The Spouter-Inn

By Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma

Chris (a poet) and Suzanne (a professor) spent six years talking about “great books” (whatever that means), and are now talking about reading (and all the things that means).... more

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FAQs about The Spouter-Inn:

How many episodes does The Spouter-Inn have?

The podcast currently has 114 episodes available.

The Spouter-Inn episodes:

May 31, 201910. Leaves of Grass.
Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the eighty-third year of The States,
To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you.
When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,
Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;
Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)
It’s Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday today! Suzanne and Chris are celebrating by
rereading Leaves of Grass, the book of poetry
that Whitman kept writing, revising, and expanding throughout his life. With
its ecstatic rhythms, its vigorous celebration of the body and of freedom, and
its dreams of collectivity through diversity, Whitman’s poetry can be
compelling, even overwhelming. And even when the book doesn’t quite live up to
our hopes and dreams, it offers a path beyond itself.
Show Notes.
Leaves of Grass. [Project
Gutenberg.
Librivox.
Bookshop.]
The Walt Whitman Archive also contains the
complete text(s).
Some curious details about the first printing of Leaves of
Grass.
The most famous section of Christopher Smart’s “Jubilate
Agno”.
Walt Whitman reading “America”.
(Though there is some controversy about the authenticity of the
recording.)
Mark Twain wrote on “The Whitman Controversy” (about Whitman’s alleged obscenity).
When Wilde Met Whitman.
Whitman Noir.
Some of the poems we quote:
Full of Life Now
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in
Hand
To a Stranger
-America
I Sing the Body Electric (final
section; later, sections 7 and 8)
Song of Myself (sections 2 and 5)
Spontaneous Me
The Sleepers
Me Imperturbe
First O Songs for a Prelude
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field
The Wound-Dresser
When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard
Bloom’d
O Captain! My Captain!
Responses to Whitman:
Federico García Lorca: Oda a Walt
Whitman
[English
translation]
Pablo Neruda: Oda a Walt
Whitman [English
translation]
Allen Ginsberg: A Supermarket in
California
Mark Doty: Letter to Walt
Whitman
Langston Hughes: I,
Too
Paul Hindemith set a requiem with When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard
Bloom’d.
Mark Doty reads Song of Myself (and
more).
Next episode: The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
You can support The Spouter-Inn and gain a
bunch of perks through Patreon.
...more
58min
May 27, 2019 9b. Bonus: Sarah Chamberlain on Frankenstein.
Not only is it a movie that deal with death, which is a huge concept for
children, but it deals with it in a kind of fun way, but also a way that makes
it a little scary and makes it a little OK, and I think that children
[experiencing] that might help them be ready for scary things that could
happen later on.
A bonus to our episode on Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein. We are joined by Sarah
Chamberlain, one of the hosts of fellow Megaphonic podcast A Part Of Our
Scare-itage. Sarah is deeply familiar with the
world of horror movies, and Frankenstein is her favourite book—so we were
excited to talk with her about a few of the many, many, many, many film
adaptations that have been made. What gets changed, what gets added, and what
audiences are addressed in these films? Also, what kind of horror is
appropriate for children?
Show Notes.
Sarah’s podcast on Canadian horror films, A Part Our Our Scare-itage.
Richard Brinsley Peake: Presumption; or, the Fate of
Frankenstein.
Frankenstein (1910).
Frankenstein
(1931).
The Bride of
Frankenstein (1935).
Penny Dreadful
(2014–2016).
Young Frankenstein (1974).
Frankenweenie
(2012).
The Terminator (1984).
Terminator 2: Judgment
Day (1991).
That last film Sarah mentions.
You can support The Spouter-Inn and gain a bunch
of perks through Patreon.
...more
47min
May 23, 2019 9. Frankenstein.
It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my
toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the
instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the
lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the
rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out,
when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye
of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its
limbs.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a story that
seems familiar to everyone—even people who haven’t read the novel (or seen any
of the movie adaptations). But the novel fleshes out the story that everyone
is familiar with (a scientist creates a creature out of dead parts, releasing
a force of havoc and destruction upon the world) in a number of intriguing
ways. Suzanne and Chris discuss how the novel tackles creation, parenting,
corporeality, nature, and death—as well as how thoroughly it is connected to
Paradise Lost, and why it has inspired
so many adaptations.
Show Notes.
We read the original 1818 text of Frankenstein.
It‘s also available on Project
Gutenberg or as a free audiobook on
Librivox.
[Bookshop.]
The New Annotated Frankenstein.
Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All
Kinds.
The Strange and Twisted Life of
Frankenstein, which includes some information about racialized
imaginings of the creature.
The Science of Life and Death in Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein.
Next time: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. Also on
Gutenberg and
Librivox.
You can support The Spouter-Inn (and the rest
of the Megaphonic podcasts) through Patreon.
Thanks!
...more
59min
May 06, 2019 8b. Bonus: Anthony Oliveira on Paradise Lost.
I’m sort of obsessed with Adam as a character, he’s like a wonderful golden
retriever of a man, so besotted by Eve and so perplexed by his own love of
her. But he turns to Raphael and is like, “Is that what it’s like in Heaven?”
And Raphael has this moment where he blushes, and then describes the extreme
gay orgy that is the permanent Heaven experience.
A bonus to our episode on Paradise Lost! We
are joined by Anthony Oliveira, a writer,
film curator, and cultural critic who received his PhD in English from the
University of Toronto. He is also the host of The Devil’s
Party, a podcast that has been slowly and
lovingly working its way through Paradise Lost, a hundred or so lines each
week. Anthony joins us to talk about queer and trans readings of Paradise
Lost, the nitty gritty about Milton’s theology, and making Paradise Lost
accessible to readers that often have been excluded.
Show Notes.
Anthony Oliveira on Twitter (a must-follow) and
on the web.
Anthony has a beautiful new memoir on
Hazlitt.
A quick primer on monism.
William Empson: Milton’s God.
C.S. Lewis: Out of the Silent Planet.
Isaac Asimov’s Annotated Paradise Lost.
John Milton: “Methought I saw my late espoused
saint”.
Philip Pullman: The Amber Spyglass, etc.
(We all make mistakes: “arma” is the first word of Aeneid, not the
Iliad.)
...more
49min
May 03, 2019 8. Paradise Lost.
Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
[...] Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
John Milton’s Paradise Lost uses haunting, powerful poetry to retell the
biblical story of Adam and Eve’s sin and exile from the Garden of Eden. But
Chris and Suzanne still struggle with Milton’s personality and theology. They
discuss the characters, including a famously compelling depiction of Satan;
Milton’s use of other texts, including the Metamorphoses; and the text’s
troubling gender politics.
Show Notes.
John Milton’s Paradise Lost. [Project
Gutenberg,
Bookshop.]
The Tree of Knowledge, by Eva Figes, is a novel
about Milton’s daughter Deborah [NYTimes
review].
Thoughts on Milton and his
daughters.
More images of Milton and his
daughters.
Everybody wants a piece of
Milton.
Gustave Doré’s illustrations for Paradise
Lost.
William Blake’s illustrations for Paradise
Lost.
Blake’s illuminated book Milton: A
Poem.
Next episode: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (the 1818
version). Also on Project Gutenberg.
...more
58min
April 18, 2019 7. Inferno.
I am the way into the doleful city,
I am the way into eternal grief,
I am the way to a forsaken race.
Justice it was that moved my great creator;
Divine omnipotence created me,
And highest wisdom joined with primal love.
Before me nothing but eternal things
Were made, and I shall last eternally.
Abandon every hope, all you who enter.
I saw these words spelled out in somber colors
Inscribed along the ledge above a gate;
‘Master,’ I said, ‘these words I see are cruel.’
Dante’s Inferno, the first section of the Divine Comedy, is a medieval
poem in which our author is given a guided tour of Hell. He encounters famous
historical figures as well as people he knew personally, while his tour guide
(the Roman poet Vergil) explains the logic of the Hell’s organization and the
divine justice of its terrible punishments. Suzanne and Chris retrace these
steps and talk about their favourite passages in all their upsetting cruelty
and beauty.
Show Notes.
The Inferno as translated by Mark Musa
[Bookshop], Charles
Singleton, or Ciaran
Carson. Also available free online in Allen
Mandelbaum’s translation (with useful notes by Teodolinda
Barolini) at Digital Dante.
The Holkham
manuscript, one of only four fully illustrated copies of
Dante’s Divine Comedy from the fourteenth century, is available online through
the Bodleian library. It’s worth exploring its
illustrations.
Gustave Doré’s famous nineteenth-century
illustrations are also
fabulous.
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s statue of Ugolino and His
Sons.
More artworks inspired by the
Inferno.
Caroline Bergvall reading
“Via”, hosted at her
PennSound page. The poem
is in her collection Fig.
Next time: John Milton’s Paradise Lost, also
available at Project Gutenberg.
...more
1h
April 04, 2019 6. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time
a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken, and I may say in each case it
was before there was any general recognition of the quality of genius in them.
The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso
and Alfred Whitehead. I have met many important people, I have met several
great people but I have only known three first class geniuses and in each case
on sight within me something rang. In no one of the three cases have I been
mistaken. In this way my new full life began.
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (written
by her partner, Gertrude Stein) recounts the couple’s lives in early
twentieth-century Paris among painters, writers, and composers—and, during the
First World War, soldiers. Chris and Suzanne explore what the book says about
how painting is like writing, about wives, and about America—and they talk
about other pieces by Stein that they love.
Show Notes.
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. [Project
Gutenberg.
Bookshop.]
Other works by Stein: Three Lives. Tender
Buttons. The Making of
Americans. How to Write.
Gertrude Stein reads If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of
Picasso.
Alice B. Toklas in her own
words.
Picasso’s Trois
femmes
(1908), a portrait, “in a sort of red brown, of three women, square and
posturing, all of it rather frightening”.
Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude
Stein.
Sonia Delaunay’s magnificent book collaboration with poet Blaise Cendrars, La
prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de
France.
Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five
Stories, an exhibit that was at
the National Portrait Gallery several years ago with a webpage full of images
of Stein.
The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, a series of lectures
hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Next time: Dante’s Inferno (translated by Mark Musa
or Charles Singleton or Ciaran
Carson or whomever you’d like).
...more
59min
March 19, 2019 5. Little Women.
‘In spite of the curly crop, I don’t see the ‘son Jo’ whom I left a year
ago,’ said Mr. March. ‘I see a young lady who pins her collar straight, laces
her boots neatly, and neither talks slang, nor lies on the rug as she used to
do. Her face is rather thin and pale just now, with watching and anxiety, but
I like to look at it, for it has grown gentler, and her voice is lower; she
doesn’t bounce, but moves quietly, and takes care of a certain little person
in a motherly way which delights me. I rather miss my wild girl, but if I get
a strong, helpful, tender-hearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite
satisfied. I don’t know whether the shearing sobered our black sheep, but I do
know that in all Washington I couldn’t find anything beautiful enough to be
bought with the five-and-twenty dollars which my good girl sent me.’
Little Women has Suzanne and Chris tackling
new territory: a novel, a children’s book, and something written within the
last two hundred years. They discuss this tale of four sisters (Meg, Jo, Beth,
and Amy), the possibilities it offers young women (but eventually takes from
them), its complex exploration of gender, and its fascination with death.
Show Notes.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. [Project
Gutenberg.
Bookshop.]
Avidly, on the Los Angeles Review of Books, had a great cluster of
articles about each
of the sisters.
“How Little Women Got Big” at the New Yorker, which draws upon a recent book about
Little Women, Anne Boyd Rioux’s Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women
and Why It Still Matters.
Next episode: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
by Gertrude Stein.
...more
1h
March 06, 2019 4b. Bonus: Timothy Perry on The Book of Peace.
There’s the importance of the text and the writer, but also the importance of
the physical object and all the things you can do with the physical object
that you can’t do if you only have digital accuess or [no] access at all.
We met up with Timothy Perry , medieval manuscript and early book
librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book
Library at the University of Toronto.
The Fisher is excited to announce the acquisition of a rare and lavish
medieval manuscript of The Book of Peace, written by Christine de Pizan (whose
classic The Book of the City of Ladies we
discussed in our last episode). Tim was kind enough to show the newly acquired
book to us and tell us about its many charms.
Show Notes.
A detailed description of the manuscript (with
images!) from the Fisher Rare Book Library.
An article about the acquisition in U of T News.
The Book of Peace, translated by Karen Green,
Constance Mews, and Janice Pinder. (Open access!)
An article about Pierre
Bergé, a previous owner of the
manuscript.
...more
37min
March 05, 2019 4. The Book of the City of Ladies.
When the evil Julian heard this voice, he reproached the torturers for not
having removed enough of Christine’s tongue, telling them to cut it so close
that she would be unable to converse with her lord Jesus. They cut off the
whole of her tongue, right down to the root, but she spat out these remains in
the tyrant’s face and blinded him in one eye. Speaking just as easily as ever,
she exclaimed, ‘Tyrant, what was the point of your removing my tongue so that
I couldn’t praise God when my spirit will praise Him for evermore whilst yours
is damned for all eternity? It’s only fitting that my tongue should have
blinded you, since you didn’t believe my words in the first place.’
The Book of the City of Ladies begins with its
author, Christine de Pizan, working in her study, and suddenly overwhelmed by
the misogyny of so many of the great books surrounding her. She is visited by
three women—personifications of Reason, Rectitude, and Justice—who instruct
her to build a city, and offer her biographies of all the illustrious women
who will live in (and therefore be ) the city. Suzanne and Chris explore
this classic medieval anthology: the ways in which women have made themselves
heard; the physical effort of creating both cities and manuscripts; and the
echoes Christine’s book has both with other great books and with our own
experiences today.
Show Notes.
The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de
Pizan, as translated by Rosalind Brown-Grant.
[Bookshop.]
More info (and images!) about the
manuscript of The Book of the City of Ladies that
Christine supervised herself.
“In the fifteenth century, men read Christine de
Pizan…”
A
banner,
unfurled at Columbia University during a protest in
1989,
included Christine as one of seven great female authors that should be part of
the canon.
Next episode: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
...more
58min

FAQs about The Spouter-Inn:

How many episodes does The Spouter-Inn have?

The podcast currently has 114 episodes available.