The Long and Short

London Review of Books
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The Long and Short

Mark Ford and Seamus Perry folllow on from their ‘revolutionary ☆☆☆☆☆’ (The Times) series on 'Modern-ish Poets' , to look at long poems and the short stories in 19th- and 20th-century literature. Episodes will appear on the 24th of each month. Mark Ford is Professor of English at University College, London, and Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford. The Long and Short is part of the Close Readings podcasts collection from the London Review of Books. Subscribe here or on the London Review of Books channel and access all our Close Readings series in full. Find our channel page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/channel/london-review-of-books/id6450677311

  1. EPISODE 1

    Introducing The Long and Short

    Seamus Perry and Mark Ford introduce their series on long poems and short stories from the 19th and 20th centuries, and consider what the qualities that define each form.

    9 min

  2. EPISODE 2

    Tennyson's 'Maud'

    Mark and Seamus’s starting point for The Long and Short is Tennyson’s ‘Maud’, a weird and disturbing poem about obsession that Tennyson himself was obsessed by. He would recite it in full at the drop of a hat, sometimes more than once, to friends and foes alike – even though it received notoriously bad reviews when it was published. This episode considers why the poem meant so much to him, and what it tells us about the Victorian age.

    45 min

  3. EPISODE 3 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself'

    Mark and Seamus turn to ‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman, for Mark 'one of the most exciting things literature has to offer'. They discuss the extraordinary physicality and exuberance of this seminal American poem, its relationship with urbanism, capitalism and sexuality, and its Johnny Appleseed-spirit, among many other things.

    57 min

  4. EPISODE 4 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Henry James's short stories

    Mark and Seamus considers the short stories of Henry James, looking in particular at ‘The Aspern Papers’ which, like Tennyson’s ‘Maud’, offers a diagnosis of obsession, in this case through a sensuous, excruciating and often comedic Venetian psychodrama. They discuss the emergence of the short story at the end of the 19th century, and how certain features of the form – its attachment to unresolved endings, its debt to the dramatic monologue – can be found in James’s own stories, along with his other major themes, such as the tortured relationship between the public and private, and the experience of Americans in Europe.

    55 min

  5. EPISODE 5 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Katherine Mansfield's short stories

    In episode four, we arrive at the squarely modernist Katherine Mansfield, whose writing famously attracted the envy of Virginia Woolf. Mark and Seamus discuss the decisive break modernist story makes from its 19th century predecessors, exemplified in Mansfield’s work. At turns lyrical, ruthless, moving and darkly comic, these stories demonstrate her knack for close observation and mimicry – no wonder one of them is Mark’s ‘desert island’ story.

    59 min

  6. EPISODE 6 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Hart Crane's 'The Bridge'

    In their fifth episode, Mark and Seamus reach their first 20th century poet of the series, the Ohio-born, New York-loving ad man Hart Crane, and his epic 1930 work The Bridge. Directly inspired by The Waste Land, The Bridge sought to address modernity, as Eliot had done, with all its conflicts, contradictions and difficulties, but infuse it with a Whitman-esque expression of American greatness. Mark and Seamus discuss Crane’s multi-faceted mythologisation of the bridge, the baroque complexity of his language, the deployment of Robert Browning and Gerard Manley Hopkins in service of his questing American origin story, and the personal struggles of a man who, for his brief life, found himself in the exhilarating creative centre of modernist experimentation.

    1h 3m

  7. EPISODE 7 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    D.H. Lawrence's short stories

    Controversial, compulsive, and overwhelmingly charismatic, D.H. Lawrence continues to exert an undeniable magnetism through his novels and poetry. But, as Mark argues in this episode, the quintessential Lawrence lies in his shorter fiction. Focusing on five stories that span Lawrence’s career, Mark and Seamus discuss the strange mix of uninhibitedness and meticulous detail that make Lawrence’s work essential reading. Stories discussed in this episode: ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ ‘The Prussian Officer’ ‘England, my England’ ‘The Blind Man’ ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’

    59 min

  8. EPISODE 8 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish’

    Seamus and Mark step into the counterculture with two long poems, ‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish’, by Allen Ginsberg, a Beat poet-celebrity with a utopian vision for an America rescued from its corrupted institutions and vested interests. Published in 1956, ‘Howl’ influenced post-war culture like no other literary work, a mind-expanded free-verse jeremiad that is also a celebratory poem of absolute ruin, it offered a restless generation a seductive escape from what Lowell called the ‘tranquillised fifties’. In his intensely confessional 1961 poem ‘Kaddish’, a eulogy to his dead mother, Ginsberg offered a graphic account of his traumatic childhood and evolution that plugged directly into his era’s obsession with subjectivity. Seamus and Mark discuss some of Ginsberg’s influences – including Whitman, Carlos Williams, O’Hara and Blake – and the far-reaching impact of his work, as well as Mark’s own experiences meeting the poet.

    58 min
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Mark Ford and Seamus Perry folllow on from their ‘revolutionary ☆☆☆☆☆’ (The Times) series on 'Modern-ish Poets' , to look at long poems and the short stories in 19th- and 20th-century literature. Episodes will appear on the 24th of each month. Mark Ford is Professor of English at University College, London, and Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford. The Long and Short is part of the Close Readings podcasts collection from the London Review of Books. Subscribe here or on the London Review of Books channel and access all our Close Readings series in full. Find our channel page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/channel/london-review-of-books/id6450677311

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