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 114 episodes available.

The Spouter-Inn episodes:

February 08, 2021 41. Exile and Pride.
Gender reaches into disability; disability wraps around class; class strains
against abuse; abuse snarls into sexuality; sexuality folds on top of race …
everything finally piling into a single human body. To write about any
aspect of identity, any aspect of the body, means writing about this entire
maze. This I know, and yet the question remains: where to start?
We start off the year (a bit late) by reading a book that pushes us in some
new directions. Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride is half memoir, half analysis
of the intersections of queerness, disability, gender, race, and the
environment. Chris and Suzanne explore its many devotions: to lists, to
intersectionality, and especially to the desire to never let things be simple,
but always striving to consider the world in its full complexity.
Show Notes.
Eli Clare: Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and
Liberation.
[Bookshop.]
Other books by Eli Clare: Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with
Cure; The Marrow’s Telling: Words in
Motion.
Thomas Browne: Religio Medici.
An in-depth interview with Clare from
2009.
And a recently online talk given by
Clare.
Next: Laxdæla Saga.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
...more
52min
January 14, 2021 40. The Boys in the Band.
HAROLD. (Coolly.) Are you now? Are you warning me? Me? I’m Harold.
I’m the one person you don’t warn, Michael. Because you and I are a match.
And we tread very softly with each other because we both play each other’s
game too well. Oh, I know this game you’re playing. I know it very well. And
I play it very well. You play it very well too. But you know what? I’m the
only one that’s better at it than you are. I can beat you at it. So don’t
push me. I’m warning you.
Suzanne and Chris end 2020 (a little late) by reading something from one of
the many notable authors we lost—in this case, Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking
play about gay men, The Boys in the Band. The
play was first produced in 1968, the year before the Stonewall riots; and a
film was made in 1970. For the play’s 50th anniversary, the play was
remounted, and then in 2020 a new film adaptation was made by Netflix. But
what does it mean to read or produce The Boys in the Band in 2020? Is it a
historical artifact—something you turn to in order to understand what life was
like for some people in a particular place and time—or does it offer fresh
pleasures and insights? Is this play being canonized, and if so, how?
Show Notes.
Mart Crowley: The Boys in the Band.
[Bookshop.]
The Boys in the Band (1970)
(trailer) and The Boys in the
Band (2020)
(trailer).
LitHub’s list of notable literary deaths in
2020.
Some interviews with
Mart
Crowley.
Next: Eli Clare: Exlie and Pride.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
...more
55min
January 02, 2021 39. The Metaphysical Poets.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Chris and Suzanne wrap up their cluster on
Sex by looking at some
Metaphysical Poets —namely, Andrew Marvell and John Donne. How and why do
they use philosophical ideas and argumentation in their poetry? What is going
on, formally and structurally? And is it erotic, and if so… where do the
erotic interests lie? Women? Nature? God? The poets themselves?
Show Notes.
The selection of poems we
looked at. [PDF]
An anthology of Metaphysical poetry.
[Bookshop.]
More poems by Marvell
and Donne.
A review of a recent biography of Andrew
Marvell [Nigel Smith: Andrew Marvell: The
Chameleon].
A recent acquisition of a manuscript of Donne poems that circulated through
his coterie.
Next: Mart Crowley: The Boys in the Band.
[Bookshop.]
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon. [Thank
you!]
...more
59min
December 22, 2020 38b. Bonus: Luther Obrock on the Mahabharata.
The very first word of the Bhagavad Gita is, of course, dharma. And I find
that rather beautiful, how this is set up, and that we’re automatically
embedded within a story, within a telling. So we have this theophany that’s
absolutely beautiful that itself is already being part of a story that’s
being told through us. I find that rather beautiful.
Luther Obrock is assistant
professor in the department of Historical Studies and the Department for the
Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. His area of research focuses
on Sanskrit poetry in the second millennium, specifically on the literary and
cultural place of Sanskrit in the Sultanate period — that is during the first
centuries of Muslim rule in South Asia. He is also an avid reader of the
Mahabharata since his undergraduate days.
He joins Chris and Suzanne to provide them with a bit more context on the
Mahabharata, to read a few lines of the original Sanskrit, and to share some
of his favourite stories and passages.
Show Notes.
Our main episode on the Mahabharata.
Our episodes on the Iliad and the
Symposium.
Luther’s article (which we also posted with our main article), “Mahabharata
Brahmins, Kings, and the South Asian Social
World”.
James L. Fitzgerald on the
Mahabharata.
A.K. Ramanujan: “Is There an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal
Essay”. [You,
uh, may be able to google a non-paywalled copy.]
The Razmnama.
Andha Yug [The Blind Age].
Niyoga.
Shloka metre.
Kavya.
If you want more, check out the Mahabharata
podcast!
Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.
...more
41min
December 21, 2020 38. Mahabharata.
“Have a hundred jars filled up with ghee.
Now, sprinkle the flesh with water.” Instantly,
The hideous ball split into a hundred pieces —
Embryos, the size of a finger joint —
And one extra. Vyasa took each one,
Placed it in a jar, and left instructions
About the tending of the embryos,
And when the vessels should be broken open.
…
More months of waiting. In the room of jars,
A dozen nurses tended the embryos
That slowly grew inside the glowing vessels.
One day, Gandhari woke to a loud commotion.
The first baby had been born from his jar
And was brought to her. Her hands encountered
A large, muscular infant, her first-born son.
The Mahabharata is an enormous Sanskrit epic of ancient India. It tells of
a great war between two sides of a family, and of how the various participants
in the war struggle to follow dharma—that is, roughly, how to do what they are
meant to do in life. Suzanne and Chris focus on two sections in particular:
Book 1, which tells of origins and complicated genealogy of the Bharatas, and
Book 6, which includes the Bhagavad Gita, a prolonged conversation that takes
place on the precipice of battle. Although they are only able to scratch the
surface on this remarkable collection of tales, they are enthusiastic about
what they’ve discovered so far.
Show Notes.
The Mahabharata, trans. Carole Satyamurti.
[Bookshop.]
William Buck’s translation.
Our episode on the Iliad.
J. Robert Oppenheimer on the
Mahabharata.
Luther Obrock’s article “Mahabharata Brahmins, Kings, and the South Asian
Social
World”
provides a helpful overview.
This overview of the Mahabharata family
tree might also be helpful for
newcomers.
A bonus episode with someone more familiar with the Mahabharata is coming
soon!
Next time: Poetry by Andrew Marvell and John
Donne. [PDF]
If you’re enjoying the show and you’re able to, please considersupporting the
Spouter-Inn on Patreon
In memoriam Bobby Akbari, beloved research assistant [on the right]
...more
57min
November 15, 2020 37. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.
Despite moments of infatuation on both sides, these were not love
relationships. The few hustlers excepted, they were not business
relationships. They were encounters whose most important aspect was that
mutual pleasure was exchanged—an aspect that, yes, colored all other
aspects, but that did not involve any sort of life commitment. Most were
affable but brief because, beyond pleasure, these were people you had little
in common with. Yet what greater field and force than pleasure can human
beings share?
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue is a book that’s half memoir, half
theoretical argument. It’s about Samuel R. Delany’s experiences in the adult
theatres of New York City (which he often frequented, and which, as the book
was written, were being torn down and replaced with the “family-friendly”
version of Times Square we know today) and about the nature of contact in a
vibrant city. It begins our cluster of books on
sex with astonishing frankness,
nuanced thought, and vast empathy—and it’s gorgeously written as well.
Show Notes.
Samuel R. Delany: Times Square Red, Times Square
Blue.
[Bookshop.]
Other books by Delany that we mention: Dhalgren;
In Search of Silence: The Journals of Samuel R. Delany, Volume I,
1957-1969; Return to
Nevèrÿon; The Motion of Light in
Water; Heavenly
Breakfast; Through the Valley of the Nest of
Spiders.
Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American
Cities.
Our episodes on Middlemarch, A
Moveable Feast, and Memory
Serves.
Anne Carson: Nox.
Julia Kristeva: Stabat Mater.
[JSTOR, paywalled, but you can see the layout of the first page, at least.]
Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project.
Delany’s website has long included a robust
page of errata he’s found in his books, which often get updated in reprints
(though the page seems to be broken right now).
The Poetry Project has some videos of Delany talking
about and reading
from the 20th anniversary
edition of the book.
Next: The Mahabharata.
[Bookshop.]
If you’re enjoying The Spouter-Inn, consider supporting us on
Patreon. Thank you!
...more
57min
October 27, 2020 36b. Bonus: Shamma Boyarin on the Disciplina Clericalis.
There are these moments in The Scholar’s Guide, where they’re not
necessarily contradictions, but they’re ruptures, they’re gaps between what
is happening and what we actually notice. That I think suggests that what
Petrus Alfonsi is doing. He’s actually using [the genre of dialogue]
in a way to undercut it. It’s a didactic literature that’s anti-didactic in
its mode.
Shamma Boyarin is an Assistant
Professor in the English Department at the University of Victoria. He is also
the director of the Religion, Culture and Society Program. His research and
teaching interests span medieval literature (with a specific focus on Hebrew
and Arabic literature), religion, and pop culture. He joined us recently to
discuss what he’s been reading during the pandemic, and joins us once again to
talk about Petrus Alfonsi’s Disciplina
Clericalis, as well as teaching such a
text in the context of the history of literature from England.
Show Notes.
Shamma was previously on our second
episode on Reading During Crisis.
Adelard of Bath.
Meir of Norwich.
Susan Einbinder: No Place of Rest: Jewish Literature, Expulsion, and the
Memory of Medieval France.
The article Shamma mentions is Gabriel Ford’s “Why Not Read Petrus Alfonsi’s
Disciplina clericalis in the British Literature
Survey?”,
which is sadly behind a paywall.
Suzanne’s article “Between Diaspora and Conquest: Norman Assimilation in
Petrus Alfonsi’s Disciplina Clericalis and Marie de France’s
Fables”.
If you're enjoying The Spouter-Inn, and you're able to, consider supporting
us on Patreon. Thanks!
...more
41min
October 20, 2020 36. Disciplina Clericalis.
[A poet] presented his badly composed verses to the king. [...] The
king did not receive him well and asked him whose son he was. The poet said
he was the nephew of [a] famous author, at which the king burst out
laughing. [...] The king said, “I once read a book containing a fable,
which I now see before my eyes.”
    They asked him what it was and the king said:
    “A fox found a newborn mule in a field, and, surprised, asked him: ‘Who are
you?’
    “The mule said he was a creature of God.
    “The fox asked him, ‘Have you a father or a mother?’
    “The mule said, ‘My uncle is a noble horse.’
    “And just as this mule did not claim the ass as his father because it is a
lazy, ugly animal, so this poet is ashamed to confess his father...”
The Disciplina Clericalis — which has been
translated into English as “The Scholar’s Guide” — is a curious collection of
aphorisms and (often salacious) short stories put together by Petrus Alphonsi
in the early twelfth century. Who is this educating, and from what
perspective? How does the dialogue format function in education? Is this an
educational text at all? Suzanne and Chris have a dialogue about it.
Show Notes.
Disciplina Clericalis [The Scholar’s
Guide].
[Bookshop.]
Our episode on Boccaccio’s Decameron.
Petrus Alphonsi: Dialogue against the
Jews [Dialogi contra Iudaeos].
Gesta Romanorum [some old
translations].
Dame Sirith.
Ramon Llull: The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise
Men.
Peter Abelard: Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a
Christian.
Adab.
A medieval manuscript that includes the Disciplina
Clericalis.
Next: Samuel R. Delany: Times Square Red, Times Square
Blue.
[Bookshop.]
If you’re enjoying the show, consider supporting us on
Patreon. If you do, you can chat with us
about books on a members-only Slack. Thank you!
...more
52min
September 24, 2020 35b. Bonus: Loretta Todd on Monkey Beach.
I was so deeply moved by the love that Eden [Robinson] showed for her
characters. There was so much love she had for Lisamarie and her family.
There was so much devotion, really, to—not so much their happiness, but
their resilience.
Loretta Todd is a writer, director,
and producer. Her credits include award-winning documentaries, such as
Forgotten Warriors,
Kainayssini Imanistaisiwa: The People Go
On, and
Hands of History. She also
created, produced and directed Tansi! Nehiyawetan, a
Cree children’s series on APTN; MyCree, a
Cree language learning app (which has had over 20,000 downloads); and Fierce
Girls, a webseries and transmedia project for
Indigenous girls about Indigenous girl superheroes. And she is the director of
the feature film adaptation of Eden Robinson’s novel Monkey
Beach, which premieres today at the Vancouver
International Film Festival.
She joins us to discuss her relationship with the novel, the choices that went
into adapting it for the screen, and what it was like to film with and around
Haisla Nation.
Show Notes.
Loretta Todd’s website.
Several of her films are available via the
NFB, including Forgotten
Warriors, the film acknowledged
in Monkey Beach.
Monkey Beach premieres
tonight at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Watch the trailer.
Our episode on Monkey Beach.
It’s a Wonderful Life.
Another interview with Loretta Todd about Monkey
Beach.
Loretta Todd giving a talk about Indigenous Storytelling in
Cyberspace.
If you are enjoying the podcast and are able to help out, please consider
supporting us and our network on Patreon.
Thank you.
...more
47min
September 21, 2020 35. Monkey Beach.
Contacting the dead, lesson one. Sleep is an altered state of consciousness.
To fall asleep is to fall into a deep, healing trance. In the spectrum of
realities, being awake is on one side and being asleep is way, way on the
other. To be absorbed in a movie, a game or work is to enter a light trance.
Daydreams, prayers or obsessing are heavier trances. Most people enter
trances reflexively. To contact the spirit world, you must control the way
you enter this state of being that is somewhere between waking and sleeping.
Eden Robinson’s debut novel Monkey Beach is a
coming-of-age story that has elements of horror and magic realism, but is
deeply rooted in the writer’s own Indigenous Haisla and Heiltsuk culture. The
education that the narrator, Lisamarie, receives from her uncle and
grandmother on the lands and waters (both salt and fresh) of the Pacific
Northwest is a powerful counterbalance to the trauma of the residential school
that has damaged the community so painfully. And her own search for her
brother, Jimmy, leads Lisa into the past and even—like Dante’s narrator—into
the spirit world of the dead.
Content warning: In the main discussion of this episode, we mention
violence, death, and sexual assualt.
Show Notes.
Eden Robinson: Monkey Beach. [Sadly, not available
on Bookshop.]
Other books by Eden Robinson: Blood Sports, Son of
a Trickster, Trickster
Drift, The Sasquatch at Home: Traditional Protocols
and Modern Storytelling.
The new film of Monkey Beach premieres
Thursday at the Vancouver International Film
Festival.
The CBC recently checked in with Eden
Robinson.
Our episodes on other texts we mention: The Autobiography of Malcolm
X [finally available in audiobook!];
Purgatorio;
Middlemarch;
Iliad.
Tseshaht First Nation commemorates the closing of Alberni Indian Residential
School.
The names of all 202 children known to have died in Vancouver Island
Residential Schools.
An article about WIllie Blackwater, a student who stood up to an abuser at
Alberni.
Next: Petrus Alfonsi: Disciplina Clericalis [translated as The Scholar’s
Guide].
[Bookshop.]
...more
59min

FAQs about The Spouter-Inn:

How many episodes does The Spouter-Inn have?

The podcast currently has 114 episodes available.