71 episodes
Versecraft Elijah Perseus Blumov
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- Arts
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4.7 • 23 Ratings
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Exploring the art of poetry through the craft of some of the world's best but most underrated poems.
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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.
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 (/ /) -
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.
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 (/ /) -
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.
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 (/ /) -
10 Poems I Like
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 (/ /) -
"The Marriage" by Yvor Winters
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 (/ /) -
"Shiversong" by George David Clark
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 (/ /)
Customer Reviews
Refreshing
While the preface indicates that this is a podcast for poetic dissection, there is much more on offer.
Versecraft topics run the gambit from homosexuality to feminism to suicide to lust, history, music, abortion, rap, love, and on, and on.. the ground covered is broad and can be bold. It doesn’t just poke at the heart of what humans can really do with language, but what we choose to communicate and how. It presents a poetry which you can interpret, rather than intuit alone.
In a world that is flush with feelings of meaninglessness and nihilism Versecraft offers a refreshingly purposeful and serious take on the human experience, as viewed through a particular artistic window.
Not to say some of the content isn’t controversial- Elijah definitely rubs the established poetry community the wrong way at times. However, though some may bristle at the delivery, as a podcast Versecraft has ample entertainment and educational value to go along with that bold, refreshing perspective. 5/5.
An exceptionally thoughtful and well-crafted podcast
I discovered Versecraft during a Keats binge over the weekend. My goal was to hear as many of the great poems spoken aloud as possible, and so I came to this first because I enjoyed Blumov’s recitation of “On First Seeing the Elgin Marbles” more than the other options. His commentary turned out to be even more of a highlight. I appreciated his sophistication in making a strong, interpretive reading without veering off into speculation. I also enjoyed his use of critical terms for the sake of fluid communication (we hear of topoi and trochaic substitutions) while resisting the urge toward jargon for its own sake. Since listening to the Keats episode I’ve also tuned in for “Marriage as a Problem of Universals” and the intercalated episode on the nature of art. I’ve been impressed by each of these and look forward to hearing more in the future!
Already One of the Best Poetry Podcasts
I have been looking for a podcast like this for a long time, a poetry show that discusses the intricate details of poetry—meter, rhyme, rhythm, lines, etc. Most poetry podcasts are dull or superfluous, a waste of time. Versecraft has now joined a short list of good ones, a list which especially includes Sleerickets and Poetry Says, and I believe Versecraft is going to be right alongside those two for me now.