Reading and Writing

We talk about the life-affirming poems of Adam Zagajewski.    Check out my new book of poems here.  And listen to Claire's new album here. 

Check out Claire's music, art, and writing here: www.claireakebrandart.com   Claire and I have one of my favorite discussions about a very under-read book. We talk about the relationship between America and money, love and money, obsession, greed, expectations vs. reality, imagination vs. fantasy, nature, beauty, truth, hoarse-voiced entertainers on sub-par cruises, and lots more. 

Check out Claire's music, art, and writing here: www.claireakebrandart.com   In this episode, I present a recording from a class in which students and I discuss Frost's masterpiece, "Home Burial." 

Claire and I talk about the strange wonderful pleasure of this book, focusing on the first 250 pages. More Cervantes discussions to come!

"Everything that is is holy." Translation: CLAIRE IS BACK!!!!!!

Some students and I walk through Hopkins' poem, celebrating its particular pleasures and insights, as well as talking in general about how easy it is to access the strange mysterious power of a poem. 

Who's there? Who are you? Why are you here? What is it all for? Are these the right questions? Can we even know? 

I yammer on for a while about how inadequate any theory of poetry is, and then I think I end up outlining a tentative theory of poetry. Oops.   

I aim for a brief glimpse of the grandeur of these ancient scriptures, and think out loud about their central message: all is one. Along the way I ramble about death, unity, grief, the Self, the transcendent vs. the immanent, and more. 

In this episode, I talk for an entire hour as if I know something. I make many statements that have the cadence of "understanding," but mostly I'm just rambling about a very beautiful and fascinating book, The Book of Chuang Tzu. And the worse thing of all is that Claire--the only reason these recordings are worth listening to--isn't even here to stop me from rambling! 

Claire and I swoon over our favorite bits of Romeo and Juliet, and discuss why this play is not a cautionary tale of unbridled passion and the excesses of youth, but rather a hymn to the redemptive powers of love itself. 

Claire and I celebrate this under-read hidden gem, the first novel in Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet." We wander through topics like love, sex, memory, time, prose style, modernism, and much more. 

Claire and I weep over the end of Dante's sublime poem and try to describe, in some small way, the power of his mystical vision of unity for the modern reader.

Claire and I climb the mountain of purgatory with Dante and Virgil and talk about pride, love, morality, freedom, pleasure, Christ, grief, trials, suffering, and lots lots more. 

Claire and I walk with Dante and Virgil through hell. Along the way, we talk about all manner of things: pity, sin, reading, love, exploration, tradition, heresy, truth, and most of all why Dante is important to us, just two common readers, in the 21st century. 

Claire and I fall under the spell of Shakespeare's Macbeth, and walk through some of our favorite moments in this play. Among other things, we talk about the dangers of the imagination, the nature of paradox and truth, the cyclical nature of tragedy, the milk of human kindness, the motif of blood, and the way Macbeth (and all of us) are torn between this life and the idea of the next. Along the way we ask if there are any glimmers of hope to be found in this, Shakespeare's darkest ode to humanity.     

Claire and I swoon over one of our favorites, Conrad's Heart of Darkness. We talk about how and when to approach great books, what makes Conrad a master prose stylist, how this work subverts too-easy dichotomies of light and dark, Kurtz as a distillation of Europe, why Marlowe stays loyal to him, the horror of existence, the evil in every human heart, the dark power of nihilism, and what glimmers of light, if any, this novella offers as a source of hope. 

Claire and I chat about our love for another ancient religious text, the Tao Te Ching. We talk about doing noble things simply, and simple things nobly. We also discuss ideas like emptiness, peace, humility, immateriality, fate, balance, how this text could be relevant for artists, writers, and parents, and what it could look like to live "the Way." Loosey-goosey, loosey-goosey...

Claire and I use Emerson's life-changing essay(s) to think out loud about genius, inspiration, instinct, truth, authority, failure, beauty, good and evil, history, the literary tradition, appropriation, America, and more. 

Claire and I savor our favorite bits of the Meditations, and talk about the unity of all things, living in the moment, bearing our trials nobly, accepting pain as a part of life, how to think about change, what the duty of humans is, and much more. Also, Nietzsche somehow sneaks in to help us push back on some of Marcus Aurelius' claims, and to ask if Marcus Aurelius loves life enough, when forgetting is important and when it isn't, and how to find a balance between acceptance and hope.     

Happy 80th Birthday Bob Dylan!!!

Claire and I celebrate the Hindu epic scripture the Bhagavad Gita. We talk about the indescribability of the divine, what it means to perform worship and feel awe, the unity of all things, the divinity inside each of us, the doctrine of karma, and many practical injunctions on how to live, including detaching ourselves from the fruits of our actions, meditation, selfless service, praise, and whether or not there might be something good about the extremes of desire and passion and pain. 

Claire and I talk about Steinbeck's novella The Pearl, and consider the genre of parable, the downside of dreams, the risks of interpretation, the poisonous nature of desire, our exile from Eden, the dangers of wealth and fame, utopian thinking, Hamlet's claim that "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," and more. 

A few final thoughts. 

This time I chat with Spencer, Steven, and Cecilia about Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. We talk about silence, meaning, nothingness, God, nihilism, play, love, friendship, endurance, suicide, amnesia, King Lear, Charlie Chaplin, happiness, and more!

Emily, Allie, and I talk about more sections of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. We discuss the value of literature as a witness to human pain, the dangers of ideology, what it means to take responsibility for our suffering, how Solzhenitsyn could end up saying "bless you, prison," the power of small individual actions, how one book can change the world, and much more. 

Carter and I discuss some early chunks of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, and consider the implications of the archipelago metaphor, why it's valuable to read about atrocities, why this book has such lyrical power, what happens when we do not value freedom enough, Solzhenitsyn's provocative claim that the Gulag inmates "deserved everything" that happened to them, the dangers of lying, the consequences of political ideology, and much more. 

Emma, Rachel, and I enthuse over As You Like It. We chat about what it can teach us about writing poetry in the 21st century, in what ways poetry can delight and instruct, how Shakespeare manages to conjure believable humans, what literary irony is, why Rosalind is so captivating, why Orlando's poetry is bad, in what ways all the world is a stage, how the play itself refutes its most famous soliloquy, and much more. 

Ysa and Ethan help me celebrate the beautiful conclusion of Camus' novel The Plague. We talk about the problem of evil and suffering, how Christianity can be kept honest, how we can choose between accepting everything or denying everything, what it means to attain a happiness that knows death, in what ways we are all called upon to be healers, why there are more things in humans to admire than to despise, what it means that "the plague" never really goes away, and much more. 

Ysa, Emily, and I celebrate Whitman's masterpiece Song of Myself. We talk about what it feels like to stand in the presence of great art, what makes Whitman's poetry timeless and democratic, what aspects of his poem we can still use as models in the 21st century, how to make truth statements in poetry, how to use abstractions, how to notice moments of quiet beauty, what the poem's rhythmical power is, and much more. 

Porter, Nathan and I talk first about Camus's parable "The Myth of Sisyphus." We describe why life can rightly be called "absurd," and ask how it's possible to be happy even in pointless or futile struggle. We then touch briefly on the first half of Camus's The Plague, asking how this novel might display Sisyphean attitudes, why it opens with a suicide attempt, how the emotional struggles of these characters map our to our own during the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it makes sense to blame an omnipotent deity for such catastrophes, why it might be a bad idea to wear pajamas during Zoom calls, and much more. 

Remy and Kelly and I swoon over a few more Frost masterpieces, and talk about how poems offer temporary stays against confusion. We examine metrical variation, the relationship between the specific and the universal, the importance of getting lost, how poetry can turn the mundane into the sacred, how to rhyme well, how life imitates art, and much more. 

I chat with Calli and Brenna about Woolf's A Room of One's Own. We ask why it's hard to create literary masterpieces and what particular obstacles women have faced through the centuries. We consider Woolf's claim that "it would have been impossible...for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare." Then we react to her admonition to give voice to Shakespeare's sister, and ask what excuses we (men included) really have not to try, what progress has been made in the past hundred years, what are the dangers of hate and resentment, why it might be a mistake for anyone who writes to think of their gender, and much more. 

Taylor and Conner and I chat about Chaplin's masterpiece The Kid. We discuss a few things films can do that books can't, what aspects of film Chaplin perfected that are still around, the balance of comedy and tragedy, what makes this film "Modern," what it has to say about urban life in America, why we love the character of the Tramp even in his vices, where evil comes from, why we should distrust utopias, and how much power we actually have, despite suffering and poverty, to make the world better. 

Esther, Alexander and I chat about three of our favorite Frost poems. We examine what specifically makes them so beautiful, including: rhythm and meter, sonic texture, the power of monosyllables, universality in poetry, aphoristic wisdom, the tension between form and content, Frost's darker side, dialectical tensions in poetry, tone, and much more. 

#WeAreAllRatLickers

Melissa, Sydney, and I talk about death. What does it mean to think well about death? How much can we or should we think about our eventual demise? Should we live every day as if we were dying? Even if we could, would this be desirable? Why might it be healthy to be close to death, and how should we react to deaths of those around us? To help us answer these questions, and many others, we consider Tolstoy's brilliant novella, and highlight many of its most beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking moments. 

I chat with Baylie and Makayla about why life is worth living. We explore Father Zosima's life as an embodied refutation to Ivan Karamazov's rational arguments about the nature of suffering. We consider how each person is indeed responsible for the sins of all people everywhere, why this attitude will lead to salvation, why Christ is such a potent model for how to live in the world, how to react to suffering, why birds, leaves, and trees make life worth living, why the earth deserves to be kissed, how heaven is within us, and the salvific power of love. To borrow from Whitman: "Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour."

I chat with Liam and Elizabeth about Ivan Karamazov's objections to life and the world. We consider the ubiquity of human suffering, and agree with Ivan that if we had to found a universal harmony on the tears of one child, we would not do it. After this we chat about Ivan's "poem" and explore the relationship between freedom and suffering, the ways in which this text predicts the totalitarian mindset, and the mysterious significance of Christ's kiss.   

Kailey, Lydia and I talk about Sylvia Plath's Ariel. We consider only a few of the ways this "autobiography of a fever" achieves its most daring effects: metaphor, pronouns, vivid imagery, provocative plainness, and repetitions combined with variation. We consider her bee poems as a series of ars poetica, and explore the possibility that her most famous poems might actually be overshadowing her best poems. 

Jacob, Felix, and I chat about Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. We discuss how reliable this narrator is, why humans can sometimes enjoy pain and despair, what causes us to act knowingly against our own self-interest, the dangers of Utopian thinking, the limits of human improvement, the relationship between free will and suffering, the limits of reason, the problem of proving the existence of God, what a "whole life" means, and much more. 

Josh and Heather and I talk about a few of our favorite Derek Walcott poems, and the reasons why they're so great. We discuss how being more specific actually helps poems be more universal; what makes the typical Walcott line so taut and vivid; how and why poets can echo the great poets of the past, and much more. 

I chat with Tacey and Cassidy about Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. We discuss some relevant details of Shelley's life, the novel's innovative structure, the Prometheus myth, the dangers of knowledge, what counts as a human and what counts as a monster, the blank slate theory, nature vs nurture, what makes this novel "Romantic," how it rebels against key Enlightenment tenets, where cruelty comes from, how this novel invented many modern sci-fi tropes, and much more. 

William and I enjoy a few early poems by Derek Walcott, and talk about the relationship between talent and practice, how to load your poem with surprises, how to write politically without being didactic, what it means to increase the emotional stakes in a poem, what the bare minimum ingredients for a great poem might be, how to make the particulars of your life seem significant and universal, and much more. 

I swoon with Claire over maybe the best poem in English, and talk about its strange non-title, what makes this poem "Romantic," the relationship between the self and nature, between the past and the present, and between childhood and adulthood. We consider Wordsworth's claim that "all which we behold is full of blessings," how the mind can become a mansion full of lovely forms, and come to the conclusion that every single second of our lives is a potential masterpiece. 

Claire and I chat about maybe the best poem in English, and discuss Romanticism and its varieties, death and immortality, why "but to think is to be full of sorrow," why we long for nature yet feel exiled from it, Eden and its aftermath, how the form of this poem helps contribute to its greatness, why a life of sensations can be more attractive than a life of thoughts, our failed attempt to make a Keats pilgrimage, and more.  

Zach and Kevin and I celebrate the conclusion of Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities. We talk about the transformation of Sydney Carton, the rage of Madame Defarge, the heroism of Miss. Pross, how giving even one person comfort counts as success in life, and how important it is to recognize both the hero and villain inside each of us. Throughout, we ask maybe the most important question: what does it mean to live "a life you love"?     

I chat with Liberty and Eliza about the middle third of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. We discuss which characters appeal to us the most, the relationship between vengeance and justice, how to overcome the desire for vengeance, and why keeping a list of offenses committed against us is a bad way to live. We also chat about mob mentality and connect this novel to recent events at the US Capitol building: what explains the phenomenon of mob mentality, and how can we balance the benefits of joining collective causes without surrendering our own agency to the momentum of the mob? Lastly, we emphasize the need for mercy--even extreme mercy--towards those who hurt us. 

I chat with Megan and Maura about the first 3rd of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. We discuss why its opening sentence has become one of the most famous sentences in English, the pros and cons of presenting history through fiction, what makes Dickens' style so appealing, how the first sections of this novel depict both French and English society, and much more. 

Hannah and Rachel and I enthuse over the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. We read a few of our favorites, and talk about what makes them so beautiful: their mixture of images and abstractions, their emotional restraint, their ultra-specificity, their irony, the way poetic form can mirror content, Bishop's approach to biographical writing, epiphanies, and maybe the most important trait to acquire as a poet: patience. 

Sarah, Janaya and I swoon over Claire Wahmanholm's Redmouth, and talk about surprises in poetry, and things like diction, mystery, white space, erasure poetry, how to convey emotions and ideas through images and sounds, how living poets should relate to the tradition, and much more.