44 episodes
Versecraft Elijah Perseus Blumov
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- Arts
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4.7 • 21 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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"Mother Carey's Hen" by David Yezzi
Text of poem HERE
No more Versecraft until October! Sorry :(
BUY SHIRTS
Topics discussed in this episode include:
-Matthew comes for my prosodic neck (mea culpa: his reading was first foot trochee, feminine ending).
-Rabbi Neil Blumofe brings up Pirkei Avot
-Susan Spear and Catherine Chandler
-David Yezzi!
-Yezzi's new Anthony Hecht biography, Late Romance
-Matthew interviews David here
-Yezzi's new Selected, More Things In Heaven
-Mother Carey, Mater Cara, Stella Maris
-Metrical schemes and ambiguous scansions
-Salty mirages
-The Tao of the petrel
-Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, "Following Nature"
-The Post-Symbolist Method
Support the showBUY 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 Sponge" by Joshua Mehigan
Text of poem here.
Order Versecraft merch here!
Topics discussed in this episode include:
-Matthew's new book, Midlife!
-Joshua Mehigan and his books, The Optimist and Accepting the Disaster
-Josh's interview on SLEERICKETS
-American Naturalism
-Josh's poem Down In the Valley
-Sponges 101
-Parapraxis, aka "The Freudian slip"
-Venice by Herman Melville
-The gang and I talk The Pathetic Fallacy on SLEERICKETS
-Monism, Pantheism, Mysticism, oh my!
-Zen and the art of microbe filtration
-Everything is connected, man!
-Learning how to be and not to be mortal.
-The Hindu Asrama system
-Accepting our disaster
Support the showBUY 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 (/ /) -
Haydn In Plain Style: An Interview With Dick Davis
Topics discussed in this episode include:
E.M. Forster
“The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” by Edward Fitzgerald
Thomas Hardy
W.H. Auden
“Troilus and Criseyde” by Geoffrey Chaucer
“Vis and Ramin” by Gorgani
“Wisdom and Wilderness” by Dick Davis
Thom Gunn
Yvor Winters
Fulke Greville
Edgar Bowers
Mozart vs. Haydn
“The Creation” by Joseph Haydn
“Requiem” by W.A. Mozart
“Symphony 9” by Franz Schubert
“Requiem” by Michael Haydn
The Creative and the Erotic
The Spirituality of Old Age
William Wordsworth
“The Poetry of Sturge Moore” by Edgar Bowers (thanks Shane!)
Atheism and Morality
Embracing Nothingness
“A Personal Sonnet” by Dick Davis
Text of poem:
A Personal Sonnet
How strange this life is mine, and not another,
this jigsaw... each irrevocable piece.
That bad, unfinished business of my brother,
dead at nineteen; my gadding years in Greece
and Italy; life lived, not understood;
a sunset in Kerala, when it seemed
the sun had risen on my life for good.
All this was real, but seems now as if dreamed.
The presences I've loved, and poetry--
faces I cannot parse or paraphrase
whose mystery is all that they reveal;
the Persian poets who laid hands on me
and whispered that all poetry is praise:
these are the dreams that turned out to be real.
Support the showBUY 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 (/ /) -
"Athena" by Amy Clampitt
Buy Versecraft merch HERE
Read text of poem HERE
Topics discussed in this episode include:
-No Versecraft next week! :(
-R.S. Gwynn
-On late-bloomers in poetry
-What Krishna meant
-The life-changing power of the unicorn tapestries
-The Amy Clampitt Residency Program and Virginia Konchan
-The "Tails To Heads" Maneuver.
-"The Eumenides" by Aeschylus
-We're gonna need to see some Id
-Pathos, Bathos, and whoever the other musketeers are...
-Alicia Stallings' wonderful essay on the Parthenon, "Frieze Frame"
-I just really wanted an excuse to say "apotropaic"
-Every culture on earth seems to have beef with snakes
-The cultural appropriation of Chaos
-You Kant always get what you want
-The deep logic of tragedy
-We are ourselves both god and monster.
Support the showBUY 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 (/ /) -
"Trolling For Blues" by Richard Wilbur
Order Versecraft merch HERE
Topics discussed in this episode include:
-Varieties of Modernism: The Big Six
-Formalism and Cosmic Rebellion
-Wilbur's audacious sanity
-The Idea Of Literary Celebrity At Key West
-Accent vs. Stress
-Measuring my stress levels
-And isn't it ionic... don't you think?
-The temptation to see ourselves in Nature
-"I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud" by William Wordsworth
-"The Garden" by Andrew Marvell
-Wilbur's version of Altered States
-Or maybe, Wilbur's version of Go Into The Water
-God dreams of fishes
-Nature itself is the strangest thing you could imagine
Read the text of the poem here
Support the showBUY 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 (/ /) -
"East Coker IV" by T.S. Eliot
Get Versecraft merch HERE!
Topics discussed in this episode include:
-"T.S. Eliot: The Illusion of Reaction" by Yvor Winters
-Les poetes maudites Tristan Corbiere et Jules Laforgue
-When Eliot was taken to Pound town
-The objective correlative and its problems
-This is basically what East Coker is
-The "Logic" of Imagery (Crane: "Well, one of us is going to have to change!")
-Nancy Drew And The Curious Case of Why Eliot Thinks He's A Classicist
-The Dissociation of Sensibility
-"Life is difficult, so like... poetry should be difficult, man!"
-The fallacy of imitative form
-"Sweet Caroline" just sounds better than "Sweet Jacobean"
-A forbidden fruit a day keeps Dr. Jesus away
-Every rose has its thorn, except Mary's
-From Satan's creature to God's preacher
Text of poem:
East Coker IV
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
Support the showBUY 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.