Versecraft

Topics discussed in this episode:

-Email me your questions!! 

-Cameron's substack, "Minor Tiresias"

-My poem, "At Woodlawn" in Merion West

-My poem, "Aztec Support" in Light

-My episode on Learning the Secrets of English Verse

-"Missing Measures" and "All the Fun's In How You Say A Thing" by Timothy Steele

-De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum

-"Notes On Metre" by Otto Jespersen

-The Trager-Smith school of linguistics

-The Halle-Keyser theory of prosody

-Paul Kiparsky

-Seymour Chapman

-"The Rhythms of English Poetry" by Derek Attridge

-"The Origin of Writing" by Roy Harris

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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 here

Send me your AMA questions for Versecraft 100!

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Greatest Generation poets

-"Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry" by Howard Nemerov

-"De Anima" by Aristotle

-On loose iambics

-The ghost of Sapphics

-A transexual volta

-Life engenders the great romance of death

-"Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

-The nature of empathy and tragedy

-Orpheus and Eurydice and my Shane McCrae Episode

-Cupid like you've never seen him before

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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:

Bird Watcher

It returns to the same nest. The watcher lies

beneath spring brushwood to await its coming–

at watch so long he dreams himself becoming

less than himself and more, the landscape’s eyes. 

Though far beyond his eyes, beyond the range

of field-glasses, he knows it breaks no bonds: 

its instinct to his knowledge corresponds,

riding the current of the season’s change. 

What is there in a small bird’s blood that learns

to plot its course by sun and stars, being drawn

yearly toward a lost, remembered dawn? 

The watcher broods on this. The bird returns.

And all its colours flash where he attends–

a deep blue mantling rust and white. It sings

caged in his retina; then on curving wings

veers off to vanish where the human ends. 

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-My episode with Zina and David on Fireside Chat

-My essay, The Iron Lyre

-My essay, The Monumentalist Manifesto

-Subscribe to the Versecraft substack! 

-Also subscribe to Zina, David, Matthew, Ethan, Alice, Steve, and Chris's substacks!

-My interview with Dick Davis

-John Ruskin and William Morris

-The Books of Enoch

-"To A Waterfowl" by William Cullen Bryant

-"Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens

-A Poeta Ad Avem

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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 (/ /)

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Go buy Learning the Secrets of English Verse!

-The Monumentalist Manifesto

-My episode, The Idea Of A Poetry Conservatory

-Poetry as skill

-The Fitzgerald system of scansion

-Parallelism, Syllabics, Loose Iambics, Stress-counting, rhyme-driving, sprung rhythm, oh my!

-"All the Fun's In How You Say A Thing" by Timothy Steele

-Sonnets don't cure polio, but they're pretty great.

-Rhyme Royal, Ottava Rima, Spenserians, Onegin, oh my!

-L'dor Vador

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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 include:

-Your host has an identity crisis

-RIP POETRY SAYS!

-Listen to Alice on Milton and with me.

-Moira Egan!

-My Pindar essay

-My Melville essay

-The Iron Lyre!

-Matthew, Alice, and I argue about The Iron Lyre

-THE ERN MALLEY HOAX

-The New York School and the Generation of '68

-Read the entire text of The Darkening Ecliptic here.

-A Primer of English Versification

-Dickinson and Blake

-The loneliness of love

-The mysticism of lust

-Embracing the eternal vibration, man.

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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

Link to translations

Topics discussed:

-Alice tackles Milton on Poetry Says

-Check out my Substack here! 

-My episode on Ryan Wilson

-My episode on Geoffrey Hill

-The long and short of a long fellow

-Longfellow's Dante

-The Monster of Literature

-Romance languages and hendecasyllabics

-Faithful to which fidelity?

-Translational hijinks ensue

-Mosaic rhymes!

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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

Note: My use of the phrase "men without chests" and Matthew's were completely coincidental! 

Text of poem:

Lachrimae Antiquae Novae

Crucified Lord, so naked to the world,

you live unseen within that nakedness,

consigned by proxy to the judas-kiss

of our devotion, bowed beneath the gold,

with re-enactments, penances foretold:

scentings of love across a wilderness

of retrospection, wild and objectless

longings incarnate in the carnal child.

Beautiful for themselves the icons fade;

the lions and the hermits disappear.

Triumphalism feasts on empty dread,

fulfilling triumphs of the festal year.

We find you wounded by the token spear.

Dominion is swallowed with your blood.

Topics discussed:

Subscribe to Versecraft on Substack!

The SLEERICKETS Geoffrey Hill episode

-Poetic accessibility, pro and contra

-John Dowland's "Lachrimae"

-My episode on Eliot's East Coker IV

-Choriambs??

-Scansion vs. delivery

-Hill's vorticism

-John Henry Newman's "illative sense" 

-The Wordsworthian cult of the child

-Plato's "Meno" dialogue

-Childhood neuroplasticity

-Psychedelic rewiring of the brain (see Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind")

-The Anglican tension

-"The Abolition of Man" by C.S. Lewis

-Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene"

-Old tears renewed

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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:

Nor strange it is, to us who walk in bonds

Of flesh and time, if virtue's self awhile

Gleam dull like sunless ice; whilst graceful guile—

Blood-flecked like hematite or diamonds

With a red inward spark—to reconcile

Beauty and evil seems and corresponds

So well with good that the mind joys to have

Full wider jet and scope nor swings and sleeps

Forever in one cradle wearily:

Like those vast weeds that off d'Acunha's isle

Wash with the surf and flap their mighty fronds

Mournfully to the dipping of the wave,

Yet cannot be disrupted from their deeps

By the whole heave and settle of the sea.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-That time Italy almost got involved in the Civil War

-Transcendentalism (or not)

-Hawthorne continues to demonstrate his good taste

-Yvor Winters? Witter Bynner? Who names these people? 

-Previous feature N. Scott Momaday

-Nonce sonnets!

-Antinomian ruminations

-Virtue vs. Goodness

-The cradle and the weed

-Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym"

-Pesky dualities

-Surfing the Tao

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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

Read the text of the poem here

Topics discussed in this episode include:

The Iron Lyre: Poetry, Heavy Metal, and the New Sublime

Alice and Elijah vs. The Abyss on SLEERICKETS

Melissa Range!

Aaron Baker!

David Southward!

"The Rhythms of English Poetry" by Derek Attridge

My John Donne episode

My George Herbert episode

My Gerard Manley Hopkins episode

My Mark Jarman episode

Speech stress vs. meter

Adventures in etymology

What was accomplished on the cross?

The Aztec cosmic blood machine

Un triolet par moi

We are worms!

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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 (/ /)

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Jewelcraft, Housecraft, Guitarcraft

-The utilities of form

-David Gilmour

-The mysticism of scientific discovery

-Technology: What is it good for?

-Cosmic double-consciousness

-Does a cosmic perspective lead to enlightenment or nihilism?

-The functional aesthetics of Nature

Support the show

VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK 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 (/ /)