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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How many episodes does The Spouter-Inn have?

The podcast currently has 116 episodes available.

The Spouter-Inn episodes:

February 26, 2023 65. The Epic of Gilgamesh.
‘My friend, whom I loved so dear,
   who with me went through every danger,
my friend Enkidu, whom I loved so dear,
   who with me went through every danger:
‘the doom of mortals overtook him.
   Six days I wept for him and seven nights.
I did not surrender his body for burial,
   until a maggot dropped from his nostril.
‘Then I was afraid that I too would die,
   I grew fearful of death, and so wander the wild.
‘What became of my friend was too much to bear,
   so on a far road I wander the wild;
what became of my friend Enkidu was too much to bear,
   so on a far path I wander the wild.
‘How can I keep silent? How can I stay quiet?
   My friend, whom I loved, has turned to clay,
my friend Enkidu, whom I loved, has turned to clay.
   Shall I not be like him and also lie down,
never to rise again, through all eternity?’
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a very old poem. The Standard Babylonian version
of it was redacted over three thousand years ago by an editor and poet named
Sîn-lēqi-unninni, but much of the material he compiled was even older than
that. The poem describes Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, two-thirds divine and
one-third human, who is so superior to everyone else that the gods must create
a companion for him. That companion is Enkidu, a bestial man who must be
carefully brought into civilization. Their relationship — and the questions
that arise after the gods condemn Enkidu to an early death — are still
compelling several thousand years later. Chris and Suzanne explore this
fragmentary monument of ancient literature, and think about what choices a
translator (and a reader!) have to make when engaging with it.
Show Notes.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, as translated by Andrew
George, N.K. Sandars,
Sophus Helle, and David
Ferry. [Many others are available!]
Our episode on The Iliad.
On cuneiform writing.
In a very different context, Chris has talked about Gilgamesh on a podcast
before.
Michael Schmidt: Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem, an
accessible book-length overview of the poem.
Next: Sophocles: Antigone.
[Bookshop.]
And our 2023 reading list, if you want to read ahead! (Some books may change. We
are fickle.)
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. Thanks!
...more
54min
February 12, 2023 64b. Bonus: Sassan Tabatabai on Blind Owl.
In classical narrative poetry, there’s these formulaic repetitions that come
up, right? And then we have these very weird formulaic repetitions that come
up in Blind Owl. And I think the function is completely the opposite in the
classical works and in this modern work. [In classical poetic narratives,
repetitions] keep the reader kind of grounded. It’s that same familiar
signpost that keeps you on the right track. When we get to Blind Owl, when we
get these very odd repetitions … it unhinges the reader, right? It makes you
feel like you’re in some weird dream and you can’t get up.
Sassan Tabatabai is a poet, translator, and scholar of Medieval Persian
literature. He is Master Lecturer in World Languages and Literatures and the
Core Curriculum, and Coordinator of the Persian Language Program at Boston
University. His translations of Persian poetry have appeared in numerous
journals, and he is the author of Father of Persian Verse: Rudaki and His
Poetry, Sufi Haiku, and
Uzunburun: Poems. He is also the translator of the
novel Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat, published by
Penguin Classics. His forthcoming books, both scheduled for release in spring
2023 are Ferry to Malta: Poems and Translations, and a Persian translation of
the poetry of David Ferry.
He joins Suzanne and Chris to talk about the challenges in translating prose
and poetry, and to further explore the influences and the intricacies of Sadeq
Hedayat’s novel Blind Owl.
Show Notes.
Sassan Tabatabai on Twitter.
Sassan Tabatabai’s books and translations: Blind
Owl. Father of Persian Verse: Rudaki and His
Poetry. Sufi Haiku.
Uzunburun: Poems. Also some translations of
Rumi.
Our episodes on Blind Owl, The
Conference of the Birds, and
Frankenstein.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. Thank
you!
...more
38min
January 31, 2023 64. Blind Owl.
I had thought about death and the decomposition of all the particles in my
body many times—to the extent that it didn’t frighten me—in fact, my true wish
was to be completely annihilated. The only thing that frightened me was that
the atoms in my body would mix with the atoms in the bodies of the vulgar.
This was an insufferable thought. Sometimes I wished that after death I would
have long arms and extended fingers with which I could gather all my own atoms
and hold them with both hands so that the atoms that belong to me would not
enter the bodies of the vulgar.
Sadeq Hedayat’s novel Blind Owl is brief, curious, and often disquieting.
It tells the tale of a man who paints pen-case covers, who paints the same
image again and again—and old man sitting beneath a cypress tree, an alluring
young woman offering him a water lily, a stream running between them. And he
is haunted by this image, and especially by the woman in this image—who may
also be his wife, his cousin, his mother? The setting of the novel keeps
shifting, the props in the novel keep reappearing, and the characters all seem
like hazy echoes of the two figures in the painting. Chris and Suzanne try to
stay grounded as they discuss this marvellous gem of Iranian modernism.
Content warning: The book contains some potentially disturbing imagery, and
so does our discussion.
Thank you to Michael Collins for helping us edit this episode.
Show Notes.
Next: Sadeq Hedayat: Blind Owl.
[Bookshop.] (We read the
translation by Sassan Tabatabai.)
Not enough of Hedayat’s other work is available in English, but see also
Three Drops of Blood (a collection of short
stories) and The Fable of Creation (a play).
Previous episodes that we mention: Invisible
Man.
Persepolis.
Symposium.
Paradiso.
Frankenstein.
An example of a nineteenth-century painted pen case from
Iran.
Lingam
puja.
Edgar Allan Poe: Berenice.
Junji Ito: Frankenstein and The Enigma of Amigara
Fault.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. Thank
you.
...more
55min
January 20, 2023 63. Midwinter Day.
I know the rest of the night will be as devoted to work as love as I’m now
resting in this expensive sentence and in the end I’ll spend it fast writing
to you anyway, addressing you and a solution or night beginning like a letter,
just a few words more freely seeing everything more clearly than the rest of
life and love tends to be like windows facing mostly south but surrounding us,
I’m thinking of you.
Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day is a book-length poem entirely written on
December 22, 1978. It documents her day—early morning dreams, midday chores
with her toddlers, late night all-night writing sessions with her partner—in a
panoply of poetic modes. Chris and Suzanne read the poem alongside some of the
other books they’ve read this year, and consider Mayer’s works and days.
Show Notes.
Bernadette Mayer: Midwinter Day.
[Bookshop.]
Other books by Bernadette Mayer: Memory. Studying
Hunger Journals. Eating the Colors of a Lineup of
Words: The Early Books of Bernadette Mayer.
Sonnets. A Bernadette Mayer
Reader. The Helens of Troy,
NY. Milkweed Smithereens.
0 to 9: The Complete Magazine, 1967–1969.
Bernadette Mayer’s pages at the Poetry
Foundation and
PennSound.
Some of her early works can be found at
Eclipse.
Obituaries in the New York
Times
and Artforum.
Our episodes on Times Square Red, Times Square
Blue,
Ulysses, Mrs.
Dalloway, the Metaphysical
Poets, the
Iliad, and The Waste
Land.
Catullus.
Geoffrey Chaucer: The House of Fame.
Ted and Alice are Ted Berrigan and Alice
Notley.
John Donne: A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s
Day.
Sonnet [You jerk you didn’t call me
up].
Bernadette Mayer’s Writing
Experiments.
Next: Sadeq Hedayat: Blind Owl.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon and hang
out with us in a private Discord.
...more
53min
January 04, 2023 62. The Waste Land.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land is a monument of modernist poetry built
out of fragments. But the poem also turned 100 in 2022, and so Chris and
Suzanne wonder: What does it mean to read this poem today? What still delights
us, and what frustrates us? And what are the various languages, dialects, and
registers all doing in this poem, rubbing up against each other like that?
Show Notes.
T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land. (And Eliot’s
endnotes, usually published
alongside the poem.)
Also a new edition of a facsimile of the original drafts of The Waste
Land, with Ezra Pound’s notes, was published for the
centenary.
And you can listen to Eliot reading the
poem.
Other works by Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock. The Hollow
Men. Four Quartets. Murder in the
Cathedral. The Cocktail
Party.
Support us on Patreon and hear Chris and
other Megaphonic hosts talking about the 1965 epic The Greatest Story Ever
Told.
Jessie Weston.
The Beatles: Revolution 9.
Our episode on Ulysses.
Rothenberg & Joris, eds.: Poems for the Millennium, Vol.
1.
Some books that have been published for the centenary:
Matthew Hollis: The Waste Land: A Biography of the
Poem.
Jed Rasula: What the Thunder Said: How The Waste Land Made Poetry
Modern.
Robert Crawford: Eliot After The Waste Land.
Next: Bernadette Mayer: Midwinter Day.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon and hang
out with us in a friendly little Discord.
...more
49min
December 20, 2022 61. Native Tongue.
Encodings were precious. The little girls heard the stories at their mother’s
knees, when their mothers had time to tell them…. How women, in the long ago
time when women could vote and be doctors and fly spaceships—a fantasy world
for these girlchildren, as fabulous and glittering as any tale of castles and
dragons—how women, even then, had begun the first slow gropings toward a
language of their own.
The tales were told again and again, and embroidered lovingly with detail;
and prominent in their ornament were the jewels of the Encodings. A word for a
perception that had never had a word of its own before.... [Encodings were]
precious because they were truly newborn to the universe of discourse.... “A
woman who gives an Encoding to other women is a woman of valor, and all women
are in her debt forevermore.”
Suzette Haden Elgin’s novel Native Tongue is a feminist science-fiction
novel first published in 1984. The future it describes features an America in
which women are considered biologically (and thus legally) inferior to men.
But it’s also taking place in a time when humans are in contact with aliens,
and only a handful of families have the ability to communicate in their alien
languages. And the women of these linguist families are constructing a
language that should make it easier for women to express their thoughts—which
in turn will have powerful political implications. Suzanne and Chris explore
the tremendous world-building of this novel.
Thank you to Michael Collins for helping to edit this episode.
Show Notes.
Suzette Haden Elgin: Native Tongue.
[Bookshop.]
Other words by Elgin: Judas Rose.
Earthsong. The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defence. A Third Dictionary and Grammar of
Láadan.
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association.
The homepage for Láadan.
The Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis.
An article on Láadan and emotional labour.
Another article on Elgin’s influence.
Diane Wilson: The Seed Keeper.
Next: T.S. Eliot: The Waste
Land.
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. Thank
you!
...more
58min
November 05, 2022 60b. Bonus: Jared Pechaček on The Two Towers.
The Two Towers’ landscape passages... a lot of the book is from Sam’s POV, and
he’s the gardener, and Ithilien is packed with flower names in a way that not
even the Shire is when he’s not the viewpoint character. So there’s so much
lore that he clearly is collecting as he goes. Which I think is so beautiful.
Jared Pechaček is a writer and
artist whose recent work includes illustrating the acclaimed horror novel Red
X by David
Demchuk. He’s also one of the hosts of
By-The-Bywater, a podcast here on the
Megaphonic network that’s about all things Tolkien. He lives in Seattle, where
he can generally be found either tweeting about fashion or drifting over the
beach at low tide.
Jared joins Chris and Suzanne for a wide-ranging discussion on The Two Towers,
including a look at the characters of Sam and Frodo, a reading of the
landscape of Ithilien, and a sampling of rabbit stew.
Show Notes.
Follow Jared on Twitter or
Patreon, or listen to him on By-The-Bywater.
By-The-Bywater episodes on food,
the Ents, and
Orcs.
Jared made rabbit stew for a Kitchen
Party livestream (which happens
occasionally on the Megaphonic twitch channel).
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
...more
37min
October 01, 2022 60. The Two Towers.
‘Hm, but you are hasty folk, I see,’ said Treebeard. ‘I am honoured by your
confidence; but you should not be too free all at once.... I’ll call you
Merry and Pippin if you please – nice names. For I am not going to tell you
my name, not yet at any rate.... For one thing it would take a long
while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long
time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the
things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It
is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it,
because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time
to say, and to listen to.’
The Two Towers is the middle section of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Lord
of the Rings. It separates the people who formed the first book’s fellowship
into two groups: Most head west and encounter the tree-ish ents and the horse-riding Rohirrim, while Sam and Frodo try to enter Mordor, with Gollum as their
guide. It begins a cluster on Other Languages, as Chris and Suzanne tease out
how Tolkien distinguishes and connects peoples through carefully constructed
language families.
Show Notes.
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Two Towers.
[Bookshop.]
Our episode on The Fellowship of the
Ring.
By-The-Bywater, an all-Tolkien
podcast here on Megaphonic, recently had an episode on Tolkien’s constructed
languages.
Tolkien’s major essay on language construction, A Secret
Vice, has been republished in a lavish critical
edition.
Next: Suzette Haden Elgin: Native Tongue.
[Bookshop.]
...more
54min
September 25, 2022 59. Harriet the Spy.
“I want to know everything, everything,” screeched Harriet suddenly, lying
back and bouncing up and down on the bed. “Everything in the world,
everything, everything. I will be a spy and know everything.”
Ole Golly said, “It won’t do you a bit of good to know everything if
you don’t do anything with it. Now get up, Miss Harriet the Spy, you’re going
to sleep now.”
Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy is a novel about a young girl who wants
to be a writer — or maybe a spy. She constantly writes her candid observations
about other people in her private notebook, and she is given love and
attention by her nurse, Ole Golly. But what would happen if Ole Golly were to
leave? Or if her notebook got into the hands of her classmates, and they read
her unfiltered thoughts about them? Suzanne and Chris reconnect with a book
that meant a great deal to them as children, appreciating its careful and
striking construction, and teasing out the queerness in the book.
Show Notes.
Louise Fitzhugh: Harriet the Spy.
[Bookshop.]
Other books by Louise Fitzhugh: The Long Secret.
Nobody’s Familiy Is Going to Change.
Sport.
Sandra Scoppettone: Suzuki Beane.
Leslie Brody: Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise
Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy. (An
excerpt.)
Our episodes on other children’s books: Little
Women. Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory. Charlotte’s
Web.
Our episode on Invisible Man.
Next episode: J.R.R. Tolkien: The Two Towers.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. Thanks!
...more
58min
September 04, 2022 58. Invisible Man.
In the South everyone knew you, but coming North was a jump into the unknown.
How many days could you walk the streets of the big city without encountering
anyone who knew you, and how many nights? You could actually make yourself
anew. The notion was frightening, for now the world seemed to flow before my
eyes. All boundaries down, freedom was not only the recognition of necessity,
it was the recognition of possibility.
Ralph Ellison’s monumental novel Invisible Man is a picaresque coming-of-age story. Our unnamed narrator grows up in the American South between the
World Wars. After a series of incidents gets him a scholarship to—and then
expelled from—college, he travels to New York City. There, in the bustling,
anonymous city, he realizes he has been invisible all along—which is to say,
that no one seems to be able to see him for him. Suzanne and Chris explore
this powerfully written book, and how sight, sound, and taste can connect its
narrator, even as the city isolates him.
Show Notes.
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man.
[Bookshop.]
Also by Ralph Ellison: Juneteenth;
Essays (Includes “Living with Music”).
Our episodes on: Gertrude Stein,
Dante’s Inferno, Moby-Dick, Ernest
Hemingway, the
Decameron, The Book of the City of
Ladies, and The
Jungle.
Voltaire: Candide.
Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American
Cities.
Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project.
China Miéville: The City and the City.
Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities.
Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities.
Next: Louise Fitzhugh: Harriet the Spy.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. Thanks!
...more
53min

FAQs about The Spouter-Inn:

How many episodes does The Spouter-Inn have?

The podcast currently has 116 episodes available.

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