The Troubadour Podcast

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For the Romantics Dreams played a very special role in our lives. It was an indication of our imaginative capacities to reach into other realms. In this poem we experience a dream that Blake had about an ant that becomes isolated from its community. 

We learn more about Blakes view of imagination, the self, innocence and the loss of innocence in "A Dream."

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Poe was a proponent of a "single unified effect" in his fiction work. Some emotion that all of the parts of the story lead up to and create.

In The Cask of Amontillado we can experience the fear of unknown death by the character Fortunato. Or we can experience the fear of our own potential for violence in the narrator Montressor. Which one do you experience?

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How should we perceive children?  Are children born with sin as the Calvinists believed? Do infants retain a memory of God as some Romantics believed? Are children, as Rousseau taught, naturally good with an innate ability to learn?

In these two poems we will explore how William Blake, a Romantic poet, gave voice to the voiceless infants. 

We will also discuss why these poems are useless by themselves but profound within the context of The Songs of Innocence and Experience.

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This is a great example of William Blake's expression of the dialectic process. There are two nurse's songs in Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Each one reveals the inner feelings of a nurse as she is watching over a group of her wards. Each poem is in contrast to the other and speaking through the other.

This is a shorter episode because these poems are both more on the surface. But they are valuable to understanding Blake's book as a whole.

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Night may be a time for partying in 2020, but two hundred years ago night represented terror and death.

In this poem we will explore a deep theme that runs throughout both the Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience. It will be important to read or listen to this poem before we read the songs of experience.

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In this episode I have a movie recommendation too!

There are two Holy Thursdays, one in The Songs of Innocence and another in the Songs of Experience. The focus for this episode is the innocence.

As with other songs of innocence poems, there is a layer of darkness just beneath the surface. Ostensibly this is a poem about an annual procession of orphans in London called Ascension Day. The poem is told from the perspective of a casual observer of the ceremony.

We'll go line by line and see how Blake is using the form and meaning of his poem to vibrate your brain in such a way as to allow you to understand a deeper meaning behind this ceremony.

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This is a very simple poem about a mother who sits by her infant's cradle while he sleeps and sings him a song. The deeper question to ask is, why is she crying?

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I had the pleasure to sit down with Jason Crawford of The Roots of Progress to discuss human progress in the arts and sciences.

We discussed quite a bit, including:
The concept of progress
Progress in ancient Greece and Modern progress
How it can be lost
How art can fuel human progress
Explorers like Vasco Balboa and the myth of Eldorado
History of bronze, steel and other technologies
And so much more!

Enjoy this great conversation and let us know what you think. Is our ability to continue creating new inventions and making new discoveries coming to an end?

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Next to The Tell-Tale Heart, this short tale by Poe is one of his most famous today. It is the story of a man captured by the Spanish Inquisition and sent to a dark pit where he received the worst psychological tortures.

We tend to think of Poe as purely a horror writer, which he is. But in Part 2 of this show I will discuss more of Poe's contributions to science fiction, which are present even in this work.

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A new theme from The Song's of Innocence and Experience by Blake starts to take shape with this poem.

In simple language, understandable to a 5 year old, Blake uses words to paint a picture of a kind of fairy tale land. This is a perfect land that can actually exist one day. To get to that day requires just one important condition.

The Laughing Song 

By William Blake

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,

And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;

When the air does laugh with our merry wit,

And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

when the meadows laugh with lively green,

And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,

When Mary and Susan and Emily

With their sweet round mouths sing 'Ha, ha he!'

When the painted birds laugh in the shade,

Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread:

Come live, and be merry, and join with me,

To sing the sweet chorus of 'Ha, ha, he!'