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The Common Reader
The twenty best English poets

The Common Reader

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 23, 2025 100:13


In this episode, James Marriott and I discuss who we think are the best twenty English poets. This is not the best poets who wrote in English, but the best British poets (though James snuck Sylvia Plath onto his list…). We did it like that to make it easier, not least so we could base a lot of our discussion on extracts in The Oxford Book of English Verse (Ricks edition). Most of what we read out is from there. We read Wordsworth, Keats, Hardy, Milton, and Pope. We both love Pope! (He should be regarded as one of the very best English poets, like Milton.) There are also readings of Herrick, Bronte, Cowper, and MacNiece. I plan to record the whole of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes' at some point soon.Here are our lists and below is the transcript (which may have more errors than usual, sorry!)HOGod Tier* Shakespeare“if not first, in the very first line”* Chaucer* Spenser* Milton* Wordsworth* Eliot—argue for Pope here, not usually includedSecond Tier* Donne* Herbert* Keats* Dryden* Gawain poet* Tom O'Bedlam poetThird Tier* Yeats* Tennyson* Hopkins* Coleridge* Auden* Shelley* MarvellJMShakespeareTier* ShakespeareTier 1* Chaucer* Milton* WordsworthTier 2* Donne* Eliot* Keats* Tennyson* Spencer* Marvell* PopeTier 3* Yeats* Hopkins* Blake* Coleridge* Auden* Shelley* Thomas Hardy* Larkin* PlathHenry: Today I'm talking to James Marriott, Times columnist, and more importantly, the writer of the Substack Cultural Capital. And we are going to argue about who are the best poets in the English language. James, welcome.James: Thanks very much for having me. I feel I should preface my appearance so that I don't bring your podcast and disrepute saying that I'm maybe here less as an expert of poetry and more as somebody who's willing to have strong and potentially species opinions. I'm more of a lover of poetry than I would claim to be any kind of academic expert, just in case anybody thinks that I'm trying to produce any definitive answer to the question that we're tackling.Henry: Yeah, no, I mean that's the same for me. We're not professors, we're just very opinionated boys. So we have lists.James: We do.Henry: And we're going to debate our lists, but what we do agree is that if we're having a top 20 English poets, Shakespeare is automatically in the God Tier and there's nothing to discuss.James: Yeah, he's in a category of his own. I think the way of, because I guess the plan we've gone for is to rather than to rank them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 into sort of, what is it, three or four broad categories that we're competing over.Henry: Yes, yes. TiersJames: I think is a more kind of reasonable way to approach it rather than trying to argue exactly why it should be one place above Shelly or I don't know, whatever.Henry: It's also just an excuse to talk about poets.James: Yes.Henry: Good. So then we have a sort of top tier, if not the first, in the very first line as it were, and you've got different people. To me, you've got Chaucer, Milton, and Wordsworth. I would also add Spenser and T.S. Eliot. So what's your problem with Spenser?James: Well, my problem is ignorance in that it's a while since I've read the Fairy Queen, which I did at university. Partly is just that looking back through it now and from what I remember of university, I mean it is not so much that I have anything against Spenser. It's quite how much I have in favour of Milton and Wordsworth and Chaucer, and I'm totally willing to be argued against on this, but I just can't think that Spenser is in quite the same league as lovely as many passages of the Fairy Queen are.Henry: So my case for Spenser is firstly, if you go through something like the Oxford Book of English Verse or some other comparable anthology, he's getting a similar page count to Shakespeare and Milton, he is important in that way. Second, it's not just the fairy queen, there's the Shepherd's Calendar, the sonnets, the wedding poems, and they're all highly accomplished. The Shepherd's Calendar particularly is really, really brilliant work. I think I enjoyed that more as an undergraduate, actually, much as I love the Fairy Queen. And the third thing is that the Fairy Queen is a very, very great epic. I mean, it's a tremendous accomplishment. There were lots of other epics knocking around in the 16th century that nobody wants to read now or I mean, obviously specialists want to read, but if we could persuade a few more people, a few more ordinary readers to pick up the fairy queen, they would love it.James: Yes, and I was rereading before he came on air, the Bower of Bliss episode, which I think is from the second book, which is just a beautifully lush passage, passage of writing. It was really, I mean, you can see why Keats was so much influenced by it. The point about Spenser's breadth is an interesting one because Milton is in my top category below Shakespeare, but I think I'm placing him there pretty much only on the basis of Paradise Lost. I think if we didn't have Paradise Lost, Milton may not even be in this competition at all for me, very little. I know. I don't know if this is a heresy, I've got much less time for Milton's minor works. There's Samuel Johnson pretty much summed up my feelings on Lycidas when he said there was nothing new. Whatever images it can supply are long ago, exhausted, and I do feel there's a certain sort of dryness to Milton's minor stuff. I mean, I can find things like Il Penseroso and L'Allegro pretty enough, but I mean, I think really the central achievement is Paradise Lost, whereas Spenser might be in contention, as you say, from if you didn't have the Fairy Queen, you've got Shepherd's Calendar, and all this other sort of other stuff, but Paradise Lost is just so massive for me.Henry: But if someone just tomorrow came out and said, oh, we found a whole book of minor poetry by Virgil and it's all pretty average, you wouldn't say, oh, well Virgil's less of a great poet.James: No, absolutely, and that's why I've stuck Milton right at the top. It's just sort of interesting how unbelievably good Paradise Lost is and how, in my opinion, how much less inspiring the stuff that comes after it is Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained I really much pleasure out of at all and how, I mean the early I think slightly dry Milton is unbelievably accomplished, but Samuel Johnson seems to say in that quote is a very accomplished use of ancient slightly worn out tropes, and he's of putting together these old ideas in a brilliant manner and he has this sort of, I mean I guess he's one of your late bloomers. I can't quite remember how old he is when he publishes Paradise Lost.Henry: Oh, he is. Oh, writing it in his fifties. Yeah.James: Yeah, this just extraordinary thing that's totally unlike anything else in English literature and of all the poems that we're going to talk about, I think is the one that has probably given me most pleasure in my life and the one that I probably return to most often if not to read all the way through then to just go over my favourite bits and pieces of it.Henry: A lot of people will think Milton is heavy and full of weird references to the ancient world and learned and biblical and not very readable for want of a better word. Can you talk us out of that? To be one of the great poets, they do have to have some readability, right?James: Yeah, I think so, and it's certainly how I felt. I mean I think it's not a trivial objection to have to Milton. It's certainly how I found him. He was my special author paper at university and I totally didn't get on with him. There was something about his massive brilliance that I felt. I remember feeling like trying to write about Paradise Lost was trying to kind of scratch a huge block of marble with your nails. There's no way to get a handle on it. I just couldn't work out what to get ahold of, and it's only I think later in adulthood maybe reading him under a little less pressure that I've come to really love him. I mean, the thing I would always say to people to look out for in Milton, but it's his most immediate pleasure and the thing that still is what sends shivers done my spine about him is the kind of cosmic scale of Paradise Lost, and it's almost got this sort of sci-fi massiveness to it. One of my very favourite passages, which I may inflict on you, we did agree that we could inflict poetry on one another.Henry: Please, pleaseJames: It's a detail from the first book of Paradise Lost. Milton's talking about Satan's architect in hell Mulciber, and this is a little explanation of who or part of his explanation of who Mulciber is, and he says, Nor was his name unheard or unadoredIn ancient Greece; and in Ausonian landMen called him Mulciber; and how he fellFrom Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry JoveSheer o'er the crystal battlements: from mornTo noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,A summer's day, and with the setting sunDropt from the zenith, like a falling star,On Lemnos, th' Aegaean isle. Thus they relate,ErringI just think it's the sort of total massiveness of that universe that “from the zenith to like a falling star”. I just can't think of any other poet in English or that I've ever read in any language, frankly, even in translation, who has that sort of scale about it, and I think that's what can most give immediate pleasure. The other thing I love about that passage is this is part of the kind of grandeur of Milton is that you get this extraordinary passage about an angel falling from heaven down to th' Aegean Isle who's then going to go to hell and the little parenthetic remark at the end, the perm just rolls on, thus they relate erring and paradise lost is such this massive grand thing that it can contain this enormous cosmic tragedy as a kind of little parenthetical thing. I also think the crystal battlements are lovely, so wonderful kind of sci-fi detail.Henry: Yes, I think that's right, and I think it's under appreciated that Milton was a hugely important influence on Charles Darwin who was a bit like you always rereading it when he was young, especially on the beagle voyage. He took it with him and quotes it in his letters sometimes, and it is not insignificant the way that paradise loss affects him in terms of when he writes his own epic thinking at this level, thinking at this scale, thinking at the level of the whole universe, how does the whole thing fit together? What's the order behind the little movements of everything? So Milton's reach I think is actually quite far into the culture even beyond the poets.James: That's fascinating. Do you have a particular favourite bit of Paradise Lost?Henry: I do, but I don't have it with me because I disorganised and couldn't find my copy.James: That's fair.Henry: What I want to do is to read one of the sonnets because I do think he's a very, very good sonnet writer, even if I'm going to let the Lycidas thing go, because I'm not going to publicly argue against Samuel Johnson.When I consider how my light is spent,Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,And that one Talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my Soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest he returning chide;“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”I fondly ask. But patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, “God doth not needEither man's work or his own gifts; who bestBear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His stateIs Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speedAnd post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:They also serve who only stand and wait.”I think that's great.James: Yeah. Okay. It is good.Henry: Yeah. I think the minor poems are very uneven, but there are lots of gems.James: Yeah, I mean he is a genius. It would be very weird if all the minor poems were s**t, which is not really what I'm trying… I guess I have a sort of slightly austere category too. I just do Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth, but we are agreed on Wordsworth, aren't we? That he belongs here.Henry: So my feeling is that the story of English poetry is something like Chaucer Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot create a kind of spine. These are the great innovators. They're writing the major works, they're the most influential. All the cliches are true. Chaucer invented iambic pentameter. Shakespeare didn't single handedly invent modern English, but he did more than all the rest of them put together. Milton is the English Homer. Wordsworth is the English Homer, but of the speech of the ordinary man. All these old things, these are all true and these are all colossal achievements and I don't really feel that we should be picking between them. I think Spenser wrote an epic that stands alongside the works of Shakespeare and Milton in words with T.S. Eliot whose poetry, frankly I do not love in the way that I love some of the other great English writers cannot be denied his position as one of the great inventors.James: Yeah, I completely agree. It's funny, I think, I mean I really do love T.S. Eliot. Someone else had spent a lot of time rereading. I'm not quite sure why he hasn't gone into quite my top category, but I think I had this—Henry: Is it because he didn't like Milton and you're not having it?James: Maybe that's part of it. I think my thought something went more along the lines of if I cut, I don't quite feel like I'm going to put John Donne in the same league as Milton, but then it seems weird to put Eliot above Donne and then I don't know that, I mean there's not a very particularly fleshed out thought, but on Wordsworth, why is Wordsworth there for you? What do you think, what do you think are the perms that make the argument for Wordsworth having his place at the very top?Henry: Well, I think the Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes and the Prelude are all of it, aren't they? I'm not a lover of the rest, and I think the preface to the Lyrical Ballads is one of the great works of literary criticism, which is another coin in his jar if you like, but in a funny way, he's much more revolutionary than T.S. Eliot. We think of modernism as the great revolution and the great sort of bringing of all the newness, but modernism relies on Wordsworth so much, relies on the idea that tradition can be subsumed into ordinary voice, ordinary speech, the passage in the Wasteland where he has all of them talking in the bar. Closing time please, closing time please. You can't have that without Wordsworth and—James: I think I completely agree with what you're saying.Henry: Yeah, so I think that's for me is the basis of it that he might be the great innovator of English poetry.James: Yeah, I think you're right because I've got, I mean again, waiting someone out of my depth here, but I can't think of anybody else who had sort of specifically and perhaps even ideologically set out to write a kind of high poetry that sounded like ordinary speech, I guess. I mean, Wordsworth again is somebody who I didn't particularly like at university and I think it's precisely about plainness that can make him initially off-putting. There's a Matthew Arnold quote where he says of Wordsworth something like He has no style. Henry: Such a Matthew Arnold thing to say.James: I mean think it's the beginning of an appreciation, but there's a real blankness to words with I think again can almost mislead you into thinking there's nothing there when you first encounter him. But yeah, I think for me, Tintern Abbey is maybe the best poem in the English language.Henry: Tintern Abbey is great. The Intimations of Immortality Ode is superb. Again, I don't have it with me, but the Poems in Two Volumes. There are so many wonderful things in there. I had a real, when I was an undergraduate, I had read some Wordsworth, but I hadn't really read a lot and I thought of I as you do as the daffodils poet, and so I read Lyrical Ballads and Poems in Two Volumes, and I had one of these electrical conversion moments like, oh, the daffodils, that is nothing. The worst possible thing for Wordsworth is that he's remembered as this daffodils poet. When you read the Intimations of Immortality, do you just think of all the things he could have been remembered for? It's diminishing.James: It's so easy to get into him wrong because the other slightly wrong way in is through, I mean maybe this is a prejudice that isn't widely shared, but the stuff that I've never particularly managed to really enjoy is all the slightly worthy stuff about beggars and deformed people and maimed soldiers. Wandering around on roads in the lake district has always been less appealing to me, and that was maybe why I didn't totally get on with 'em at first, and I mean, there's some bad words with poetry. I was looking up the infamous lines from the form that were mocked even at the time where you know the lines that go, You see a little muddy pond Of water never dry. I've measured it from side to side, 'Tis three feet long and two feet wide, and the sort of plainness condescend into banality at Wordsworth's worst moments, which come more frequently later in his career.Henry: Yes, yes. I'm going to read a little bit of the Intimations ode because I want to share some of this so-called plainness at its best. This is the third section. They're all very short Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,And while the young lambs boundAs to the tabor's sound,To me alone there came a thought of grief:A timely utterance gave that thought relief,And I again am strong:The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,And all the earth is gay;Land and seaGive themselves up to jollity,And with the heart of MayDoth every Beast keep holiday;—Thou Child of Joy,Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.And I think it's unthinkable that someone would write like this today. It would be cringe, but we're going to have a new sincerity. It's coming. It's in some ways it's already here and I think Wordsworth will maybe get a different sort of attention when that happens because that's a really high level of writing to be able to do that without it descending into what you just read. In the late Wordsworth there's a lot of that really bad stuff.James: Yeah, I mean the fact that he wrote some of that bad stuff I guess is a sign of quite how carefully the early stuff is treading that knife edge of tripping into banality. Can I read you my favourite bit of Tintern Abbey?Henry: Oh yes. That is one of the great poems.James: Yeah, I just think one of mean I, the most profound poem ever, probably for me. So this is him looking out over the landscape of Tinton Abbey. I mean these are unbelievably famous lines, so I'm sure everybody listening will know them, but they are so good And I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things. Therefore am I stillA lover of the meadows and the woodsAnd mountains; and of all that we beholdFrom this green earth; of all the mighty worldOf eye, and ear,—both what they half create,And what perceive; well pleased to recogniseIn nature and the language of the senseThe anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soulOf all my moral being.I mean in a poem, it's just that is mind blowingly good to me?Henry: Yeah. I'm going to look up another section from the Prelude, which used to be in the Oxford Book, but it isn't in the Ricks edition and I don't really know whyJames: He doesn't have much of the Prelude does he?Henry: I don't think he has any…James: Yeah.Henry: So this is from an early section when the young Wordsworth is a young boy and he's going off, I think he's sneaking out at night to row on the lake as you do when you with Wordsworth, and the initial description is of a mountain. She was an elfin pinnace; lustilyI dipped my oars into the silent lake,And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boatWent heaving through the water like a swan;When, from behind that craggy steep till thenThe horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,As if with voluntary power instinct,Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,And growing still in stature the grim shapeTowered up between me and the stars, and still,For so it seemed, with purpose of its ownAnd measured motion like a living thing,Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,And through the silent water stole my wayBack to the covert of the willow tree;It's so much like that in Wordsworth. It's just,James: Yeah, I mean, yeah, the Prelude is full of things like that. I think that is probably one of the best moments, possibly the best moments of the prelude. But yeah, I mean it's just total genius isn't it?Henry: I think he's very, very important and yeah, much more important than T.S. Eliot who is, I put him in the same category, but I can see why you didn't.James: You do have a little note saying Pope, question mark or something I think, don't you, in the document.Henry: So the six I gave as the spine of English literature and everything, that's an uncontroversial view. I think Pope should be one of those people. I think we should see Pope as being on a level with Milton and Wordsworth, and I think he's got a very mixed reputation, but I think he was just as inventive, just as important. I think you are a Pope fan, just as clever, just as moving, and it baffles me that he's not more commonly regarded as part of this great spine running through the history of English literature and between Milton and Wordsworth. If you don't have Pope, I think it's a missing link if you like.James: I mean, I wouldn't maybe go as far as you, I love Pope. Pope was really the first perch I ever loved. I remember finding a little volume of Pope in a box of books. My school library was chucking out, and that was the first book of poetry I read and took seriously. I guess he sort of suffers by the fact that we are seeing all of this through the lens of the romantics. All our taste about Shakespeare and Milton and Spenser has been formed by the romantics and hope's way of writing the Satires. This sort of society poetry I think is just totally doesn't conform to our idea of what poetry should be doing or what poetry is. Is there absolutely or virtually nobody reads Dryden nowadays. It's just not what we think poetry is for that whole Augustine 18th century idea that poetry is for writing epistles to people to explain philosophical concepts to them or to diss your enemies and rivals or to write a kind of Duncia explaining why everyone you know is a moron. That's just really, I guess Byron is the last major, is the only of figure who is in that tradition who would be a popular figure nowadays with things like English bards and scotch reviewers. But that whole idea of poetry I think was really alien to us. And I mean I'm probably formed by that prejudice because I really do love Pope, but I don't love him as much as the other people we've discussed.Henry: I think part of his problem is that he's clever and rational and we want our poems always to be about moods, which may be, I think why George Herbert, who we've both got reasonably high is also quite underrated. He's very clever. He's always think George Herbert's always thinking, and when someone like Shakespeare or Milton is thinking, they do it in such a way that you might not notice and that you might just carry on with the story. And if you do see that they're thinking you can enjoy that as well. Whereas Pope is just explicitly always thinking and maybe lecturing, hectoring, being very grand with you and as you say, calling you an idiot. But there are so many excellent bits of Pope and I just think technically he can sustain a thought or an argument over half a dozen or a dozen lines and keep the rhyme scheme moving and it's never forced, and he never has to do that thing where he puts the words in a stupid order just to make the rhyme work. He's got such an elegance and a balance of composition, which again, as you say, we live under romantic ideals, not classical ones. But that doesn't mean we should be blind to the level of his accomplishment, which is really, really very high. I mean, Samuel Johnson basically thought that Alexander Pope had finished English poetry. We have the end of history. He had the end of English poetry. Pope, he's brought us to the mightiest of the heroic couplers and he's done it. It's all over.James: The other thing about Pope that I think makes us underrate him is that he's very charming. And I think charm is a quality we're not big on is that sort of, but I think some of Pope's charm is so moving. One of my favourite poems of his is, do you know the Epistle to Miss Blount on going into the country? The poem to the young girl who's been having a fashionable season in London then is sent to the boring countryside to stay with an aunt. And it's this, it's not like a romantic love poem, it's not distraught or hectic. It's just a sort of wonderful act of sympathy with this potentially slightly airheaded young girl who's been sent to the countryside, which you'd rather go to operas and plays and flirt with people. And there's a real sort of delicate in it that isn't overblown and isn't dramatic, but is extremely charming. And I think that's again, another quality that perhaps we're prone not to totally appreciate in the 21st century. It's almost the kind of highest form of politeness and sympathyHenry: And the prevailing quality in Pope is wit: “True wit is nature to advantage dressed/ What often was thought, but ne'er so well expressed”. And I think wit can be quite alienating for an audience because it is a kind of superior form of literary art. This is why people don't read as much Swift as he deserves because he's so witty and so scornful that a lot of people will read him and think, well, I don't like you.James: And that point about what oft was thought and ne'er so well expressed again, is a very classical idea. The poet who puts not quite conventional wisdom, but something that's been thought before in the best possible words, really suffers with the romantic idea of originality. The poet has to say something utterly new. Whereas for Pope, the sort of ideas that he express, some of the philosophical ideas are not as profound in original perhaps as words with, but he's very elegant proponent of them.Henry: And we love b******g people in our culture, and I feel like the Dunciad should be more popular because it is just, I can't remember who said this, but someone said it's probably the most under appreciated great poem in English, and that's got to be true. It's full of absolute zingers. There's one moment where he's described the whole crowd of them or all these poets who he considers to be deeply inferior, and it turns out he was right because no one reads them anymore. And you need footnotes to know who they are. I mean, no one cares. And he says, “equal your merits, equal is your din”. This kind of abuse is a really high art, and we ought to love that. We love that on Twitter. And I think things like the Rape of the Lock also could be more popular.James: I love the Rape of the Lock . I mean, I think anybody is not reading Pope and is looking for a way in, I think the Rape of the Lock is the way in, isn't it? Because it's just such a charming, lovely, funny poem.Henry: It is. And probably it suffers because the whole idea of mock heroic now is lost to us. But it's a bit like it's the literary equivalent of people writing a sort of mini epic about someone like Elon Musk or some other very prominent figure in the culture and using lots of heroic imagery from the great epics of Homer and Virgil and from the Bible and all these things, but putting them into a very diminished state. So instead of being grand, it becomes comic. It's like turning a God into a cartoon. And Pope is easily the best writer that we have for that kind of thing. Dryden, but he's the genius on it.James: Yeah, no, he totally is. I guess it's another reason he's under appreciated is that our culture is just much less worshipful of epic than the 18th century culture was. The 18th century was obsessed with trying to write epics and trying to imitate epics. I mean, I think to a lot of Pope's contemporaries, the achievement they might've been expecting people to talk about in 300 years time would be his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the other stuff might've seen more minor in comparison, whereas it's the mock epic that we're remembering him for, which again is perhaps another symptom of our sort of post romantic perspective.Henry: I think this is why Spenser suffers as well, because everything in Spenser is magical. The knights are fairies, not the little fairies that live in buttercups, but big human sized fairies or even bigger than that. And there are magical women and saucers and the whole thing is a sort of hodgepodge of romance and fairy tale and legend and all this stuff. And it's often said, oh, he was old fashioned in his own time. But those things still had a lot of currency in the 16th century. And a lot of those things are in Shakespeare, for example.But to us, that's like a fantasy novel. Now, I love fantasy and I read fantasy, and I think some of it's a very high accomplishment, but to a lot of people, fantasy just means kind of trash. Why am I going to read something with fairies and a wizard? And I think a lot of people just see Spenser and they're like, what is this? This is so weird. They don't realise how Protestant they're being, but they're like, this is so weird.James: And Pope has a little, I mean, the Rape of the Lock even has a little of the same because the rape of the lock has this attendant army of good spirits called selfs and evil spirits called gnomes. I mean, I find that just totally funny and charming. I really love it.Henry: I'm going to read, there's an extract from the Rape of the Lock in the Oxford Book, and I'm going to read a few lines to give people an idea of how he can be at once mocking something but also quite charming about it. It's quite a difficult line to draw. The Rape of the Lock is all about a scandalous incident where a young man took a lock of a lady's hair. Rape doesn't mean what we think it means. It means an offence. And so because he stole a lock of her hair, it'd become obviously this huge problem and everyone's in a flurry. And to sort of calm everyone down, Pope took it so seriously that he made it into a tremendous joke. So here he is describing the sort of dressing table if you like.And now, unveil'd, the Toilet stands display'd,Each silver Vase in mystic order laid.First, rob'd in white, the Nymph intent adores,With head uncover'd, the Cosmetic pow'rs.A heav'nly image in the glass appears,To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;Th' inferior Priestess, at her altar's side,Trembling begins the sacred rites of Pride.What a way to describe someone putting on their makeup. It's fantastic.James: It's funny. I can continue that because the little passage of Pope I picked to read begins exactly where yours ended. It only gets better as it goes on, I think. So after trembling begins the sacred rites of pride, Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and hereThe various off'rings of the world appear;From each she nicely culls with curious toil,And decks the Goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white.Here files of pins extend their shining rows,Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux.It's just so lovely. I love a thing about the tortoise and the elephant unite because you've got a tortoise shell and an ivory comb. And the stuff about India's glowing gems and Arabia breathing from yonder box, I mean that's a, realistic is not quite the word, but that's a reference to Milton because Milton is continually having all the stones of Arabia and India's pearls and things all screwed through paradise lost. Yeah, it's just so lovely, isn't it?Henry: And for someone who's so classical and composed and elegant, there's something very Dickensian about things like the toilet, the tortoise and the elephant here unite, transform to combs. There's something a little bit surreal and the puffs, powders, patches, bibles, it has that sort of slightly hectic, frantic,James: That's sort of Victorian materialism, wealth of material objects,Henry: But also that famous thing that was said of Dickens, that the people are furniture and the furniture's like people. He can bring to life all the little bits and bobs of the ordinary day and turn it into something not quite ridiculous, not quite charming.James: And there is a kind of charm in the fact that it wasn't the sort of thing that poets would necessarily expect to pay attention to the 18th century. I don't think the sort of powders and ointments on a woman's dressing table. And there's something very sort of charming in his condescension to notice or what might've once seemed his condescension to notice those things, to find a new thing to take seriously, which is what poetry or not quite to take seriously, but to pay attention to, which I guess is one of the things that great perch should always be doing.Henry: When Swift, who was Pope's great friend, wrote about this, he wrote a poem called A Beautiful Young Lady Going to Bed, which is not as good, and I would love to claim Swift on our list, but I really can't.James: It's quite a horrible perm as well, that one, isn't it?Henry: It is. But it shows you how other people would treat the idea of the woman in front of her toilet, her mirror. And Swift uses an opportunity, as he said, to “lash the vice” because he hated all this adornment and what he would think of as the fakery of a woman painting herself. And so he talks about Corina pride of Drury Lane, which is obviously an ironic reference to her being a Lady of the Night, coming back and there's no drunken rake with her. Returning at the midnight hour;Four stories climbing to her bow'r;Then, seated on a three-legged chair,Takes off her artificial hair:Now, picking out a crystal eye,She wipes it clean, and lays it by.Her eye-brows from a mouse's hide,Stuck on with art on either side,Pulls off with care, and first displays 'em,Then in a play-book smoothly lays 'em.Now dexterously her plumpers draws,That serve to fill her hollow jaws.And it goes on like this. I mean, line after this is sort of raw doll quality to it, Pope, I think in contrast, it only illuminates him more to see where others are taking this kind of crude, very, very funny and witty, but very crude approach. He's able to really have the classical art of balance.James: Yes. And it's precisely his charm that he can mock it and sympathise and love it at the same time, which I think is just a more sort of complex suite of poetic emotions to have about that thing.Henry: So we want more people to read Pope and to love Pope.James: Yes. Even if I'm not letting him into my top.Henry: You are locking him out of the garden. Now, for the second tier, I want to argue for two anonymous poets. One of the things we did when we were talking about this was we asked chatGPT to see if it could give us a good answer. And if you use o1 or o1 Pro, it gives you a pretty good answer as to who the best poets in English are. But it has to be told that it's forgotten about the anonymous poets. And then it says, oh, that was stupid. There are quite a lot of good anonymous poets in English, but I suspect a lot of us, a lot of non artificial intelligence when thinking about this question overlook the anonymous poets. But I would think the Gawain poet and the Tom O' Bedlam poet deserve to be in here. I don't know what you think about that.James: I'm not competent to provide an opinion. I'm purely here to be educated on the subject of these anonymous poets. Henry: The Gawain poet, he's a mediaeval, assume it's a he, a mediaeval writer, obviously may well not be a man, a mediaeval writer. And he wrote Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, which is, if you haven't read it, you should really read it in translation first, I think because it's written at the same time as Chaucer. But Chaucer was written in a kind of London dialect, which is what became the English we speak. And so you can read quite a lot of Chaucer and the words look pretty similar and sometimes you need the footnotes, but when you read Gawain and The Green Knight, it's in a Northwestern dialect, which very much did not become modern day English. And so it's a bit more baffling, but it is a poem of tremendous imaginative power and weirdness. It's a very compelling story. We have a children's version here written by Selena Hastings who's a very accomplished biographer. And every now and then my son remembers it and he just reads it again and again and again. It's one of the best tales of King Arthur in his knights. And there's a wonderful book by John Burrow. It's a very short book, but that is such a loving piece of criticism that explicates the way in which that poem promotes virtue and all the nightly goodness that you would expect, but also is a very strange and unreal piece of work. And I think it has all the qualities of great poetry, but because it's written in this weird dialect, I remember as an undergraduate thinking, why is this so bloody difficult to read? But it is just marvellous. And I see people on Twitter, the few people who've read it, they read it again and they just say, God, it's so good. And I think there was a film of it a couple of years ago, but we will gloss lightly over that and not encourage you to do the film instead of the book.James: Yeah, you're now triggering a memory that I was at least set to read and perhaps did at least read part of Gawain and the Green Knight at University, but has not stuck to any brain cells at all.Henry: Well, you must try it again and tell me what you think. I mean, I find it easily to be one of the best poems in English.James: Yeah, no, I should. I had a little Chaucer kick recently actually, so maybe I'm prepared to rediscover mediaeval per after years of neglect since my degree,Henry: And it's quite short, which I always think is worth knowing. And then the Tom Bedlam is an anonymous poem from I think the 17th century, and it's one of the mad songs, so it's a bit like the Fool from King Lear. And again, it is a very mysterious, very strange and weird piece of work. Try and find it in and read the first few lines. And I think because it's anonymous, it's got slightly less of a reputation because it can't get picked up with some big name, but it is full of tremendous power. And again, I think it would be sad if it wasn't more well known.From the hag and hungry goblinThat into rags would rend ye,The spirit that stands by the naked manIn the Book of Moons defend ye,That of your five sound sensesYou never be forsaken,Nor wander from your selves with TomAbroad to beg your bacon,While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,Feeding, drink, or clothing;Come dame or maid, be not afraid,Poor Tom will injure nothing.Anyway, so you get the sense of it and it's got many stanzas and it's full of this kind of energy and it's again, very accomplished. It can carry the thought across these long lines and these long stanzas.James: When was it written? I'm aware of only if there's a name in the back of my mind.Henry: Oh, it's from the 17th century. So it's not from such a different time as King Lear, but it's written in the voice of a madman. And again, you think of that as the sort of thing a romantic poet would do. And it's strange to find it almost strange to find it displaced. There were these other mad songs. But I think because it's anonymous, it gets less well known, it gets less attention. It's not part of a bigger body of work, but it's absolutely, I think it's wonderful.James: I shall read it.Henry: So who have you got? Who else? Who are you putting in instead of these two?James: Hang on. So we're down to tier two now.Henry: Tier two.James: Yeah. So my tier two is: Donne, Elliot, Keats, Tennyson. I've put Spenser in tier two, Marvell and Pope, who we've already discussed. I mean, I think Eliot, we've talked about, I mean Donne just speaks for himself and there's probably a case that some people would make to bump him up a tier. Henry: Anybody can read that case in Katherine Rudell's book. We don't need to…James: Yes, exactly. If anybody's punching perhaps in tier two, it's Tennyson who I wasn't totally sure belonged there. Putting Tenon in the same tier as Donne and Spenser and Keets. I wonder if that's a little ambitious. I think that might raise eyebrows because there is a school of thought, which I'm not totally unsympathetic to this. What's the Auden quote about Tennyson? I really like it. I expressed very harshly, but I sort of get what he means. Auden said that Tennyson “had the finest ear perhaps of any English poet who was also undoubtedly the stupidest. There was little that he didn't know. There was little else that he did.” Which is far too harsh. But I mentioned to you earlier that I think was earlier this year, a friend and I had a project where we were going to memorise a perva week was a plan. We ended up basically getting, I think three quarters of the way through.And if there's a criticism of Tennyson that you could make, it's that the word music and the sheer lushness of phrases sometimes becomes its own momentum. And you can end up with these extremely lovely but sometimes slightly empty beautiful phrases, which is what I ended up feeling about Tithonus. And I sort of slightly felt I was memorising this unbelievably beautiful but ever so slightly hollow thing. And that was slightly why the project fell apart, I should say. Of course, they absolutely love Tennyson. He's one of my all time favourite poets, which is why my personal favouritism has bumped him up into that category. But I can see there's a case, and I think to a lot of people, he's just the kind of Victorian establishment gloom man, which is totally unfair, but there's not no case against Tennyson.Henry: Yeah, the common thing is that he has no ideas. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm also, I'm not sure how desperately important it is. It should be possible to be a great poet without ideas being at the centre of your work. If you accept the idea that the essence of poetry is invention, i.e. to say old things in a fantastically new way, then I think he qualifies very well as a great poet.James: Yes..Henry: Well, very well. I think Auden said what he said because he was anxious that it was true of himself.James: Yeah, I mean there's a strong argument that Auden had far too many ideas and the sorts of mad schemes and fantastical theories about history that Auden spent his spare time chasing after is certainly a kind of argument that poets maybe shouldn't have as many ideas, although it's just reading. Seamus Perry's got a very good little book on Tennyson, and the opening chapter is all about arguments about people who have tended to dislike Tennyson. And there are all kinds of embarrassing anecdotes about the elderly Tennyson trying to sort of go around dinner parties saying profound and sage-like things and totally putting his foot in it and saying things are completely banal. I should have made a note that this was sort of slightly, again, intensifying my alarm about is there occasionally a tinsely hollowness about Tennyson. I'm now being way too harsh about one of my favourite poets—Henry: I think it depends what you mean by ideas. He is more than just a poet of moods. He gives great expression, deep and strongly felt expression to a whole way of being and a whole way of conceiving of things. And it really was a huge part of why people became interested in the middle ages in the 19th century. I think there's Walter Scott and there's Tennyson who are really leading that work, and that became a dominant cultural force and it became something that meant a lot to people. And whether or not, I don't know whether it's the sort of idea that we're talking about, but I think that sort of thing, I think that qualifies as having ideas and think again, I think he's one of the best writers about the Arthurian legend. Now that work doesn't get into the Oxford Book of English Verse, maybe that's fair. But I think it was very important and I love it. I love it. And I find Tennyson easy to memorise, which is another point in his favour.James: Yeah.Henry: I'm going to read a little bit of Ulysses, which everyone knows the last five or six lines of that poem because it gets put into James Bond films and other such things. I'm going to read it from a little bit from earlier on. I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known; cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.I think that's amazing. And he can do that. He can do lots and lots and lots of that.James: Yeah, he really can. It's stunning. “Far on the ringing planes of windy Troy” is such an unbelievably evocative phrase.Henry: And that's what I mean. He's got this ability to bring back a sort of a whole mood of history. It's not just personal mood poetry. He can take you into these places and that is in the space of a line. In the space of a line. I think Matthew Arnold said of the last bit of what I just read is that he had this ability in Ulysses to make the lines seem very long and slow and to give them this kind of epic quality that far goes far beyond the actual length of that poem. Ulysses feels like this huge poem that's capturing so much of Homer and it's a few dozen lines.James: Yeah, no, I completely agree. Can I read a little bit of slightly more domestic Tennyson, from In Memoriam, I think his best poem and one of my all time favourite poems and it's got, there are many sort of famous lines on grief and things, but there's little sort of passage of natural description I think quite near the beginning that I've always really loved and I've always just thought was a stunning piece of poetry in terms of its sound and the way that the sound has patented and an unbelievably attentive description natural world, which is kind of the reason that even though I think Keats is a better poet, I do prefer reading Tennyson to Keats, so this is from the beginning of In Memoriam. Calm is the morn without a sound,Calm as to suit a calmer grief,And only thro' the faded leafThe chesnut pattering to the ground:Calm and deep peace on this high wold,And on these dews that drench the furze,And all the silvery gossamersThat twinkle into green and gold:Calm and still light on yon great plainThat sweeps with all its autumn bowers,And crowded farms and lessening towers,To mingle with the bounding main:And I just think that's an amazing piece of writing that takes you from that very close up image that it begins with of the “chestnut patterning to the ground” through the faded leaves of the tree, which is again, a really attentive little bit of natural description. I think anyone can picture the way that a chestnut might fall through the leaves of a chestnut tree, and it's just an amazing thing to notice. And I think the chestnut pattern to the ground does all the kind of wonderful, slightly onomatopoeic, Tennyson stuff so well, but by the end, you're kind of looking out over the English countryside, you've seen dew on the firs, and then you're just looking out across the plane to the sea, and it's this sort of, I just think it's one of those bits of poetry that anybody who stood in a slightly wet and romantic day in the English countryside knows exactly the feeling that he's evoking. And I mean there's no bit of—all of In Memoriam is pretty much that good. That's not a particularly celebrated passage I don't think. It's just wonderful everywhere.Henry: Yes. In Memoriam a bit like the Dunciad—under appreciated relative to its huge merits.James: Yeah, I think it sounds, I mean guess by the end of his life, Tennyson had that reputation as the establishment sage of Victorian England, queen of Victoria's favourite poet, which is a pretty off-putting reputation for to have. And I think In Memoriam is supposed to be this slightly cobwebby, musty masterpiece of Victorian grief. But there was just so much, I mean, gorgeous, beautiful sensuous poetry in it.Henry: Yeah, lots of very intense feelings. No, I agree. I have Tennyson my third tier because I had to have the Gawain poet, but I agree that he's very, very great.James: Yeah, I think the case for third tier is I'm very open to that case for the reasons that I said.Henry: Keats, we both have Keats much higher than Shelly. I think Byron's not on anyone's list because who cares about Byron. Overrated, badly behaved. Terrible jokes. Terrible jokes.James: I think people often think Byron's a better pert without having read an awful lot of the poetry of Byron. But I think anybody who's tried to wade through long swathes of Don Juan or—Henry: My God,James: Childe Harold, has amazing, amazing, beautiful moments. But yeah, there's an awful lot of stuff that you don't enjoy. I think.Henry: So to make the case for Keats, I want to talk about The Eve of St. Agnes, which I don't know about you, but I love The Eve of St. Agnes. I go back to it all the time. I find it absolutely electric.James: I'm going to say that Keats is a poet, which is kind of weird for somebody is sent to us and obviously beautiful as Keats. I sort of feel like I admire more than I love. I get why he's brilliant. It's very hard not to see why he's brilliant, but he's someone I would very rarely sit down and read for fun and somebody got an awful lot of feeling or excitement out of, but that's clearly a me problem, not a Keats problem.Henry: When I was a teenager, I knew so much Keats by heart. I knew the whole of the Ode to a Nightingale. I mean, I was absolutely steeped in it morning, noon and night. I couldn't get over it. And now I don't know if I could get back to that point. He was a very young poet and he writes in a very young way. But I'm going to read—The Eve of St. Agnes is great. It's a narrative poem, which I think is a good way to get into this stuff because the story is fantastic. And he had read Spenser, he was part of this kind of the beginning of this mediaeval revival. And he's very interested in going back to those old images, those old stories. And this is the bit, I think everything we're reading is from the Oxford Book of English Verse, so that if people at home want to read along they can.This is when the heroine of the poem is Madeline is making her escape basically. And I think this is very, very exciting. Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade,Old Angela was feeling for the stair,When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid,Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware:With silver taper's light, and pious care,She turn'd, and down the aged gossip ledTo a safe level matting. Now prepare,Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled.Out went the taper as she hurried in;Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:She clos'd the door, she panted, all akinTo spirits of the air, and visions wide:No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!But to her heart, her heart was voluble,Paining with eloquence her balmy side;As though a tongueless nightingale should swellHer throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,All garlanded with carven imag'riesOf fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,And diamonded with panes of quaint device,Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.I mean, so much atmosphere, so much tension, so many wonderful images just coming one after the other. The rapidity of it, the tumbling nature of it. And people often quote the Ode to autumn, which has a lot of that.James: I have to say, I found that totally enchanting. And perhaps my problem is that I need you to read it all to me. You can make an audio book that I can listen to.Henry: I honestly, I actually might read the whole of the E and put it out as audio on Substack becauseJames: I would actually listen to that.Henry: I love it so much. And I feel like it gets, when we talk about Keats, we talk about, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer and Bright Star and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and these are great, great poems and they're poems that we do at school Ode to a Nightingale because I think The Great Gatsby has a big debt to Ode to a Nightingale, doesn't it? And obviously everyone quotes the Ode to Autumn. I mean, as far as I can tell, the 1st of October every year is the whole world sharing the first stands of the Ode to Autumn.James: Yeah. He may be one of the people who suffers from over familiarity perhaps. And I think also because it sounds so much what poetry is supposed to sound like, because so much of our idea of poetry derives from Keats. Maybe that's something I've slightly need to get past a little bit.Henry: But if you can get into the complete works, there are many, the bit I just read is I think quite representative.James: I loved it. I thought it was completely beautiful and I would never have thought to ever, I probably can't have read that poem for years. I wouldn't have thought to read it. Since university, I don't thinkHenry: He's one of those people. All of my copies of him are sort of frayed and the spines are breaking, but the book is wearing out. I should just commit it to memory and be done. But somehow I love going back to it. So Keats is very high in my estimation, and we've both put him higher than Shelly and Coleridge.James: Yeah.Henry: Tell me why. Because those would typically, I think, be considered the superior poets.James: Do you think Shelly? I think Keats would be considered the superior poetHenry: To Shelly?James: Certainly, yes. I think to Shelly and Coleridge, that's where current fashion would place them. I mean, I have to say Coleridge is one of my all time favourite poets. In terms of people who had just every so often think, I'd love to read a poem, I'd love to read Frost at Midnight. I'd love to read the Aeolian Harp. I'd love to read This Lime Tree Bower, My Prison. I'd love to read Kubla Khan. Outside Milton, Coleridge is probably the person that I read most, but I think, I guess there's a case that Coleridge's output is pretty slight. What his reputation rest on is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, the conversation poems, which a lot of people think are kind of plagiarised Wordsworth, at least in their style and tone, and then maybe not much else. Does anybody particularly read Cristabel and get much out of it nowadays? Dejection an Ode people like: it's never done an awful lot for me, so I sort of, in my personal Pantheon Coleridge is at the top and he's such an immensely sympathetic personality as well and such a curious person. But I think he's a little slight, and there's probably nothing in Coleridge that can match that gorgeous passage of Keats that you read. I think.Henry: Yeah, that's probably true. He's got more ideas, I guess. I don't think it matters that he's slight. Robert Frost said something about his ambition had been to lodge five or six poems in the English language, and if he'd done that, he would've achieved greatness. And obviously Frost very much did do that and is probably the most quotable and well-known poet. But I think Coleridge easily meets those criteria with the poems you described. And if all we had was the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I would think it to be like Tom O' Bedlam, like the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, one of those great, great, great poems that on its own terms, deserves to be on this list.James: Yeah, and I guess another point in his favour is a great poet is they're all pretty unalike. I think if given Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a conversation poem and Kubla Khan and said, guess whether these are three separate poets or the same guy, you would say, oh, there's a totally different poems. They're three different people. One's a kind of creepy gothic horror ballad. Another one is a philosophical reflection. Another is the sort of Mad Opium dream. I mean, Kubla Khan is just without a doubt, one of the top handful of purposes in English language, I think.Henry: Oh yeah, yeah. And it has that quality of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard that so many of the lines are so quotable in the sense that they could be, in the case of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, a lot of novels did get their titles from it. I think it was James Lees Milne. Every volume of his diaries, which there are obviously quite a few, had its title from Kubla Khan. Ancient as the Hills and so on. It's one of those poems. It just provides us with so much wonderful language in the space of what a page.James: Sort of goes all over the place. Romantic chasms, Abyssinian made with dulcimer, icy pleasure dome with caves of ice. It just such a—it's so mysterious. I mean, there's nothing else remotely like it at all in English literature that I can think of, and its kind strangeness and virtuosity. I really love that poem.Henry: Now, should we say a word for Shelly? Because everyone knows Ozymandias, which is one of those internet poems that goes around a lot, but I don't know how well known the rest of his body of work is beyond that. I fell in love with him when I read a very short lyric called “To—” Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory—Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.I found that to be one of those poems that was once read and immediately memorised. But he has this very, again, broad body of work. He can write about philosophical ideas, he can write about moods, he can write narrative. He wrote Julian and Maddalo, which is a dialogue poem about visiting a madman and taking sympathy with him and asking the question, who's really mad here? Very Swiftian question. He can write about the sublime in Mont Blanc. I mean, he has got huge intellectual power along with the beauty. He's what people want Tennyson to be, I guess.James: Yeah. Or what people think Byron might be. I think Shelly is great. I don't quite get that Byron is so much more famous. Shelly has just a dramatic and, well, maybe not quite just as, but an incredibly dramatic and exciting life to go along with it,Henry: I think some of the short lyrics from Byron have got much more purchase in day-to-day life, like She Walks in Beauty.James: Yeah. I think you have to maybe get Shelly a little more length, don't you? I mean, even there's something like Ode to the West Wind is you have to take the whole thing to love it, perhaps.Henry: Yes. And again, I think he's a bit like George Herbert. He's always thinking you really have to pay attention and think with him. Whereas Byron has got lots of lines you can copy out and give to a girl that you like on the bus or something.James: Yes. No, that's true.Henry: I don't mean that in quite as rude a way as it sounds. I do think that's a good thing. But Shelly's, I think, much more of a thinker, and I agree with you Childe Harold and so forth. It's all crashing bore. I might to try it again, but awful.James: I don't want move past Coledridge without inflicting little Coledridge on you. Can I?Henry: Oh, yes. No, sorry. We didn't read Coledridge, right?James: Are just, I mean, what to read from Coledridge? I mean, I could read the whole of Kubla Khan, but that would be maybe a bit boring. I mean, again, these are pretty famous and obvious lines from Frost at Midnight, which is Coledridge sitting up late at night in his cottage with his baby in its cradle, and he sort of addressing it and thinking about it. And I just think these lines are so, well, everything we've said about Coledridge, philosophical, thoughtful, beautiful, in a sort of totally knockout, undeniable way. So it goes, he's talking to his young son, I think. My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heartWith tender gladness, thus to look at thee,And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,And in far other scenes! For I was rearedIn the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breezeBy lakes and sandy shores, beneath the cragsOf ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,Which image in their bulk both lakes and shoresAnd mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hearThe lovely shapes and sounds intelligibleOf that eternal language, which thy GodUtters, who from eternity doth teachHimself in all, and all things in himself.Which is just—what aren't those lines of poetry doing? And with such kind of confidence, the way you get from talking to your baby and its cradle about what kind of upbringing you hope it will have to those flashes of, I mean quite Wordsworthian beauty, and then the sort of philosophical tone at the end. It's just such a stunning, lovely poem. Yeah, I love it.Henry: Now we both got Yeats and Hopkins. And Hopkins I think is really, really a tremendous poet, but neither of us has put Browning, which a lot of other people maybe would. Can we have a go at Browning for a minute? Can we leave him in shreds? James: Oh God. I mean, you're going to be a better advocate of Browning than I am. I've never—Henry: Don't advocate for him. No, no, no.James: We we're sticking him out.Henry: We're sticking him.James: I wonder if I even feel qualified to do that. I mean, I read quite a bit of Browning at university, found it hard to get on with sometimes. I think I found a little affected and pretentious about him and a little kind of needlessly difficult in a sort of off-puttingly Victorian way. But then I was reading, I reviewed a couple of years ago, John Carey has an excellent introduction to English poetry. I think it's called A Little History of Poetry in which he described Browning's incredibly long poem, The Ring in the Book as one of the all time wonders of verbal art. This thing is, I think it's like 700 or 800 pages long poem in the Penguin edition, which has always given me pause for thought and made me think that I've dismissed Browning out of hand because if John Carey's telling me that, then I must be wrong.But I think I have had very little pleasure out of Browning, and I mean by the end of the 19th century, there was a bit of a sort of Victorian cult of Browning, which I think was influential. And people liked him because he was a living celebrity who'd been anointed as a great poet, and people liked to go and worship at his feet and stuff. I do kind of wonder whether he's lasted, I don't think many people read him for pleasure, and I wonder if that maybe tells its own story. What's your case against Browning?Henry: No, much the same. I think he's very accomplished and very, he probably, he deserves a place on the list, but I can't enjoy him and I don't really know why. But to me, he's very clever and very good, but as you say, a bit dull.James: Yeah, I totally agree. I'm willing. It must be our failing, I'm sure. Yeah, no, I'm sure. I'm willing to believe they're all, if this podcast is listened to by scholars of Victorian poetry, they're cringing and holding their head in their hands at this—Henry: They've turned off already. Well, if you read The Ring and the Book, you can come back on and tell us about it.James: Oh God, yeah. I mean, in about 20 years time.Henry: I think we both have Auden, but you said something you said, “does Auden have an edge of fraudulence?”James: Yeah, I mean, again, I feel like I'm being really rude about a lot of poets that I really love. I don't really know why doesn't think, realising that people consider to be a little bit weak makes you appreciate their best stuff even more I guess. I mean, it's hard to make that argument without reading a bit of Auden. I wonder what bit gets it across. I haven't gotten any ready. What would you say about Auden?Henry: I love Auden. I think he was the best poet of the 20th century maybe. I mean, I have to sort of begrudgingly accept T.S. Eliot beside, I think he can do everything from, he can do songs, light lyrics, comic verse, he can do occasional poetry, obituaries. He was a political poet. He wrote in every form, I think almost literally that might be true. Every type of stanza, different lines. He was just structurally remarkable. I suspect he'll end up a bit like Pope once the culture has tur

god love university spotify live english europe earth bible man soul england voice fall british land war africa beauty pride elon musk spain lies satan night songs rome ring talent chatgpt stuck beast ocean atlantic forgive snow calm poetry greece shakespeare hang james bond midnight terrible elephants pope twenty ancient thousands feeding funeral maker fool bed twelve transformed lock edinburgh scotland substack swift zen victorian overrated goddess newton rape odyssey hills calendar romantic clouds revolutionary toilet milton penguin arise hardy frost echoes chapman northwestern amazing grace hopkins bard homer poems remembered wandering innocence bibles alas winds gpt protestant takes pulls donne dickens way back poets immortality arabia ode eliot virgil king arthur wasteland sigmund freud charles darwin nightingale green knight tortoise thames epistle browning paradise lost great gatsby patches moons tomo cosmetic virgins partly priestess mont blanc bedlam forster robert frost iliad ricks rime sylvia plath arthurian king lear bower trembling vase elegy yeats victorian england beaux arts don juan puffs romantics in memoriam bronte dylan thomas chaucer charon keats daffodils wordsworth wastes john donne spenser four weddings tennyson dickensian samuel johnson ozymandias auden herrick walter scott dryden billet thomas hardy holy word bright star ere sir gawain coleridge marvell nymph another time gpo ancient mariner gawain emily bronte powders alexander pope george herbert robert graves philip larkin strode william cowper west wind make much matthew arnold drury lane musee cowper john carey little history george vi innumerable seethe allthe intimations fairy queen god tier kubla khan james no awaythe dejection abyssinian she walks manin robert herrick oxford book tintern abbey menand james marriott satires james it james you tithonus james yeah odours english verse doth god dofe childe harold james yes charlotte mew souland james well lycidas james thanks henry it seamus perry on first looking to music henry is mulciber
Ukraine: The Latest
New breakthrough in Kursk as Ukraine captures garrison town

Ukraine: The Latest

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2024 52:43


Day 937.Today, we analyse last weekend's Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference, report on another Ukrainian incursion into Russia, and hear from Central Asia where German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is taking his first visit to the region. Articles Referenced:Planning for a Post-American NATO (Phillips P. O'Brien and Edward Stringer in Foreign Affairs):https://www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/planning-post-american-natoAliona Hlivco on how NATO could come apart (The Telegraph):https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/29/putin-plot-to-destroy-nato-reaching-its-climax/Poem by Shelley:Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory—Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carpet Cleaning Methods
Expert Carpet Cleaning Tips For Removing Pet Odours And Stains

Carpet Cleaning Methods

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2023 3:27


Explore proven techniques and expert-recommended cleaning solutions utilised by professional carpet cleaners. Say goodbye to lingering pet odors and tough stains with these effective methods. Restore your carpets to their original pristine state and breathe new life into your living space after unexpected pet accidents.

Ride: The Urban Mobility Podcast
Episode 39: The smell of future mobility, feat. Tristan Rousselle, Aryballe

Ride: The Urban Mobility Podcast

Play Episode Play 58 sec Highlight Listen Later Oct 31, 2023 39:16


GUEST: Tristan Rousselle, Founder & CEO, AryballeABOUT THIS EPISODEWhat is digital nose technology? And what role could it play in future mobility?Our guest on this episode is Tristan Rousselle, founder and CEO of Aryballe, a digital olfaction firm that uses biochemical sensors, advanced optics, and machine learning to detect odour and turn it into data. This data is worth little, however, without a database behind it, and Aryballe's USP is a searchable digital library of smells.In this episode, we talk about Aryballe's digital nose technology, the origins of the company, how digital olfaction can be used in automotive and future mobility applications, domestic robots with noses in their fingers, and of course, cheese, wine, and fish odours.Connect with Tristan on LinkedInSHOW NOTESHumans Can Identify More Than 1 Trillion Smellshttps://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/humans-can-identify-more-1-trillion-smellsEuropean Union-funded Rose project, in which Aryballe is a lead participant (Restoring Odorant detection and recognition in Smell dEficits)https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/964529Moorfields patient receives world's first 3D printed eyehttps://www.moorfields.nhs.uk/news/moorfields-patient-receives-world-s-first-3d-printed-eye?Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2004 awarded jointly to Richard Axel and Linda Buck for their discoveries of “odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.” https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2004/press-release/  You can subscribe to Ride: The Urban Mobility Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Feel free to share it, like it, give it a rating, sign up to the Ride LinkedIn page, and check out our website, ridemobilitypodcast.com.

Busybee Refinishing with MelDidItHerself
73: Removing Stenches & Odours From Your Furniture

Busybee Refinishing with MelDidItHerself

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2023 16:38


In episde 73 of BusyBee Refinishing with MelDidItHerself, I discuss different strategies for removing stenches and odours from your furniture-- whether it's a piece you inherited from someone, have sitting around your house already that has picked up an unideal scent, or is a piece you're looking to flip for profit. Products mentioned in this episode: Shop towels* Howard's Feed and Wax* Dixie Belle Big Mama's Butta* Links you may be interested in: Want to get weekly furniture flipping inspo and tips right to your inbox? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sign up for the Friday Furniture Focus newsletter here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the waitlist ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠for the next cohort of Refinish Your Future: Two Weeks To A Profitable Furniture Flipping Side Hustle Try out Surf Prep Sanding products and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠use this link⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or use code MDIH10 to save 10% off all their products Want help putting together a strategy for your social media, or get some support and accountability for completing your action plan and crushing your goals? Check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my coaching/consultation services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and let's get you heading in the right direction today. Sign up for a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BusyBees in Business Strategy Session⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to join me on the podcast to talk through a barrier/challenge you've been experiencing refinishing furniture or starting up a side hustle/business selling your painted and refinished furniture! Ready to tackle your first furniture flip!? Grab ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the No BS Guide To Your First Furniture Makeover⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ now and get to flipping. Use code BUSYBEE for 20% off for a limited time! Want to snag some Surf Prep Sanding* or Fusion Mineral Paint* products for your furniture makeover for 10% off? See my curated Amazon Storefront* with all the furniture flipping essentials for your project? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Grab your free copy of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Guide and Checklist For Starting Your Official Furniture Refinishing Business ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Record an audio clip through ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my SpeakPipe Link⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ shouting out your favourite episode of BusyBee Refinishing with MelDidItHerself, and don't forget to shout out your socials so we can follow along on your furniture refinishing journey! Are you loving the Busybee Refinishing with MelDidItHerself podcast? Let the world know by leaving a rating on whatever platform you're listening on, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts letting me know what you're loving, or what you've learned that you're going to take back into your work - this will help more busybees like us discover this community and join us every week to gush about all things furniture refinishing.   Can't get enough MelDidItHerself? Check out my ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more furniture refinishing, painting, DIY and lifestyle content to tide you over until next week's episode. Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mel@MelDidItHerself.ca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for sponsorships, or just to say hey! *this means this is an affiliate code where I make a small commission when you use my link, and you save money on your order! It's a great way to support me and my small business when you're buying products you already intended on getting – thanks in advance if you use it :) 

The PastCast
Scent back in time: how ancient odours can bring the past to life

The PastCast

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2023 30:10


In Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, a single bite of a tea-dipped madeleine is enough to transport the author back into a vivid world of recollection. Our sense of smell is even more powerful in this respect than taste, however, with a direct route between the olfactory bulbs and the parts of the brain linked to emotion and memory. This can be harnessed to great effect when creating atmospherically immersive experiences for museum exhibitions and heritage attractions – and for the last 50 years, specialists at AromaPrime have been creating bespoke scents to help bring the past to life. On this episode of The PastCast, Liam R Findlay – Heritage Scenting Consultant at AromaPrime – discusses the company's fascinating work, concocting everything from the scent of the embalmed mummies of Ancient Egypt to the breath of a Tyrannosaurus rex. The work of AromaPrime is also the subject of an article in the latest issue of Current Archaeology magazine, which is out now in the UK, and is also available to read in full on The Past website. On this episode, Liam spoke with Current Archaeology editor Carly Hilts and regular PastCast presenter Calum Henderson. The Past brings together the most exciting stories and the very best writing from the realms of history, archaeology, heritage, and the ancient world. You can subscribe to The Past today for just £7.99. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider liking it, subscribing, and sharing it around.

Home Hacks
Let's Talk About Odours

Home Hacks

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2023 27:15


You don't want people talking about odours in your house, so let's talk about how to prevent them and get rid of them! Rachael and Karlie share their best tips and tricks for dealing with the worst smells. LINKS   Nature Direct Enviro Mist – https://naturedirect.com.au/shop-below-on-home-page/ols/products/nature-direct-carpet-and-upholstery-cleaner-ntr-drc-crp-phl6  Zero Co Air Freshener – Air Freshener Combo (250ml) – Zero Co Australia PetLab Enzyme Cleaner For Pet Urine | #1 Enzymatic Cleaner in AU | PetLab® (pet-lab.com.au) Follow Mums Who on Facebook.   Join the Mums Who Organise Facebook group. Follow Nova Podcasts on Instagram @novapodcastsofficial.   Got a question for Rachael and Karlie? You can email them at homehacks@novapodcasts.com.au.    CREDITS   Hosts: Rachael Hallett and Karlie Suttie.   Managing Producer: Elle Beattie.   Producer and editor: Amy Kimball.   Listen to more great podcasts at novapodcasts.com.au.  Nova Entertainment acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we recorded this podcast, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respect to Elders past and present.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Winnipeg's Real Estate Podcast (Audio versions)
Offensive Odours Can Kill The House Sale

Winnipeg's Real Estate Podcast (Audio versions)

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2023 2:05


Hello…this is Bo Kauffmann of Remax in Winnipeg, with your real estate news for…  Monday, April 24th, 2023…   Today is National Bucket List Day and Pics in a blanket Day   Today, let's talk a little about home staging.  When hearing the word, a lot of people might envision a long, involved process, including movers, decorators and stagers. In reality, even a few touch ups and clean ups can make a huge impact. Over the next few days we'll look at several areas where a little diy and elbow grease will go a long way to make a great first impression.   For today, I'll focus on an often forgotten aspect of staging….  Offensive odours:   Odours are usually traced to any of 3 sources:  Pet, smoking or cooking. The problem is that home owners often no longer notice these smells, as they get used to them. But a non-smoking buyer, for example, will immediately pick up on the distinctive smell of cigarettes or cigars.   I just showed a house that had an overwhelming cat odor it was like a punch in the face stepping into the home.   Adding to the problem is the fact that many listing agents just don't feel comfortable addressing this issue head-on.  How do you tell a home seller that their home has offensive odors?  Doing so might cause the owner to go with a different agent, one who is more effusive and complimentary and tells the seller just how beautiful their home is.   Take it from me…..  offensive odors can cost you serious money in lost offers, and lowball offers.    Thinking of selling?  Call me right now to set up a free home seller consultation, either in person or via zoom.   204-333-2202   Add us to your Daily Routine on Alexa.  Go here to add to Alexa in the Canadian Skill Store. Are you interested in more in-depth real estate information?  Check out our podcast, available on most podcast platforms. Do you have an Android Phone?  Add our Free Podcast App Here. Do you have an I-Phone?  Here is our iOS version of the podcast app.

Ipswich Today
Cleanaway charged over odours, action needed on obesity, show scores $63K & Riverview open longer

Ipswich Today

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2023 16:44


Cleanaway faces millions in fines over Chuwar smell. Obesity levels are up a whopping 46 per cent in 11 years as a new report is released calling for more action to support healthy diets and lifestyles. Joining the show is Dr Aletha Ward lecturer in nursing and a public health researcher at the University of Southern Queensland and lead author of the report published this week by West Moreton Obesity Group. Also in this episode council approves $63,000 to support the 150th Ipswich Show and Riverview transfer station now open longer hours all year. Published: 31 March 2023. Music: www.purple-planet.com Image: UniSQ's Dr Aletha Ward, lead author on an obesity white paper published by West Moreton Obesity Group (supplied) Obesity Group report: http://bit.ly/3zilK18 Cleanaway charges: https://bit.ly/3lW3XK8 Council advocacy: https://bit.ly/3G5LLog Resource recovery: http://bit.ly/3zgUwrT Ipswich City Council: www.ipswich.qld.gov.au/ Ipswich Planning Scheme: bit.ly/3g4Jwb7 Resilient Homes Fund: bit.ly/3PDPJHH Council meeting agendas and minutes: bit.ly/2JlrVKY Council meetings on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/IpswichCityCouncilTV Shape your Ipswich: www.shapeyouripswich.com.au/ Ipswich Civic Centre: www.ipswichciviccentre.com.au/ Ipswich Art Gallery: www.ipswichartgallery.qld.gov.au/ Discover Ipswich: www.discoveripswich.com.au/ Ipswich Libraries: www.ipswichlibraries.com.au/ Studio 188: www.studio188.com.au/ Nicholas Street Precinct: www.nicholasst.com.au/ Picture Ipswich: www.pictureipswich.com.au/ Ipswich Today is supported by listeners like you. Help keep it online with a small donation.Visit www.ipswichtoday.com.au

RNZ: Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan
Female odours and pheromones extend life in mice

RNZ: Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 29, 2023 10:25


Otago University researchers have found that the smell of female odours and pheromones causes weight loss and extends the life span of mice - which might have implications for humans.

UBC News World
Eliminate Odours & VOCs In UK Commercial Buildings With Surface Cleaning Spray

UBC News World

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 23, 2022 3:32


Breathe better with PURETi Clean & Fresh, supplied in the UK by Pure Clear Coatings Ltd (0203 929 2052). The dual-purpose surface cleaner and air purifier zaps harmful germs, pollutants, and odours using the power of light. Go to https://pureclearcoatings.co.uk/pureti-clean-fresh for more details. Pure Clear Coatings Ltd Kemp House 128 City Road, London, London EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom Website https://pureclearcoatings.co.uk/ Phone +44-20-3929-2052 Email info@pureclearcoatings.co.uk

Blueprint for Living - ABC RN
Ancient odours, wilding your garden, the art of preserving, and the history of voting booths

Blueprint for Living - ABC RN

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2022 54:07


Film and television shows have conjured up images of ancient cities many times, thanks largely to historical texts and archaeological finds. Now archaeologists are trying to recreate the odours of old civilisations. Barbara Huber from Germany's Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History is on a mission to advance the science of olfactory archaeology to understand how ancient people experienced and interpreted their worlds through smell. It's time to dig, mulch and prune with Australia's award-winning landscape designer Paul Bangay. In this edition, Paul throws formality to the wind as he takes Jonathan through The Woodland, where geometry and grids give way to the freedom of wilding. For those of us with smaller green spaces Paul and Jonathan muse on whether you can rewild an urban courtyard. Jams, pickles, and chutneys, oh my! Preserving is an art and Kylee Newton is a master at it. She's also the author of Modern Preserves and calls herself a saint of produce, giving fruit and vegetables another life through her time capsules in jars. She shares ideas on how to use up that glut of keeps, that won't involve toast or crumpets. As Australians make their way to the polls this Saturday, in-house design guru Colin Bisset leans into the election, democracy sausage in hand, as he takes us through the design history of the voting booth. Surprisingly, the idea of voting in private is an Australian one, first used in Victoria in 1856, and later adopted by the British and Americans. But how has it evolved since?

Nightlife
Monday Science: Sense of Smell

Nightlife

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 25, 2022 12:47


Traditionally a sense of smell is culturally learned, and cultures enjoy certain scents.

2 In The Box Podcast
Episode 48 - JJ Daigneault

2 In The Box Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2021 65:24


Well what can we say about this one ehh? Just two good Canadian kids having a good time after 7 days apart.

Property Management Excellence (PME) Stacey Holt
Odours in rental property. During and at end of tenancy.

Property Management Excellence (PME) Stacey Holt

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2021 4:49


Odours in rental property. During and at end of tenancy.

Our Weird Life Podcast
Swooning Stars & Ominous Odours - Ep. 49

Our Weird Life Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 4, 2021 45:57


Jak and Jodi look at the Japanese star festival known as “Tanabata”. They also discuss their opinions on the worst (and best) smells in the world. Become a part of the OWL community by subscribing to our channel! INSTAGRAM: @ourweirdlifepod YOUTUBE: Our Weird Life Podcast TWITTER: @OurWeirdLifePod FACEBOOK: @ourweirdlifepodcast

No Way! Stories with Rach
Omlettes And Odours

No Way! Stories with Rach

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2021 16:03


I'm sure you've heard of a girl stuck in a tower before but I bet you've never heard of her being rescued this way. Come find out what happens when you put a lazy apprentice, a Chief Pilot and a whole lot of omlette together. It's going to be a smelly ride! Don't forget to follow us where ever you listen to your podcasts! Follow our adventures at @storieswrach. Mission items: nothing :) Age: 3+ Car friendly

Late Night Live - ABC RN
Nature's oddities, the odours of history and the origins of alphabetical order

Late Night Live - ABC RN

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2021 54:06


Nature's oddities, the odours of history and the origins of alphabetical order

Late Night Live - ABC RN
Nature's oddities, the odours of history and the origins of alphabetical order

Late Night Live - ABC RN

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2021 54:06


Nature's oddities, the odours of history and the origins of alphabetical order

Gorgeoustalks With Oreva Sharon.
This Episode is really about Vagina Odour. You will learn about Vagina Odour and how to stop it.

Gorgeoustalks With Oreva Sharon.

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2020 10:26


You learn about the different types of Vagina Odour and the causes of these Odours which are usually Infections. If you have Vagina Odour you literally have Vagina infection. For the Fishy Vagina Odour, you have BV( Bacterial Vaginosis) but if your Vagina smells like honey, beer or cookies then you have Yeast Infection. You learn what to do when you start perceiving these Odours, like taking care of your hygiene and other natural methods of stopping the Odour. Thank you.

BSP Podcast
Andreas Sandner - ‘Visible Odours? On the Issue of Visuocentricism in “Olfactory Austerity”

BSP Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 11, 2020 20:34


Season four of the BSP Podcast continues with a paper from Andreas Sandner, Department of Philosophy at University of Koblenz-Landau. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.   ABSTRACT: It is widely held in analytic philosophy of mind and cognition that olfactory perception – first and foremost – represents odours if it represents anything at all. Despite some controversies on the very nature of those odours we encounter in olfactory perceptual experience, the vast majority of today’s philosophers hold that the intentional objects of olfactory perception are the odorous emanations of so-called source objects – ordinary concrete things. So, broadly speaking, most discussants account for some version of the principle of ‘olfactory austerity’: When we smell we perceive nothing but odours, and never do we (directly) smell particular objects. After depicting the main reasons for adopting such a view especially within a chiefly representationalist framework, I will examine one of the alleged benefits a bit more carefully. Namely I will address the anti-visuocentricism in austere theories of olfactory objects. It has been argued frequently that the view of olfactory austerity reveals our visuocentric biases and guides us to overcome them in theorising perception. In short, the idea goes pretty much as follows: Those who think that we could smell ordinary objects in olfactory experience just like we can see these objects in visual experience simply disregard the missing aspects of objecthood in what is really smelled there, particularly the missing spatial structure. To attribute such aspects to pure olfactory experience then would mean to fall for the supremacy of vision and to only infer the particular source object by the smelled odour from memory or recollection. The main goal of my talk will come down to contrasting the so reproached visuocentricism of a source-object-theory of olfactory objects with the visuocentricism within the view of olfactory austerity itself, as it is still at work at the very core of this approach in that the criteria of ‘objecthood’ are obviously stipulated by means of the ordinary objects in visual perception. What is at stake in this comparison is to extrapolate visuocentricism as a crucial structure of perceptual consciousness – at least for the sighted – and hence accounting for the supremacy of vision as a fact instead of a fallacious bias.   BIO: From 2007 to 2015 I studied philosophy, sociology and communication science at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. I received a bachelor's degree in 2011 with a thesis on the theory of causes in Plato's Phaedo and a master's degree in 2015 with a thesis on Kant's criticism of Berkeley's immaterialism. Since 2016 I have been a research assistant at the Institute of Philosophy in Landau where I hold seminars and am writing a dissertation on the phenomenology of olfactory perception. In this context, I also organized a small international conference on perception and the senses in continental and analytic philosophy last year.   The ‘British Society for Phenomenology Annual Conference 2019 – the Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’ was held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester, UK, 5 – 7 September, 2019: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference/   You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/

RNZ: The Weekend
Saving the smells of our history

RNZ: The Weekend

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2020 15:01


Cecilia Bembibre is on a mission to save a part of our heritage that is often forgotten, or not thought of - the smell of things. That delicious smell of an old book through to the scent of a person, a building or even a town - she's intent on finding culturally significant smells, and capturing them. 

Ask the Naked Scientists Podcast
Are bananas sterile inside?

Ask the Naked Scientists Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 8, 2019 24:20


What are the medical risks and benefits of silver? Is what I call a smell the same experience for you? And why do some things smell appealing, but not others? Does engine oil have a best-before date? And why do metal insulin needles have a use-by date? What makes body odours attractive? Is the inside of a banana sterile? And how do scientists find the medical properties of plants? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Ask the Naked Scientists
Are bananas sterile inside?

Ask the Naked Scientists

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 8, 2019 24:20


What are the medical risks and benefits of silver? Is what I call a smell the same experience for you? And why do some things smell appealing, but not others? Does engine oil have a best-before date? And why do metal insulin needles have a use-by date? What makes body odours attractive? Is the inside of a banana sterile? And how do scientists find the medical properties of plants? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Room 104 With Cormac Moore and Saoirse Long
How Foods Change Your Body's Odours

Room 104 With Cormac Moore and Saoirse Long

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2019 12:29


Dr Wider is back this week, talking about the impact certain types of food have on your bodily odours and fluids. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

BIV Today
Cannabis producers battle Metro Vancouver over odours, emissions

BIV Today

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2019 29:56


On BIV Today... Are cannabis producers the cause for a bad odours and harmful emissions in Metro Vancouver? The regional district seems to think so. Tantalus Labs CEO Dan Sutton (2:14) joins the show to discuss the ongoing conflict between licensed producers and the regional body. Then, the BIV technology panel (15:13), featuring Gluu Technology Society’s Linda Fawcus and Faber’s John Reid, delves into upcoming advances in airport security technology, the prospect of travelling in flying taxis and whether Apple’s new credit card is too delicate for your pocket. Tyler Orton hosts, see more at https://biv.com/

Avmor: A MORE COMPLETE CLEAN

What is it with garbage bags for odour control? In this podcast, listen to a new twist on how you can use a garbage bag(s) to remove odour from floors. From elementary school boys’ washrooms to long term care homes, stubborn odours can be eliminated with this garbage bag hack. Your chemical is probably the right one, it just needs a bit of help!

tough odours
Odours of the Odeon

In this week’s episode the Odours team wade through the convoluted mess that is 1995’s Congo!Undeterred by the films lead talking Gorilla declining an interview, the Odours team talk gender-fluidity amongst simians, the uncomfortable apex of diamond heists and colonialism, the unprecedented violence of Hungry Hippos, the mob-lynching of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, and doing the weekly-shop with Delroy Lindo at Tescos. Get some!

Savage Snowflake with Jeff Leach
Episode 42 (feat. Nicole Aimee Schrieber) Orthodox odours, muscle maidens & penis parameters.

Savage Snowflake with Jeff Leach

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 17, 2019 71:59


Comedian and actress Aimee Nicole Schrieber joins Jeff Leach the day before she become a regular at the world famous Comedy Store (with her name on the wall and everything) to shed a little light on why Hacidic Jewish men have so much orthodox odour, how muscle-y is TOO muscle-y for maidens & what Jeff's ACTUAL penis parameters are. Show us your support! For a shout-out on the podcast, hand-written postcards, private discord and more perks you can become a Savage by donating as little as $1 a month at: patreon.com/savagesnowflake For video & audio links: linktr.ee/jeffleach Find Jeff on twitter/instagram: @jeffleach Buy some Savage Merch: bit.ly/2FdmgUU Check out our dope sponsors BNDLS Tech at bndlstech.com for the best vape technology in existence. Flower, oil, cartridge or resin, they have what YOU need to keep life as relaxed as possible. (Use code: SAVAGE for 10% discount) and @bndlstech on social media!

ON Point with Alex Pierson
Emissions and odours wreak havoc on residents surrounding cannabis facilities

ON Point with Alex Pierson

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 16, 2019 9:25


Alex is joined by Marvin Junkin, Mayor of Pelham, Ontario, to talk about some of the issues that his constituents have brought forward in regards to the bright lights and overwhelming odours that are stemming from the many cannabis production sites, that have sprouted up in the region.

Odours of the Odeon
Cliffhanger

Odours of the Odeon

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 12, 2019 45:30


In this weeks episode the Odours Of The Odeon kick off 2019 with a look at 1993’s action-thriller classic, CliffHanger! With an exclusive interview with star of the film Craig Fairbrass, the Odours team discuss an action scene so dangerous it had Direct Line’s best under-writers sweating, the golden era of plane Highjacking, the unheralded importance of Morrison’s car parks to the silver screen, and Marco Gabbiadini as Sly Stallone’s understudy.If you’ve got the arsehole, tune in and listen now.

Odours of the Odeon
Christmas Special

Odours of the Odeon

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2018 36:00


In this weeks Christmas Special, the Odours team discuss the best of the worst festive villains. Who will reign victorious in a seasonal hunger games that see’s Kevin McAllister, John McLane, The Wet Bandits, and Hans Gruber go toe-to-toe in blood-soaked auditions for a part in Leslie Grantham’s Dickensian Christmas Panto? Listen NOW to find out.

Odours of the Odeon
How To Get A Head In Advertising

Odours of the Odeon

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2018 58:34


In this weeks episode the Odours team dive into 1989’s ‘How To Get Ahead In Advertising’! With a featured interview from the star of 2018 Blockbuster Hereditary, Milly Shapiro, and British institution Anneka Rice, the team discuss The Falklands War, Consumerism, Dogging, the rise of Yuppyism in Thatchers Britain, and the shared Twitter responsibilities of Richard E Grant and Jacob Rees Mogg.

Odours of the Odeon
Action Jackson

Odours of the Odeon

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2018 36:12


In this weeks episode Odours of the Odeon review 1988’s gritty Carl Weathers-led crime caper.... Action Jackson!With an exclusive critique of the films original artwork from celeb CJ DeMooi, the Odours team discuss schlock one-liners, blaxploitation, Haitian President and totalitarian despot Papa Doc, an unexplored alternative life-path for OJ Simpson, and the necessity of bureaucratic protocol in law enforcement promotions.

Now That I'm Older
NTIO #196 All Worked Up

Now That I'm Older

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 14, 2018 39:13


Hello and welcome back to a show that remembers when kids cartoons weren’t mindless crap, like Spongebob or as we like to call it, Now That I’m Older. This week on episode #196 we start out talking about screwing up at work. Like falling asleep at your desk because you didn’t get enough sleep or falling asleep while doing nitrous in a dental chair at your dental job or falling asleep in a different city, as you work as a baggage handler. We also talk about a Concentration Camp themed Halloween display and how HOA’s are pretty much pure evil! This week we shouted out these #PodernFamily shows: Knowing My Nightmares Podcast; Odours of the Odeon and Da Box Office Boys and we spun promos for: 365Flicks Podcast and Gareth's Random Ramblings! So check out their shows... as soon as this one is over. This week we send this show out to the guy who is just about to leave for vacation with his two little kids. Sure, you love your kids. You love your wife, but the idea of being locked in a car with them for 6 hours on the way to your destination makes you want to pull what little hair you have left out. The idea of the kids whining or your wife complaining makes you wonder, what happened to the 22 year old guy who just wanted to marry the hot chick? Now you're playing chauffeur to two little rug rats and their mom? WHERE DID MY LIFE GO? So here's to you Reluctant Vacation Guy. Put your headphones in and let us drown out how much you may or may not hate your life. Have a great week guys! BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THAT I'M OLDER HERE: FACEBOOK ITUNES GOOGLE PLAY STITCHER TWITTER INSTAGRAM SIGN UP TO BE A PATRON TODAY

Odours of the Odeon
Eliminators

Odours of the Odeon

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2018 65:12


In this weeks episode the Odours of the Odeon discuss 1986 B-movie... Eliminators! With a featured interview from the Eliminators lead star Patrick Reynolds, the Odours team discuss time-travel, the Roman Empire, Euthanasia, the perils of artificial intelligence, PTSD, modern-day Centaurs born in a B+Q warehouse, and the impact of the incestual Regan/Thatcher dynamic on the 1980’s silver-screen.

Odours of the Odeon
Condorman

Odours of the Odeon

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2018 76:18


In this weeks episode Odours of the Odeon discuss 1981’s classic, CondorMan!With a featured interview from the films lead animator Michael Cedeno, the Odours team examine Disney’s approach to cold-war relations, trans-atlantic accents, re-used facial prosthetics, Reagan’s support of the Nicaraguan Contra’s, and the birth of Daft Punk.

The FrankenPod - A Gothic Literature and Cinema Podcast
Unpleasant Odours - Richard Marsh's The Beetle with Olivia of What'shername podcast

The FrankenPod - A Gothic Literature and Cinema Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2018 62:28


Damp stains, the sound of scuttling insect feet and a creeping sense of Imperialist dread This week Morgan talks to Olivia of What'shername Podcast about the often overlooked gothic tale The Beetle by Richard Marsh Picture from The British Library  Thanks to the U.S. Army Jazz band for making Kelli's no. available on the free music archive. Our Blog thefrankenpod.wordpress.com Twitter @thefrankenpod

Freedom, Books, Flowers & the Moon

Joining Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas this week: Muriel Zagha, to discuss the redolent funk of French cinema; and James O'Brien, to summarise the rancid political mess of Great Britain. Meanwhile, Sam Graydon goes to see the National Poetry Library in London. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Splitting Hairs with Max & Nicky
Episode 26 - Cologne, Perfume, And Other Odours

Splitting Hairs with Max & Nicky

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2017 51:49


Max & Nicky discuss how much they dislike the smell of cologne and most perfumes and examine alternative and natural odors they do enjoy. PLUS, more Game of Thrones talk.

Learn French with daily podcasts
2671 – Mille milliards d’odeurs (One trillion odours)

Learn French with daily podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 23, 2017 5:25


Le nez humain peut détecter mille milliards d’odeurs différentes, beaucoup plus ...

Pure Air
Pure Air - Saturday, May 21st, 2016

Pure Air

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2016 41:23


The "Pure Air" expert hour from Saturday, May 21st, 2016

Smiles & Faces Orthodontics
How to avoid and manage odours or unpleasant smelling Orthodontic Retainers

Smiles & Faces Orthodontics

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2015 4:00


Have you completed or about to complete orthodontic treatment? Are you wearing orthodontic retainers. If so, you would find this short podcast by Dr Andrew Chang and his team at Smiles & Faces Orthodontics very useful. This is a short podcast of about 4 minutes.  Some highlights are: 1:27- Using a whitening mouthwash 3:02- How to avoid pets, particularly dogs, from chewing your retainers. Natalie offers her insights on this. 3:32- Why a clear mouthwash in better than a coloured one when cleaning your retainer Seeking more information or interested in a  complimentary orthodontic consultation on how to improve your smile? Visit our website at https://www.greatsydneysmiles.com.au      

Sleek Geeks
Does sunlight kill odours?

Sleek Geeks

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2015 18:49


sunlight odours
Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study
Emotions and Odours: beyond valence

Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2014 71:52


Institute of Philosophy Sylvain Delplanque, University of Geneva The Two Senses of Smell Workshop - Emotions and Odours: beyond valence Respondent: Alisa Mandrigin (IP) This workshop is being run jointly by Rethinking the Senses and the AHR...

Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study
Emotions and Odours: beyond valence

Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2014


Institute of Philosophy Sylvain Delplanque, University of Geneva The Two Senses of Smell Workshop - Emotions and Odours: beyond valence Respondent: Alisa Mandrigin (IP) This workshop is being run jointly by Rethinking the Senses and the AHR...