Versecraft Elijah Perseus Blumov

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: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

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 (/ /)

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.
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: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

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:
 
-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.
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: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

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 (/ /)

Poems discussed on this episode include:
 
"Are They Shadows" by Samuel Daniel"To Heaven" by Ben Jonson"The Kraken" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson"Aspecta Medusa" by Dante Gabriel RossettiSonnet VII by George Santayana"Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers"What Are Years" by Marianne Moore"My Son, My Executioner" by Donald Hall"Drought" by Catherine Chandler (see show transcript for text)"Elegy" by John Dunn SmithSupport 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: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

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: Sorry about the little skip in the concluding reading-- don't know why that happened. 

Text of the poem here.
 
Topics discussed in this episode include:
 
-"In Defense of Reason" by Yvor Winters
-"A Winters Tale" on SLEERICKETS
-"The Seriousness of Yvor Winters" by David Yezzi
-"The Absolutist: Yvor Winters" by Jan Schreiber
-"What You Need to Know About Yvor Winters" by James Matthew Wilson (also includes other cool links!)
-"Wisdom and Wilderness" by Dick Davis
-The morality of poetry and evaluative criticism
-The Wintersian legacy
-Yes, he really does sound like that
-The superiority of the heroic couplet
-Flesh, spirit, and sexual-religious vegetables
-Love vs. lust
-Poems that outlast everlasting love
 
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: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

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:
-RIP N. Scott Momaday
-Gather ye old buds while ye may
-32 Poems
-David's new collection, Newly Not Eternal
-"Iscariot's Psalm" by George David Clark
-Read the earlier version of "Shiversong" here
-The 'ol feminine-acephalous combo (we need a real name for this)
-Not rhythmic, but METRICAL modulation
-"The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens
-Job 38
-Lear 4:1
-"The Need Of Being Versed In Country Things" by Robert Frost
-"Boy At The Window" by Richard Wilbur
-The Agony In The Garden
-"My Prime Of Youth Is But A Frost Of Cares" by Chidiock Tichborne
-"Oh no! The rancor!" 
-Words are straw, and the poem is a scarecrow
 
Text of poem:
 
Shiversong

Given snow
That doesn’t flinch
To throw its pounds
Through heaven inch
By inch, that sows
A billion motes
Of chill into
This ground man can’t
Defend; and given
Wind that won’t
Begin to tell
Us how it’s driven,
Where it fell from,
What it’s meant
To blow and which
Proud limbs the clouds
Want riven since
It doesn’t dimly
Know, or even
Why the howling
Whims have pardoned
Us thus far;
Given such,
It’s hard to watch
The black-eyed scarecrow
Some fool left here
Miming care
Above the blighted
Garden, though
Tonight he seems
Intent to wrack
The soil and climb
The air, to fly,
To crash his flimsy
Cross against
The deadpan rancor
In the vast
Grim sky. 


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: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

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 (/ /)