SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– Poetry Magazine, October 2024 (all of the poems discussed appear herein)

– Allegory by Morri Creech

– The 400-Pound CEO by George Saunders

– My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

– The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

– Trust by Hernan Diaz

– Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– Cameron’s opening reading for the Critical Path Symposium (w/ Elijah, too!) October 24 at 11:00 a.m. US Eastern

Welcome Session (Thu 10/24)                    https://brandeis.zoom.us/j/99723229304?pwd=8PxJRe3eaLx9SV3BzZOTyFUbhw99qN.1

Symposium Sessions (Thu/Fri/Sat)            https://brandeis.zoom.us/j/93979607180?pwd=MfaFbLZWNLZJAxcOY3cm6eTsJESVqL.1

Readings (Thu/Fri/Sat)                                   https://brandeis.zoom.us/j/92469126577?pwd=ZMYw1sFP889LzAgkkzlRrSD1hA1gqz.1

– That Peculiar Affirmative by Jonathan Farmer

– The Battle for Attention by Nathan Heller

– Jonathan’s review of Promises of Gold by Jose Olivarez

– The Lottery in Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges

– American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes

– Robert Wilson

– The Way of the Gun (2000)

– Football Club Bruno’s Magpies

– Ned Kelly

– Oulipo

– Italo Calvino

– Portlandia

– Alan Shapiro

– The episode of Poetry Says in which Alice and I did indeed end up talking about Gwen Harwood’s Krote poems, among other things

– The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

– Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning

– Wendy Cope’s Strugnell poems

– Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis by Wendy Cope

– Barry (2018)

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– Fugitive/Refuge by Philip Metres

– The ALSCW Conference, where I’ll be reading with Mary Jo Salter and Christopher Childers

– The Will to Believe by William James

– 90 North by Randall Jarrell

– Done on This Side by Joshua Mehigan

– My poem Creed for Atheists

– Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens

– The Cleveland reading

– White Noise by Emma Cline

– My sight, which was my power, now blurs by Arseny Tarkovsky, trans. Philip Metres

– Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction by Wallace Stevens

– A High-Toned Old Christian Woman by Wallace Stevens

– The Auroras of Autumn by Wallace Stevens

– Jesus and the woman taken in adultery

– Padraig O Tuama

– St. John Chrysostrom

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– The ALSCW Conference

– The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot

– The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

– My ill-advised poem Overheard at a Reading, from the new issue of 32 Poems

– Translation by Roy Fuller

– A Colleague Confesses by Carl Dennis

– Poetry Says Ep 283. Tool time

– Ep 163. How Racist Is Creative Writing?, ft. Alexis Sears & Joanna Pearson

– Victoria’s essay referencing SLRKTS

– Ep 161. Handbook for the Recently Deceased Poet

– Ep 111. Obvious Boobies, ft. Ashley Anna McHugh, Pt. 1

– Secret Show Ep 110. Water Power!

– The Simpson Season 6, Ep 18: A Star Is Burns

– The Shining (1980)

– When Defending Your Writing Becomes Defending Yourself by Matthew Salesses

– Self-Portrait of the Artist as an Ungrateful Black Writer by Saeed Jones

– Ethan’s excellent graphs of the last 10 winners of 10 big poetry prizes

– Send your literary conference blind items to SLEERICKETS [at] GMAIL [dot] COM !

– Secret Show Ep 94. Who’s Winning the Poetry Prizes?

– The Most Precious Substance on Earth by Shashi Bhat

– MFA vs. POC by Junot Diaz

– VIDA: Women in Literary Arts

– SLEERICKETS Ep 5: Ars Foetica

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– Out of Order by Alexis Sears

– Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson

– When Defending Your Writing Becomes Defending Yourself by Matthew Salesses

– Self-Portrait of the Artist as an Ungrateful Black Writer by Saeed Jones

– Ethan’s excellent graphs of the last 10 winners of 10 big poetry prizes

– Send your literary conference blind items to SLEERICKETS [at] GMAIL [dot] COM !

– Secret Show Ep 94. Who’s Winning the Poetry Prizes?

– The Most Precious Substance on Earth by Shashi Bhat

– MFA vs. POC by Junot Diaz

– Stephanie Macias

– The Humpty Dance by Digital Underground

– Wyatt Prunty

– Caki Wilkinson

– Jonathan Heinen

– Tim Robinson

– There There by Tommy Orange

– Questlove

– VIDA: Women in Literary Arts

– SLEERICKETS Ep 5: Ars Foetica

– Jerry Saltz

– Curvy Wife Guy

– Widespread Bias Found in Home Appraisals by Debra Kamin

– Sherman Alexie’s introduction to the 2015 Best American Poetry

– The Unquiet Grave

– Daniel Handler

– Jacqueline Woodson

– Citizen by Claudia Rankine

– Pretendians

– Heartbreak Ghazal by Alexis Sears

– MFA Draft

– Do ghazals work in English? by Victoria Moul

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– When the Earth Flies into the Sun by Derek Mong

– At Length magazine

– 32 Poems No 43. Summer 2024

– There by Christopher Childers

– I Too Had a Childhood by Eleanor Stanford

– One of two poems of mine in the new 32 Poems

– The part in Tree of Life where (among other things) Jessica Chastain flies

– Marjorie Perloff’s review of The Birthday Letters

– The Two Ariels: The (Re)making of the Sylvia Plath Canon by Marjorie Perloff

– Ariel by Sylvia Plath

– Ariel: The Restored Edition

– Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

– Sylvia (2003)

– Pike by Ted Hughes

– Sharon Olds

– Anne Sexton

– Deborah Landau

– Metaphors by Sylvia Plath

– Adrienne Rich

– Helen Vendler

– Daddy by Sylvia Plath

– Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

– Nick and the Candlestick by Sylvia Plath

– A Secret by Sylvia Plath

– You’re by Sylvia Plath

– William Heyen

– Swoop by Hailey Leithauser

– Transformations by Anne Sexton

– Kevin Young

– Life Studies by Robert Lowell

– Memories of West Street and Lepke by Robert Lowell

– 13 Reasons Why (2017)

– Wintering by Sylvia Plath

– A rough approximation of a store in my town

– Purdah by Sylvia Plath

– Sheep in Fog by Sylvia Plath

– Honey’s Dead by The Jesus and Mary Chain

– Shaken Baby Syndrome

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith

NB3: Check out former guest Victoria Moul’s criticism of this episode here!

NB2: Speaking of Whoreywood, check out Matt Wall’s bananas unfinished memoir of making movies in Hollywood.

NB1: It turns out there is in fact some record of Heraclitus the poet, outside of Callimachus’ poem, but not much.

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– Material Witness: Remembering an Abiding Debt to Timothy Murphy by Maryann Corbett

– Wildfire Season by Maryann Corbett

– Timothy Murphy

– Maryann Corbett

– Alan Sullivan

– Eratosphere

– Aaron Poochigian

– Alex Pepple

– Richard Wilbur

– Quincy Lehr

– Lin-Manuel Miranda

– Champagne Sharks

– The West Wing

– Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney

– Breakfast at Brennan’s by Timothy Murphy

– Prison Chaplain by Timothy Murphy

– The Failure by Timothy Murphy

– The Dead Poet by Timothy Murphy

– The Drowned Immortal by Timothy Murphy

– Only Poems

– Paging Dr. Platzmouth

– The Stars Shine Without Me by Matt Cardin

– Chris Childers

– The Dowser’s Ear by Wilmer Mills (the poem, I think, that Stallings read in memory of Mills at the 2012 Sewanee Writers’ Conference)

– Heraclitus by William Johnson Cory

– Rachel Wetzsteon

– Hart Crane

– Jay Wright

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– Poetry Says Ep 270. Jonathan Farmer: I don’t think I love poetry

– Departing Afghanistan by William H. McRaven

– How-to by Anders Carlson-Wee

– Dogs of War by Mark Leidner

– My poem Stay-at-Home (It’s short!)

– Victoria Moul’s piece on Amanda Gorman’s poem

– Steve Knepper’s New Verse Review

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– Poetry Says Ep 256. Antarctica

– Ars Poetica by Horace

– The inaugural issue of New Verse Review (ft. work by Zara, Victoria, Michael, Marly, Katie, JMW (da-da-dummmm), Ethan, Elijah, Amit, and Maryann Corbett, among many others!)

– The Iliad by Homer

– The Aeneid by Virgil

– The Metamorphoses by Ovid

– Their Lonely Betters by W. H. Auden

– Horace iii.25 (the one Elijah says is atypical)

– Horace i.11

– Burton Raffel

– Christopher Smart

– David Ferry

– The Greeks and the Irrational by E. R. Dodd

– The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche

– Ion by Plato

– The Bacchae by Euripides

– The Oresteia by Aeschylus

– Charles Baudelaire

– T. S. Eliot

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith

SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems.

My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or here

For more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chat

Leave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it’s easier). Thanks!

Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!

SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!

Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:

– Wolf Trees by Katie Hartsock

– The Old and the New by Katie Hartsock

– Tradition and the Individual Talent by T. S. Eliot

– Kafka and His Precursors by Jorge Luis Borges

– An Organ of Extreme Perfection & Another Achilles (what has two thumbs and likes…)

– The Tradition by Jericho Brown

– Duplex by Jericho Brown

– Invention (essay on the duplex form) by Jericho Brown

– Ep 118: Obvious Boobies, ft. Ashley Anna McHugh

– Paradelle for Susan by Billy Collins

– Proofs and Theories by Louise Gluck

– Motherhood by Cecily Park

– The Circe / Mud Poems by Margaret Atwood

– The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

– Punishment by Seamus Heaney

– Eurydice by Caroline Duffy

– The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

– Agamemnon by Aeschylus

– The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus

– Hamlet by William Shakespeare

– The Iliad by Homer

– The Aeneid by Virgil

– The Metamorphoses by Ovid

– The Trojan Women by Euripides

– The Trojan Women by Anne Carson and Rosanna Bruno

– Greeking Out

– Horace & Friends by Victoria Moul

– Alcestis by Euripides

– Richard Feynman

Frequently mentioned names:

– Joshua Mehigan

– Shane McCrae

– A. E. Stallings

– Ryan Wilson

– Morri Creech

– Austin Allen

– Jonathan Farmer

– Zara Raab

– Amit Majmudar

– Ethan McGuire

– Coleman Glenn

– Alexis Sears

– JP Gritton

– Alex Pepple

– Ernie Hilbert

– Joanna Pearson

Other Ratbag Poetry Pods:

Poetry Says by Alice Allan

I Hate Matt Wall by Matt Wall

Versecraft by Elijah Blumov

Ratbag Poetics By David Jalal Motamed

Alice: Poetry Says

Brian: @BPlatzer

Cameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] com

Matthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] com

Music by ETRNL

Art by Daniel Alexander Smith