:58), and an excerpt from the titular story, “Liberation Day” (21:30).

On the back-half, we talk about the power of revision through “Elliott Spencer” (27:40), the seeds of the book’s moving final story, “My House” (36:34), the ‘failures in compassion’ it reveals (40:50), Saunders’ enduring relationship with his wife (45:08), and how he hopes to continue surprising himself as a writer, at 63 (48:40).

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Novelist Zadie Smith is one of the most acclaimed and beloved writers of her generation. Editor David Remnick has called her “a blessing not merely to The New Yorker but to language itself.” Author George Saunders has praised Smith’s work for its “heart and moral ambition.” I, too, think she’s quite good.

And so today we’re joined by Smith to discuss her prescient historical novel The Fraud (8:20), her instinctive writing process (14:06), and the role of projection in her work (20:30). Then, Zadie reflects on her upbringing in North West London (24:12), the art that influenced her growing up (27:15), and the media circus that followed the publication of her debut novel, White Teeth (33:45).

On the back-half, we discuss her desire to frequently reinvent herself as an artist as a writer (41:55), why she prioritized pleasure after her book On Beauty (45:17), the nuanced politics of her work (49:04), her evolving relationship to humanism (48:15), a striking passage from Intimations (54:00), and what she sees in this next generation of novelists (1:04:45).

This conversation was recorded at Spotify Studios.

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