SLEERICKETS

By Matthew Buckley SmithArts Books

SLEERICKETS episodes

December 23, 2021 Ep 36: Hell Yeah, ft. JP Gritton
Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:
– JP Gritton’s novel Wyoming
– Another good story by JP
– My earlier interview with JP (in transcript form)
– FBoy Island
– Alice McDermott’s book What About the Baby?
– LitHub’s interview with Mat Johnson, All Fiction Is Crime Fiction
– Edgar Allan Poe’s story Murders in the Rue Morgue
– David Yezzi’s essay These are the poems, folks
– Oedipus the King
– Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem Sunday Afternoons
– Walter Mosley’s novel Devil in a Blue Dress
– Chinatown
– Billy Collins’ poem Hangover
– The story of Ugolino in the Inferno
– Jorie Graham’s book Sea Change
– Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy
Music by ETRNL
Art by Daniel Alexander Smith
1 hr 28 min
December 15, 2021 Ep 35: Bad Things
Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:
– My recent appearance on Poetry Says
– My class at the Redbud Writing Project
– Good writer Jonathan Farmer
– The 2021 Chess World Championship
– Yeats’ poem Adam’s Curse
– The Touch-Move Rule
– Good writer Shane McCrae
– Frederick Seidel’s poem Victory Parade
– Jay Wright
– Austin Allen’s essay Hard Line Politics: On the Myth of Free Verse
– Lyn Hejinian, Jorie Graham, Ishion Hutchinson, Martin Corless-Smith
– Anthony Hecht’s poem A Letter
– Oh, no, more Bad Art Friend
– The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man
– Nietzsche’s whole God Is Dead thing
– Karl Jasper’s book Man in the Modern Age
– Philosopher and Nazi Martin Heidegger
– Auden’s poem In Memory of W. B. Yeats
– The Poetic Edda
Music by ETRNL
Art by Daniel Alexander Smith
1 hr 16 min
December 09, 2021 BONUS: @BPlatzer Literary Diss Track
Send all your angry feedback to @BPlatzer on Twitter!
Music by ETRNL
Art by Daniel Alexander Smith
12 min
December 08, 2021 Ep 34: Hell Is Other Writers, ft. Brian Platzer
Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:
– Brian’s dumb books
– The World Chess Championship
– Former World Chess Champion Mikhail Tal
– W. Somerset Maugham’s memoir The Summing Up
– Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton
– The Hero’s Journey
– Good writer Reg McKnight
– Peter Schjeldahl’s article The Art of Dying
– Good writer Ryan Wilson
– Tom Disch’s story The Joycelin Shrager Story (paywalled here at the Paris Review)
– Cool '70s dudes Updike, Stone, Pynchon, and Vonnegut
– Martin Amis’ story Career Move
– Good writer Andrew Palmer
– The Pearl of Great Price
– O. Henry’s short story The Gift of the Magi
– Beowulf
– Robert Kolker’s article Who Is the Bad Art Friend?
– Porochista Khakpour
Please rate, review, and subscribe! Or just recommend the show to a friend!
Send questions, comments, and suggestions to [email protected].

Music by ETRNL
Art by Daniel Alexander Smith
1 hr 33 min
December 01, 2021 Ep 33: Pudding Day
NB: In case you do live in North Carolina and are for some reason interested in taking a writing class with me (or someone else), the company for which I’m going to be teaching is called Redbud Writing Project.
Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:
– Robert Kolker’s article Who Is the Bad Art Friend?
– Teaching creative writing
– The 2021 Chess World Championship
– Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue
– SLEERICKETS is kind of on Twitter, but mostly on Chess.com
– A rather tart listener email about Red Scare and Cum Town
– The William Logan dilemma
– The health of poetry
– Mark Edmundson’s essay Poetry Slam
– Amiri Baraka’s poem Somebody Blew Up America
– Michael Dickman’s poem Scholls Ferry Rd.
– The downfall of Don Share
– Anders Carlson Wee’s poem How-To
– Kirk Nesset’s poem One Place Is as Good as the Next
– Sherman Alexie’s selection of Yi-Fen Chou’s/Michael Derrick Hudson’s poem The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve for the 2015 edition of The Best American Poetry
– Roger Dodger
– Catullus ii & iii
– Kevin Young’s poem Interlude
Please rate, review, and subscribe! Or just recommend the show to a friend!
Send questions, comments, and suggestions to [email protected].

Music by ETRNL
Art by Daniel Alexander Smith
1 hr 19 min
November 24, 2021 Ep 32: Poets Without Poems, ft. Sam Riviere
NB: For some reason, I say “satired” instead of “satirized.” In my defense, it had been a long week, and I was feeling pretty satired.
Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:
– Sam Riviere’s book Dead Souls
– Sam’s essay In Defense of Poetic Plagiarism
– Sam’s book Kim Kardashian’s Marriage
– Sam’s poem D.F.W.
– Gogol’s book Dead Souls
– Thomas Bernhard
– Kent Johnson
– Andrew W. K.
– Kanye West
– Plato’s Ion
– Louise Gluck’s (Learned my lesson, no umlaut this time!) book Proofs & Theories
– The Cambridge School
– The downfall of Don Share
– Flarf
– Noor Hindi’s poem Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying
– Paul Elie’s article How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?
– Eliot’s essay Tradition and the Individual Talent
– Nicholson Baker’s book The Anthologist (The audiobook is read by Baker himself and is a real treat.)
– The Movement
Please rate, review, and subscribe! Or just recommend the show to a friend!
Send questions, comments, and suggestions to [email protected].

Music by ETRNL
Art by Daniel Alexander Smith
1 hr 36 min
November 17, 2021 Ep 31: Poetry+, ft. Jonathan Farmer
NB: Yes, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” is only kind of Mozart. Whatever. Also, yes, I over-hyped the length of this episode, since I ended up doing another edit after recording the intro and outro and got it down to a more reasonable length. Also whatever.
Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:
– Poet, critic, and editor Jonathan Farmer
– Jonathan’s essay “The Way We Talk About Poetry Is the Problem”
– Jonathan’s essay “When I Mean I”
– Alan Shapiro’s book “That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration”
– Brian Platzer
– Alice Allan
– The Glomar Denial
– William Logan
– Pascal’s Wager
– The new Dune
– Prisoners
– Winter Light
– Albert Camus’ book “The Myth of Sisyphus”
– Matthew Zapruder’s book “Why Poetry”
– Craig Morgan Teicher’s book “We Begin in Gladness”
– Stephanie Burt’s book “Don’t Read Poetry”
– Descriptivism vs. Prescriptivism
– George Herbert’s poem “Jordan I”
– Plato’s “Republic”
– Christopher Marlowe’s play “Doctor Faustus”
– Thomas Wyatt’s poem “Whoso List to Hunt”
– Paul Giamatti’s pinot noir monologue in “Sideways”
– C. S. Lewis’ book “Mere Christianity”
– Dave Smith
– Stephen Kampa
– Philip K. Dick’s theory of kipple
– Sarah Vap
– Stephen King’s book “The Gunslinger”
– Wayne Miller’s essay “When Talking About Poetry Online Goes Very Wrong”
– Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade”
– Randall Jarrell’s poem “90 North”
– D. W. Winnicott
– Maggie Nelson’s book “The Argonauts”
Please rate, review, and subscribe! Or just recommend the show to a friend!
Send questions, comments, and suggestions to [email protected].

Music by ETRNL
Art by Daniel Alexander Smith
1 hr 28 min
November 10, 2021 Ep 30: Letters to a Middle-Aged Poet, ft. Alice Allan
Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:
– The four types of poetry podcasts
– A recent episode of Alice Allan’s podcast Poetry Says
– Alice’s book The Empty Show
– Red Scare and The Garret
– George Orwell’s essay “Poetry and the Microphone”
– Mark Strand
– Bonny Cassidy
– Finding your voice as a poet
– Shane McCrae’s essay “My War with John Ashbery”
– David Shurman Wallace’s essay “Dead Poet Anxiety”
– Extremely online poets
– Alan Shapiro
– Shane McCrae’s poem “Jim Limber on Continuity in Heaven”
– Harold Bloom’s book The Anxiety of Influence
– Instagram poet Kate Baer
– Famous nonexistent Australian poet Ern Malley
– Nobody wants to write reviews
– Ben Marcus’ book Notable American Women
– Kaveh Akbar’s bad blurb for the inaccurately titled Best Poems of Jane Kenyon
– John Ashbery’s poem “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”
– John Ashbery’s poem “The Instruction Manual”
– John Ashbery’s poem “Some Trees”
Please rate, review, and subscribe! Or just recommend the show to a friend!
Send questions, comments, and suggestions to [email protected].

Music by ETRNL
Art by Daniel Alexander Smith
1 hr 35 min
November 03, 2021 Ep 29: The Fifth Wall, ft. Joanna Pearson
Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:
– Joanna Pearson’s new book Now You Know It All
– Ingmar Bergman’s original 1973 movie/series Scenes from a Marriage
– Hagai Levi’s new HBO adaptation of Scenes from a Marriage
– Kristin Wiig’s sad, hilarious turn in Welcome to Me
– The fourth wall
– Brecht!
– Lars Von Trier’s movie Dogville
– The marriages in Friday Night Lights, The Odyssey, and Fargo
– Alice Munro
– The short stories of Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, Shirley Jackson, Karen Russell, and Lauren Groff
– Joanna’s Uncanny Lit picks for Electric Lit (link coming soon)
– The Turn of the Screw
– Tom Sawyer’s funeral
– R.I.P. Poetry
Please rate, review, and subscribe! Or just recommend the show to a friend!
Send questions, comments, and suggestions to [email protected].

Music by ETRNL
Art by Daniel Alexander Smith
1 hr 11 min
October 28, 2021 Ep 28: Unobjectionable Title Here
NB: The RSS feed for this episode got all fucked up, possibly because of something in the original show notes. To see them in full, go to the website. Sorry for the inconvenience. This has been a huge headache.
1 hr 6 min