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 116 episodes available.

The Spouter-Inn episodes:

October 25, 2024 73. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back.
Storytelling is an emergent practice, and meaning for each individual listener will necessarily be different. The relationships between the storyteller and the listeners become the nest that cradles the meaning. The storyteller creates both the context and the content and collectively a plurality of meanings are generated through the experiences of the audience. The “analysis” and the “critical examination” are done with the utmost care and respect. Nishnaabeg storytellers, when telling in English, will use phrases such as “maybe it happened this way,” “some people say that’s what happened, I don’t know, I wasn’t there” or “I heard it happened that way, but I don’t know.” Revealing that one can only speak about what they know to be true from direct experience.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s nonfiction book Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (2011) considers what “resurgence” might mean for Indigenous people and communities. Her ways of thinking about resurgence are intimately connected to her thinking about story, especially the many forms of creation story. Suzanne and Chris reflect on and respond to Simpson's conceptions of what story is, how it relates to the essay, and what it makes possible.
Show Notes.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson:Dancing On Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence.
Leanne Simpson’s website.
Other books by Simpson include A Short History of the Blockade, Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, and Rehearsals for Living (with Robyn Maynard).
Our episodes on Lee Maracle’s Memory Serves, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Augustine’s Confessions
Next: Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton, eds. Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers.
...more
46min
October 18, 202472. The Essays of Michel de Montaigne.
When lately I retired to my house resolved that, in so far as I could, I would cease to concern myself with anything except the passing in rest and retirement of the little time I still have to live, I could do my mind no better service than to leave it in complete idleness to commune with itself, to come to rest, and to grow settled; which I hoped it would thenceforth be able to do more easily, since it had become graver and more mature with time. But I find (variam semper dant otia mentem),
that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it is a hundred times more active on its own behalf than ever it was for others. It presents me with so many chimeras and imaginary monsters, one after another, without order or plan, that in order to contemplate their oddness and absurdity at leisure, I have begun to record them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of them.
The Spouter-Inn returns with an experiment. We recorded four episodes over a busy weekend, and our cluster topic was "Essays, Essaying, Stories, Storying". We decided, this time, to put a “classic” text in conversation with some much more recent works. Let’s see where this path takes us?
Michel de Montaigne’s Essays are often described as the origin of the genre. But his writings are almost nothing like the kinds of essays we read in magazines or write for academic assignments. Montaigne’s pieces are meandering and personal, and often only tangentially related to the topics they are nominally “about”. Chris and Suzanne read a few of these essays and follow them wherever they might go.
Show Notes.
Michel de Montaigne: Essays (trans. M.A. Screech). Also available on Project Gutenberg (trans. Charles Cotton) and on the HyperEssays website.
The essays we look at:
On Idleness (1.8)
On Liars (1.9)
On the Power of the Imagination (1.20)
On Friendship (1.27)
On the Education of Children (1.25)
Our episodes on Leaves of Grass and the Symposium.
Étienne de La Boétie.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon and hang
out with us in a friendly discord.
Next: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson:Dancing On Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence.
...more
45min
October 10, 2023 71. Troilus and Criseyde.
Allas, of me, unto the worldes ende,
Shal neither been ywriten nor ysonge
No good word, for thise bokes wol me shende.
O, rolled shal I been on many a tonge;
Thurghout the world my belle shal be ronge;
And wommen most wol hate me of alle.
Allas, that swich a cas me sholde falle!
(Alas! Until the end of the world, no good word will be written or sung about
me, because these books will utterly shame me. Oh, I will be rolled on many a
tongue, throughout the world my bell will be rung — and women will hate me
most of all. Alas, that such a thing should happen to me!)
Geoffrey Chaucer’s narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde tells a love story
— if by “love” you mean romantic obsession, coercion, and worse — all set
during the Trojan War. Chris and Suzanne talk about how this book explores the
interiority of its characters, how it depicts independence and politics, and
how it explores the way narratives unfold within systems of tropes and
traditions.
Show Notes.
Geoffrey Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (in the
original and in a
modernization).
Other works by Chaucer: The Canterbury
Tales; The
Riverside Chaucer (i.e., his complete works).
Our episode on the Iliad.
(The Spouter-Inn will in fact turn five years old in January.)
Boccaccio: Il Filostrato.
Our episodes on Paradiso, Consolation of
Philosophy, and the
Metamorphoses.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon and hang
out with us in a friendly discord.
...more
54min
September 19, 2023 70b. Bonus: Dick Davis on Translating Persian Poetry.
There’s a feeling, I think, in English poetry that you have to be original.
That feeling isn’t really there in Persian poetry until the very modern
period. Then it is. But before then, there’s a kind of sense that there’s this
vast treasury of possibilities in poetry which everybody has used—and you can
use them too.
Dick Davis is an award-winning poet and translator, famous for his
translations of medieval Persian poetry. He has translated Attar’s The
Conference of the Birds and Nezami’s Layli and Majnun (both covered on The
Spouter-Inn), as well as Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, and his most recent translation
is The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women.
He joins Chris and Suzanne to talk about reading and translating Persian
poetry, how his work in translation has influenced his own poetry, and the
specific challenges in translating Layli and Majnun.
Show Notes.
Dick Davis’s translations include Layli and Majnun,
The Conference of the Birds, and others listed
below.
Our episodes on Layli and Majnun and
Conference of the Birds.
Fakhraddin Gorgani: Vis and Ramin (trans. Dick
Davis).
The Mirror of My Heart: A Thousand Years of Persian Poetry by Women (trans.
Dick Davis): hardcover bilingual edition by
Mage and English-only paperback by
Penguin
Jahan Khatun.
Hafez.
Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (trans. Dick Davis): originally
published by Mage, paperback reprint by Penguin,
bilingual edition by Mage.
Mughal empire.
Our bonus episodes with Emily Wilson
and Sassan Tabatabai.
Nezami: Khosrow and Shirin.
“Seek a Poet who your way do's bend, / And chuse an Author as you chuse a
Friend” (Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscomon, in An Essay on Translated
Verse).
Chapman’s Homer.
John Keats: On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer.
Nizami’s Khamsa.
On Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.
Ferdowsi: Shahnameh (trans. Dick Davis): magnificent hardcover in three
volumes, illustrated, published by Mage, paperback single volume by
Penguin.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon to help
us research and record the show, and you can hang out with us on a friendly
little Discord.
...more
41min
September 06, 2023 70. Layli and Majnun.
Her voice was sweet and liquid, like a stream
That lulls all other streams to sleep and dream;
Her eyes like doe’s eyes, whose dark gaze would make
A lion lie down dazed, and half awake.
She seemed an alphabet of loveliness,
Curved letters were the curling of each tress,
Straight letters were her stature, and her lips
Were like a letter formed as an ellipse,
And all the letters made her like that bowl
That shows the world as an enchanted whole.
The story of Layli and Majnun — sometimes written as Layla and Majnun —
was most famously recorded in a book-length poem by the twelfth-century
Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi. Chris and Suzanne consider what the poem has to
say about love, mental illness, and fan culture.
Show Notes.
Nezami Ganjavi: Layla and Majnun, trans. Dick
Davis. [Bookshop.]
Our episode on Conference of the Birds.
Maria Rosa Menocal: Shards of Love: Exile and the Origin of the
Lyric.
Our episode on Enkidu from The Epic of
Gilgamesh.
Raymond Roussel: Locus Solus.
Manuscript images of Layli and Majnun at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5.
And images of Majnun at the Ka’aba with a door knocker:
1,
2.
Our episode on Blind Owl.
The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892–1910.
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit.
Next: Geoffrey Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde.
(Bookshop. Also a helpful online
modernized and annotated
version.)
You can support us through our network, Megaphonic, on
Patreon.
...more
1h
July 15, 2023 69b. Bonus: Mark Sundaram and Aven McMaster on Etymology.
Language is so personal and internal. It exists in your head. You can close
your eyes and plug your ears and not engage with the outside world at all, and
yet you still have language going on. So I think one of the things that
attracts people to [etymology] is, it’s discussing something that they
feel they have a part in.
Mark Sundaram is a medievalist
and linguist who specializes in the history of the English language. He’s the
co-host of the podcast The Endless Knot
and the main force behind the
Alliterative YouTube channel. Mark
has a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto and teaches at
Laurentian University.
Aven McMaster is a Classicist
who studies Latin poetry and Roman social history. She is the co-host of the
podcast The Endless Knot Podcast and
does production work on the
Alliterative channel videos. Aven has
a PhD in Classics from the University of Toronto and taught at Thorneloe
University at Laurentian.
They join Chris and Suzanne to talk all about etymologies, dictionaries, and
etymological dictionaries. What pleasures are found in reading the dictionary?
Why are some people so compelled by etymologies? How do etymologies and puns
inform classical poetry?
Show Notes.
The Endless Knot on Twitter.
John Ayto: Dictionary of Word Origins.
The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.
Paul Anthony Jones (Haggard Hawks on
Twitter): Why Is This A Question?
On Webster’s Third New International
Dictionary.
Ernest Weekley: The Romance of
Words.
Alliterative’s video on nation.
The etymology of feisty.
Ernest Klein: A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English
Language.
Anatoly Liberman: Word Origins and How We Know
Them.
The Oxford Etymologist.
Calvert Watkins: The American Dictionary of Indo-European
Roots.
Support The Spouter-Inn and our network,
Megaphonic, if you can. Thanks!
...more
44min
July 01, 2023 69. The Etymologies.
The word “amicus” — meaning “friend” — comes from a derivation, as if it
were “animi custos”, or “guardian of the soul”. And this is well put! The term
for someone tormented by carnal desire is “amator turpitudinis”, a lover of
wickedness. But “friend”, “amicus”, is from the word “hamus”, a hook — in
other words, the chain of charity, since hooks hold on.
The Etymologies , by the seventh-century polymath and theologian Isidore
of Seville, is a massive medieval encyclopedia, with sections devoted to
topics from grammar to farming, mathematics to war. And throughout the book,
Isidore attempts to understand the world through etymology—that is, by poking
and prodding at words until they reveal their histories and the other words
that they’re made of. Chris and Suzanne revel in Isidore’s ear for the
materiality of language, as well as his encyclopedic impulse to gather and
organize everything.
Show Notes.
Isidore of Seville: The Etymologies.
[Bookshop.] [The text in
Latin.]
The only other book by Isidore available in English translation seems to be
On the Nature of Things.
Our episodes on the Hereford Mappa
Mundi, The
Aeneid, Beyond a
Boundary, Gertrude
Stein, and Georges
Perec.
Petrus Riga’s Aurora does not
seem to be available in English translation.
The Latin text of the opening quote:
> Amicus, per derivationem, quasi animi custos. Dictus autem proprie: amator
turpitudinis, quia amore torquetur libidinis: amicus ab hamo, id est, a catena
caritatis; unde et hami quod teneant.
Suzanne wrote about encyclopedism (and Moby-Dick, naturally) for LitHub.
The Glossa Ordinaria.
The First Grammatical
Treatise.
Virgilius Maro
Grammaticus.
Next: Nezami Ganjavi: Layla and Majnun.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn through our network,
Megaphonic if you can. Thank you!
...more
49min
June 08, 2023 68. The Consolation of Philosophy.
“Now I know,” she said, “that other, more serious cause of your sickness: you
have forgotten what you are. So I really understand why you are ill and how to
cure you. For because you are wandering, forgetful of your true self, you
grieve that you are an exile and stripped of your goods; since indeed you do
not know the goal and end of all things, you think that evil and wicked men
are fortunate and powerful; since indeed you have forgotten what sort of
governance the world is guided by, you think these fluctuations of fortune
uncontrolled. All these are quite enough to cause not merely sickness but even
death. But I thank the author of all health that you have not yet wholly lost
your true nature.”
The Consolation of Philosophy by the sixth-century Roman author Boethius
has a little of everything: poetry and prose, autobiography and philosophy;
bright and lively writing and… maybe some boring bits, especially in the last
two sections. But it was written by a man who found himself thrown in jail and
condemned to death; who can blame him for trying to use philosophy—or, a
dialogue with the personification of Philosophy herself—to make sense of his
life? Chris and Suzanne discuss how this complex poem intersects with a lot of
other literary works, and argue about the uneasy marriage of philosophy and
poetry.
Show Notes.
Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy.
[Bookshop.]
Our episodes on The Symposium,
Augustine’s Confessions, The Book of
the City of Ladies,
Paradiso, and The Autobiography of
Malcolm X.
The Wikipedia page for The Consolation of
Philosophy
has a nice medieval depiction of Fortune’s
wheel.
Rainer Maria Rilke: Archaic Torso of Apollo. (The original German
text. See also
Mark Doty talking about this poem.)
Next: Isidore of Seville: The Etymologies.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn and our network on
Patreon — it helps us make the show, and it
gives you access to our friendly Discord!
...more
59min
May 11, 2023 67. The Song of Songs.
I come to my garden, my sister, my bride;
I gather my myrrh with my spice,
I eat my honeycomb with my honey,
I drink my wine with my milk.
Eat, friends, drink,
And be drunk with love.
The Song of Songs is a work of lyric poetry which is notably and
undeniably erotic in focus. And yet it has also been a key religious text
within both Judaism and Christianity, and has been read and commented upon for
thousands of years within those contexts. Chris and Suzanne read this poetry
both within and without these traditions of interpretations — and also
luxuriate in its intensity (and spiciness).
Show Notes.
The Song of Songs is part of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible, and is
available in many
translations.
Chris was primarily looking at the Jewish Publication
Society translation;
Suzanne at the Revised Standard
Version.
Our episodes on Walt Whitman, the
allegorical Conference of the Birds,
and Times Square Red, Times Square
Blue.
Bernard of Clairvaux: Commentary on the Song of
Songs.
Alain of Lille’s commentary, Elucidatio in Cantica Canticorum, doesn’t seem to
be easily available in English, but here’s the
Latin.
Rupert of Deutz’s Commentaria in Cantica Canticorum
also doesn’t seem to have been translated into English.
Next: Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy.
...more
50min
April 02, 2023 66. Antigone.
are you mockers of me
you grabbing old men
are you laughers at me
though I’m not yet gone
O springs of the rivers of Thebes
O reaches of the plains of Thebes
bear me witness
no one sheds a tear for me
as I go to my strange new grave
no one knows what kind of laws they are that sentence me
nor what kind of tomb it is I go to
I’m a strange new kind of inbetween thing aren’t I
not at home with the dead nor with the living
Sophocles’s play Antigone asks many questions about our relationship to
the law, to the state, to our families, and to the dead. The new king in town,
Creon, wants his nephew Polynices’s body to go unburied, as he died an enemy
of the state. Polynices’s sister Antigone says she will bury the body herself,
because that is the right and necessary thing to do. Things escalate.
Chris and Suzanne revisit this work and its world—how it depicts the gods and
the dead, and how we might read the struggles of a king trying to rule and a
young woman trying to do right by her brother. They also explore two different
translations by the poet and classicist Anne Carson.
Show Notes.
Sophocles: Antigone.
[Bookshop.]
Anne Carson: Antigonick and its less fancy
edition.
Also by Anne Carson: Autobiography of Red;
Nox; Grief Lessons: Four Plays by
Euripides; and many more.
Elizabeth Wyckloff’s translation of Antigone.
Euripides: Hippolytus,
translated by Sean Gurd, recreates the Greek (lack of) punctuation.
Our episode on the Iliad.
And our episode on To the Lighthouse.
Walter Benjamin: The Task of the
Translator.
Will Aitken: Antigone Undone: Juliette Binoche, Anne Carson, Ivo van Hove,
and the Art of Resistance.
Next: Song of Songs.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. Thanks!
...more
55min

FAQs about The Spouter-Inn:

How many episodes does The Spouter-Inn have?

The podcast currently has 116 episodes available.

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