Versecraft

Versecraft

By Elijah Perseus BlumovArts
Download on the App Store

Versecraft episodes

  • "Phenomena, Noumena, Startling Sparrows" by Stephen Kampa

    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

    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 (/ /)

    33 min
  • The Case For Poetic Patronage

    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

    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 (/ /)

    26 min
  • A Lover's Quarrel with Robert Frost

    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

    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 (/ /)

    41 min
  • Guardians of Matter: Timothy Steele's "Anima" and the Pathetic Fallacy

    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

    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 (/ /)

    30 min
  • Giving the Devil His Due: The Value of the Romantic Anti-Hero

    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

    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 (/ /)

    27 min
  • "Apollinian" by Amit Majmudar

    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

    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 (/ /)

    29 min
  • "Eurydice On the Art of Poetry" by Shane McCrae

    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

    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 (/ /)

    27 min
  • Folie a Deux: Laura Riding and Robert Graves

    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

    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 (/ /)

    27 min
  • Fulke Greville and the Rejection of Courtly Love

    The soundtrack to today's episode

     

    Topics discussed in this episode:

    -Norman Finkelstein and Restless Messengers 

    -Formal Poet Voltron At Loganberry Books!! Get over here! 

    -Three great things: Literary Matters, 32 Poems, SLEERICKETS

    -Ma! I'm On Sleerickets!

    -Pre-12th century Medieval heroic poetry 

    -Chivalry vs. Courtly Love

    -Slammin the canon

    -Dante is a sad, strange little man 

    -and Petrarch needs to get a life

    -The 16th Century Lyric in England by Yvor Winters

    -Name a more iconic duo (power couple??) than Phil and Fulke. 

    -"Elegy For Philip Sidney" by Fulke Greville

    -Caelica C by Fulke Greville

    -Caelica CII by Fulke Greville 

    -Chorus Sacerdotum by Fulke Greville

    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 (/ /)

    32 min
  • To Be Or Not: Dunbar and Juster On Suicide

    Topics discussed in this episode include:

     

    -That famous soliliquy

    -"The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus

    -Inferno Canto XIII

    -"Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton

    -The Catechism of the Catholic Church

    -Prayopavesa

    -Martyrs, Berserkers, Stoics and Samurai

    -"The Right To Die" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

    -"No" by A.M. Juster

    -"Resume" by Dorothy Parker

    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 (/ /)

    26 min

About Versecraft

From the publisher's feed

Exploring the art of poetry through the craft of some of the world's best but most underrated poems.

More shows like Versecraft

Poetry Off the Shelf by Poetry Foundation

Poetry Off the Shelf

440 Listeners

The Ben Shapiro Show by The Daily Wire

The Ben Shapiro Show

152,949 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,559 Listeners

SLEERICKETS by Matthew Buckley Smith

SLEERICKETS

39 Listeners