Versecraft

Mea culpa: "The Neural Lyre" was published in 1983, not 1994. Don't know why I said that! 

Read today's poem here

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-William Paley's watchmaker analogy

-Problems with teleological arguments

-Brandon Carter's Anthropic Principle

-Multiverse/many worlds theory

-John Archibald Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle

-"It from bit"

-George Berkeley's Idealism

-Vedanta Hinduism

-"The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" 

-Barrow and Tipler's Final Anthropic Principle

-"The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's theology of the noosphere and omega point

-"Everything That Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor

-Turner's essay, "The Neural Lyre" 

-Turner's book, "Natural Classicism"

-Turner's epic poems: The New World, Genesis, Apocalypse

-The transtemporal community of humanity

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Mea culpa: Apologies for my faint audio in the beginning!

Soundtrack to this episode

Second soundtrack, because... I had to.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Thom Gunn and some of his literary interests (Henry James, George Macdonald, Saki, Ovid, etc.)

-My episode on Thom Gunn

-My episode on Timothy Steele

-Read The Classical Outlook!!

-Writing from experience vs. writing from ideas

-"Missing Measures" by Timothy Steele

-All the Fun's In How You Say a Thing, 2nd Edition!

-Desert Places by Robert Frost

-How form informs content

-The importance of rhythmic modulation

-"The Audible Reading of Poetry" by Yvor Winters

-"Versification: A Short Introduction" by James McAuley

-The 20th century metrical Renaissance

-Bring back verse epistles!

-Yvor Winters's criticism: pro and contra

-The Plain Style

-The Stanford School: Yvor Winters, Janet Lewis, J.V. Cunningham, Edgar Bowers, Helen Pinkerton, Thom Gunn, etc.

-X.J. Kennedy

-Palo Alto poets vs. San Francisco poets

-The Curious Case of Thom Gunn

-What Winters and Poe have in common

-The Smith, Wilson, Clark reading

-"Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of Steele"

-Waiting for the Storm by Timothy Steele

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Soundtrack to this episode (it's Stephen Kampa!)

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Go read New Verse Review!

-Go listen to my talk on SLEERICKETS about Horace's Ars Poetica!

-Go listen to the mighty Fer de Lance!

-The Sleerickets Stephen Kampa episode

-Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

-From Transcendental Idealism to Transcendentalism

-Romanticism as post-Kantian reaction 

-Schelling, Schlegel, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Freud, Coleridge, Emerson, etc. etc.

-Contemptus Mundi

-The inauthenticity of the nihilist everyman

-The Protestant anti-rationalist tradition

-Spooky Calvinist symbolism + German Romanticism + Hinduism 101 + Patriotism = Transcendentalism

-Death and Love conceived ornithologically

-More dialectical poems!


Text of poem:


Phenomena, Noumena, Startling Sparrows

Faced with the world mistaken for the world,

I’m not confused: it seems so sensible

To call the loose, cyclonic pulse of leaves

On sidewalks “physics,” and not a miracle. 

I understand a prophet undeceives 

Himself when, limping by the roadkill curled

Beside the curb, he thinks theodicy

Inadequate for even bestial pain,

Or when, dispersing the loud shroud of flies

That swaddles it, he wonders how the sane

Escape their own conclusions. Sense defies

Every compendium of mystery. 

And if I’m senseless, then, for holding this

World most enlightening when its premises

Grow thinnest, I am glad to be struck dumb.

Look: fireflies punctuate the night with green

Epigrams on love, petunias keen

For the dead possum, and electrons hum 

Concentric hymns to probability

While leaf-swirls sing in fractal harmony.

Best is this line of sparrows that have shown 

Their utter distance from the disapproving

Caws of the crows by fleshing out a moving

Ellipsis leading into the unknown. 

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Soundtrack to this episode

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray

-Portrait of the artist in a digital world

-The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

-The decline and fall of poetry

-Four paths to pecuniary stability

-My episode on Amit Majmudar

-"Patronage" by Amit Majmudar

-Techno-feudalism

-The linger of poetic mystique

-Can Poetry Matter? by Dana Gioia

-Commissions for Occasional poetry

-From philanthropy to patronage

-"Brother, can you spare a dime?"

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Soundtrack to this episode 

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-The Beatles
-Beatles documentary "Get Back" 
-"The Other Frost" by Randall Jarrell
-"Robert Frost: or, the Spiritual Drifter as Poet" by Yvor Winters
-"The Other Other Frost" by William Logan
-"The Themes of Robert Frost" by Robert Penn Warren
-"A History of Modern Poetry" by David Perkins
-Phalaecian hendacasyllabics
-Catullus I 
-Plato's "Symposium" 

Frost poems mentioned/discussed:
-The Road Not Taken
-Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
-Mending Wall
-Fire and Ice
-Nothing Gold Can Stay
-For Once, Then, Something
-Design
-Mowing
-After Apple-Picking
-Birches
-The Most of It
-The Silken Tent
-Come In
-Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
-To a Moth Seen in Winter
-Home Burial

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Soundtrack to this episode

For text of poem, please see episode transcript at versecraft.buzzsprout.com.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-C'est Moi, MBS's response to my episode Giving the Devil His Due

-My review of Matthew's book, "Midlife," entitled The Poet Laureate of Crushed Dreams

-My episode on the Pathetic Fallacy with Matthew and Alice

-"Of the Pathetic Fallacy" by John Ruskin

-Who're you callin "pathetic?" 

-Pro and Contra

-Figurative language vs. the fallacy

-The new edition of "All the Fun's In How You Say A Thing" 

-I'm interviewing Tim! 

-Watch the reading with David, Matthew, and Ryan here! 

-The Winters circle

-The New Formalism

-The pathetic fallacy is coming from inside the house! 

-Supreme fictions and noble lies

-God, Machine, and Man

-Animism and Shinto

-The Jungian anima and the feminine turn

-In pursuit of Agape

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Soundtrack to this episode

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-"The Roots of Romanticism" by Isaiah Berlin

-The Jena Set and the Schlegels

-"Rousseau and Romanticism" by Irving Babbitt

-Harold Bloom

-"Science, Politics, and Gnosticism" by Eric Voegelin

-"Classic, Romantic, and Modern" by Jacques Barzun

-Inferno IV and XXVI

-Prometheus Bound (probably not by Aeschylus)

-"Paradise Lost" by the GOAT

-The spiritual paradox of Romanticism

-Turns out limbo parties aren't so fun

-Nostalgia for Christianity

-Romantic Irony: Metatextual and Anti-Heroic

-Literature as self-exorcism

-Unambiguous Ambivalence of Judgement

-"The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoevsky

-"Hegel's Theory of Tragedy" by A.C. Bradley

-Varieties of Anti-Hero

-Literary alchemy

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Soundtrack to this episode

Text of poem

Topics discussed in this episode:

-My sojourn in Gaul

-ITER!

-Atomic Fusion

-The contemptible STEM/Humanities divide

-Amit Majmudar!

-Sleerickets Episode 144

-Amphibrachic hexameter

-"The Birth of Tragedy" by Friedrich Nietzsche

-The Solar Cycle

-Apollo, the inverse Romantic

-Homer's Odyssey

-The myth of Daphne

-Rage or Oblivion?

-Come see David, Matthew, and Ryan JUNE 13TH and Amit JULY 11TH!!

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

COME OUT TO CLEVELAND June 13th to hear David, Matthew, and Ryan read! 

Soundtrack to this episode

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Au revoir until June! 

-"The Birth of Tragedy" by Friederich Nietzsche

-"The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

-"Pere Goriot" by Honore de Balzac

-The aesthetic parasite

-"And Which of Them In Time Would Be Betrayed" by Derek Walcott

-"The Georgics" by Publius Vergilius Maro

-"The Metamorphoses" by Publius Ovidius Naso

-The tale of Orpheus and Eurydice

-"Portrait of A Lady On Fire" directed by Celine Sciamma

-"Eurydice's Footnote" by A.E. Stallings

-"Pulling the Chariot of the Sun" by Shane McCrae

-"Eurydice On the Art of Poetry" by Shane McCrae

-"The Inferno" by Dante Alighieri

-"The Odyssey" by Omeros

-"Eurydice" by Adrienne Su

-"Axel" by Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

-The Orphic imperative absorbs all

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Soundtrack to today's episode

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-"On Portents" by Robert Graves

-"The White Goddess" by Robert Graves

-"Life With The Real White Goddess" by Louis Simpson

-Poetry Messiah Witch Cult

-The Fugitives

-Misadventures in polyamory

-"A Survey of Modernist Poetry" by Riding & Graves

-"The Cool Web" by Robert Graves

-The squishiness of children

-The double-edged sword of language

-"Rational Meaning: A New Foundation for the Definition of Words" by Laura Riding

-"Death As Death" by Laura Riding: 

To conceive death as death

is difficulty come by easily,

a blankness fallen among

images of understanding,

death like a quick cold hand

on the hot slow head of suicide.

So is it come by easily

for one instant.  Then again furnaces

roar in the ears, then again hell revolves, 

and the elastic eye holds paradise

at visible length from blindness,

and dazedly the body echoes

‘like this, like this, like nothing else.’

Like nothing—a similarity 

without resemblance.  The prophetic eye, 

closing upon difficulty,

opens upon comparison,

halving the actuality

as a gift too plain, for which 

gratitude has no language,

foresight no vision.

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: [email protected]

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)