Podcasts about satires

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

Week three of Florida February is here, and everything is upside down—literally.This week, Trevin finds a guilt-free way to get revenge on his pranking wife by questioning everything, while Amanda levels up to the “big kid class,” stepping into her daughter's karate lessons.In Fast Florida, students in Hendry County pull off the ultimate digital rebellion—hacking their high school's system to warn classmates about mandatory (and entirely fake) penis inspections.For Two Truths and a Lie, Trevin speeds into the world of NASCAR with wild Florida facts—did a racer really tape his eyes open to drive? And was Tom Petty... petty? Meanwhile, Amanda's truths (and one lie) cover Florida's deadly mix of lightning, serial killers, and dinosaurs.Then, in Storytime, Trevin explores the art of handling a petty crime with dignity—or in the case of Myra S. Mays at a Bradenton Walmart, the exact opposite. Amanda wraps things up with a wild ride through the Florida Everglades, where an airboat tour goes from sightseeing to capsizing.Flipped cars, flipped boats, and flipped reactions—this episode is a full Florida meltdown you won't want to miss.Join our Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/livelaughlarcenydoomedcrew For ad-free episodes and lots of other bonus content, join our Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/LiveLaughLarceny  Check out our website: HereFollow us on Instagram: HereFollow us on Facebook: HereFollow us on TikTok: Here  If you have a crime you'd like to hear on our show OR have a personal petty story, email us at livelaughlarceny@gmail.com or send us a DM on any of our socials!

The complete audiobook is available for purchase at Audible.com: https://n9.cl/p5lhm Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot Being the Prologue to the Satires By Alexander Pope Read by Denis Daly John Arbuthnot (1675-1735) was an eminent physician, scholar, satirist, and an intimate friend of Pope, John Gay, and Jonathan Swift. "He has more wit than we all have," said Swift; "and more humanity than wit." This very clever and highly-polished epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (also entitled the "Prologue to the Satires"), who was suffering from terminal illness, dates from 1734. Arbuthnot, from his deathbed, solemnly advised Pope to moderate his satire and expressed fear about the poet's personal safety from his numerous foes. Pope replied in a manly but self-defensive style. He is said at this time to have in his walks carried arms, and taken a large dog as a protector, but none of the purported enemies ever had the courage to attack him. The poem takes the form of a dialogue in which Pope vents at length about being publicly misrepresented and also taken advantage of by publishers and critics and Arbuthnot provides occasional rejoinders urging caution and moderation.

In this episode, we tackle Juvenal, whose sixteen satires influenced libertines, neoclassicists and early Christian moralists alike. Conservative to a fault, Juvenal's Satires rails against the rapid expansion and transformation of Roman society in the early principate – immigration, sexual mores and eating habits all come under fire. But where his contemporary Tacitus handled the same material with restraint, Juvenal's work explodes with vivid and vicious depictions of urban life, including immigration, sexual mores and eating habits. Emily and Tom explore the idiosyncrasies of Juvenal's verse and its handling in Peter Green's translation, and how best to parse his over-the-top hostility to everyone and everything.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsFurther reading in the LRB:Remembering Peter Greenhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/september/peter-green-1924-2024Claude Rawson: Blistering Attackshttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n21/claude-rawson/blistering-attacksClare Bucknell & Colin Burrow: What is satire?https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/on-satire-what-is-satire Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This hour, guest host Ian Hoch talks to Matt Rosencrans, Lead hurricane seasonal forecaster for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about the projected active hurricane season. Then, Ian discusses what are some of the best Military//War movies. 

Looking for a thrill-packed read? Brace yourself for a wild ride with Chuck Norris satires that blend humor with martial arts mastery. But that's not all! Dive deeper into the world of Taekwondo and discover why it is for all ages and genders. And to top it off, we've got a scrumptious yet budget-friendly beef recipe that'll tantalize your taste buds without breaking the bank. Let's dive in! This is Rebecca Wanner aka 'BEC' and Jeff ‘Tigger' Erhardt with The Bend Radio Show & Podcast, your news outlet for the latest in the Outdoors & Western Lifestyle! Episode 176 Details CHUCK NORRIS SATIRES: LAUGH, LEARN, & LOVE IT! Explore the hilarity and wit of Chuck Norris satires that have captured the hearts of fans worldwide. Uncover the genius behind these satirical gems and why they continue to entertain audiences of all ages. Dive into a world where comedy meets action, and prepare to have your funny bone tickled!   THE ART OF TAEKWONDO: MASTERING MIND, BODY, & SPIRIT     Discover that Tigger was at one time a student of this martial art, Taekwondo. Learn about the benefits of practicing Taekwondo, from physical fitness to mental fortitude and beyond. Find out how Taekwondo is a journey with benefits for all ages and genders. EASY & INEXPENSIVE BEEF RECIPE: A CULINARY DELIGHT ON A BUDGET MEXICAN MEATLOAF! Indulge in a mouthwatering beef recipe that's as easy on your wallet as it is on your taste buds. Get step-by-step instructions on how to whip up this delectable dish in no time, using simple and affordable ingredients. Impress your family and friends with a homemade meal that's sure to satisfy even the most discerning palates, without breaking the bank. A Mexican twist on a comfort food like meatloaf is a HUGE win in everyone's book! Ready to embark on a journey of laughter, enlightenment, and culinary delights? Dive into our Chuck Norris satires, explore the world of Taekwondo, and tantalize your taste buds with our budget-friendly beef recipe. Whether you're seeking entertainment, self-improvement, or a delicious meal, we've got you covered. Get ready to unleash the Chuck Norris within you and savor every moment of the adventure! The Bend Show starts NOW!   FIELD REPORTS & COMMENTS Call or Text your questions, or comments to 305-900-BEND or 305-900-2363 Or email BendRadioShow@gmail.com FOLLOW Facebook/Instagram: @thebendshow https://www.facebook.com/thebendshow SUBSCRIBE to The Bend YouTube Channel. Website: TheBendShow.com https://thebendshow.com/ #catchBECifyoucan #tiggerandbec #outdoors #travel #cowboys The Outdoors, Rural America, And Wildlife Conservation are Center-Stage. AND how is that? Because Tigger & BEC… Live This Lifestyle. Learn more about Jeff ‘Tigger' Erhardt & Rebecca Wanner aka BEC here: TiggerandBEC.com https://tiggerandbec.com/   WESTERN LIFESTYLE & THE OUTDOORS Tigger & BEC are News Broadcasters that represent the Working Ranch world, Rodeo, and the Western Way of Life as well as advocate for the Outdoors and Wildlife Conservation. Outdoorsmen themselves, this duo strives to provide the hunter, adventurer, cowboy, cowgirl, rancher and/or successful farmer, and anyone interested in agriculture with the knowledge, education, and tools needed to bring high-quality beef and the wild game harvested to your table for dinner. They understand the importance in sharing meals with family, cooking the fruits of our labor and fish from our adventures, and learning to understand the importance of making memories in the outdoors. Appreciate God's Country. United together, this duo offers a glimpse into and speaks about what life truly is like at the end of dirt roads and off the beaten path. Tigger & BEC look forward to hearing from you, answering your questions and sharing in the journey of making your life a success story. Adventure Awaits Around The Bend.  

Why do we care so much about the Kate Middleton photo "scandal?"//Jenna Bush-Hager says her dad wasn't offended by Saturday Night Live's satires, and Jake talks about the best Presidential satires in the history of the show.//A cosmic cause for climate change?//RFK Jr. talks potential running mates.  

Welcome to today's episode of “JR Morning with Guy Gordon, Lloyd Jackson, and Jamie Edmonds.” Here's what's coming up on our show:Today's Show Notes:Cinematic Spotlight: We're diving into the world of upcoming movies, starting with the anticipated release of “Arthur the King.” We'll discuss its fresh take on classic stories and how it's stirring conversation about the “Magical Negro” trope in film. Then, we'll switch gears to the heartfelt drama “Love Lies Bleeding,” before wrapping up with the breakout hit “Hundreds of Beavers,” a dialogue-free comedy that's already winning over audiences.Community Corner: The IBEW Local 58 is making headlines with its March is Reading Month initiative. They're not only promoting literacy in elementary schools but also introducing kids to the exciting world of construction and electrical trades. We'll discuss the importance of such programs and the long-term impact they can have on our youth.Legal Lens: In the aftermath of a school shooting, we'll discuss the prosecutor's latest actions to ensure children's safety. Plus, we'll provide an update on the ongoing scrutiny surrounding former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's finances. What does this mean for local governance and trust in our leaders?Political Pulse: Big changes may be on the horizon as we analyze the Republican National Committee's potential shift in strategies. What does this mean for the political landscape, and how might it affect upcoming elections?Airport Assessment: Are you flying happy? We'll review the latest findings on airport satisfaction levels. Find out which airports are soaring in customer approval and which ones might need a boarding pass to better service.Cultural Celebrations: As St. Patrick's Day approaches, we'll talk about the cultural significance of the holiday and the local festivities planned in our community.Courtroom Confrontation: General Motors is in the hot seat with a lawsuit challenging their sale of car data to insurers. We'll break down the implications for privacy and consumer rights.Sports Segment: It's not just about hoops; we'll give you the latest updates from the world of sports, including a highlight on an upcoming basketball game that's capturing local attention.Wildlife and Environment: Join our discussion on wildlife management and the measures being taken to maintain the balance in our local ecosystems.Metro Detroit Moves: We'll explore a Metro Detroit initiative that's encouraging young people to pick up the hammer and wrench and get involved in skilled trades.Be sure to tune in to “JR Morning” for all this and more, including live interviews, expert insights, and your calls and comments. It's all happening here, where news meets the new day. Stay with us!

In their second episode, Colin and Clare look at the dense, digressive and often dangerous satires of John Donne and other poets of the 1590s. It's likely that Donne was the first Elizabethan author to attempt formal verse satires in the vein of the Roman satirists, and they mark not only the chronological start of his poetic career, but a foundation of his whole way of writing. Colin and Clare place the satires within Donne's life and times, and explain why the secret to understanding their language lies in the poet's use of the ‘profoundly unruly parenthesis'.This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsColin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thomas Hardy (born June 2, 1840 - died January 11, 1928) was born in Dorset, England. The son of a stone mason, he trained as an architect and worked in London and Dorset for ten years.Hardy began his writing career as a novelist, publishing Desperate Remedies (Tinsley Brothers) in 1871, and was soon successful enough to leave the field of architecture for writing. His novels Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Osgood McIlvaine & Co., 1891) and Jude the Obscure (Osgood McIlvaine & Co., 1895), which are considered literary classics today, received negative reviews upon publication. He left fiction writing for poetry and published eight collections, including Poems of the Past and the Present (Harper & Bros., 1902) and Satires of Circumstance (Macmillan, 1914).Hardy's poetry explores a fatalist outlook against the dark, rugged landscape of his native Dorset. He rejected the Victorian belief in a benevolent God, and much of his poetry reads as a sardonic lament on the bleakness of the human condition. A traditionalist in technique, he nevertheless forged a highly original style, combining rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction with a variety of meters and stanzaic forms. A significant influence on later poets (including Robert Frost, Wystan Hugh Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Philip Larkin), his influence has increased over the course of the twentieth century, offering a more down-to-earth, less rhetorical alternative to the more mystical and aristocratic precedent of William Butler Yeats. Get full access to The Daily Poem Podcast at dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Hi ya'll, welcome to the first episode of the podcast! Thank you for your patience as I had to navigate several delays. And of course, one that I wanted to be especially conscientious of was supporting those on the picket line during the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes. During this time, the podcast is not covering any struck films that have been made by any companies picketed at this time. For now, I am excited to speak about one of my favorite sub-genres, Suburban Satires, and speak about two of my favorite films of all-time, Serial Mom and Greener Grass. Please enjoy!And for 3 dollars a month, you can support the podcast on Patreon! Patreons get podcasts roughly a week early (as long as I can edit them in a timely manner). Here is the Patreon if you would like to support!Social Media:TikTokInstagramFor any business inquiries: moviegoodormoviebad@gmail.com

Joining Charlotte in today's episode is Dr. Aven McMaster. In a conversation that could have carried on for HOURS, they talk about sexual and gender politics in Rome. From Ovid to Catullus. Aven tells the story of the woman she believes everyone should know about and mentions a few sources by the end, for anyone who enjoys a rabbit hole;Suetonius "Lives of the Caesars", Cicero "Philippics", Catullus, and Juvenal "Satires"."Exploring Gender Diversity" edited by Allison Surtees and Jennifer Dyer, from Edinburgh University Press, and "Performing the Kinaidos: Unmanly Men in Ancient Mediterranean Culture" by Tom Sapsford, from Oxford University Press."The Scholars" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=13330"Pandora", by Susan McMaster (http://web.ncf.ca/smcmaster/), originally from "Dark Galaxies", Ouroboros Press 1986, and also in "Paper Affair: Poems Selected and New" published in 2010 by Black Moss Books https://a.co/d/eIjYU5RFollow Aven on socialsWebsite: www.alliterative.net Twitter: @AvenSarah

Becky, Cam and special guest Allison Dore kick off the 2010 series with two movies about, well, kicking ass: Kick-Ass and MacGruber. Allison is host of the entertainment-focused, daily talk radio show The Breakdown, on SiriusXM channel 167. In 2018, Allison founded Howl & Roar Records, a female-centric comedy record label with a mandate to focus 70% of their output on women in the industry. In the remaining 30% priority is given to men in marginalized communities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Geeks talk their favorite satires in the World Famous Top 3 List! The Worst Movie Ever This Week is an early Brian DePalma/Robert DeNiro vehicle, Greetings! Sunday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater concludes the Ip Man saga with the disappointing Ip Man 4! The 'cast concludes with a review of one of the best Star Trek episodes in recent memory! Thanks for listening and Keep On Geekin' On! Timestamps 6:34 Top 3 Satires 22:11 Greetings! 33:40 Ip Man 4 51:37 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 4 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/3oldgeeks/message

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!John Donne was born in 1572 in London, England. He is known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets, a term created by Samuel Johnson, an eighteenth-century English essayist, poet, and philosopher. The loosely associated group also includes George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and John Cleveland. The Metaphysical Poets are known for their ability to startle the reader and coax new perspective through paradoxical images, subtle argument, inventive syntax, and imagery from art, philosophy, and religion using an extended metaphor known as a conceit. Donne reached beyond the rational and hierarchical structures of the seventeenth century with his exacting and ingenious conceits, advancing the exploratory spirit of his time.Donne entered the world during a period of theological and political unrest for both England and France; a Protestant massacre occurred on Saint Bartholomew's day in France; while in England, the Catholics were the persecuted minority. Born into a Roman Catholic family, Donne's personal relationship with religion was tumultuous and passionate, and at the center of much of his poetry. He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in his early teen years. He did not take a degree at either school, because to do so would have meant subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles, the doctrine that defined Anglicanism. At age twenty he studied law at Lincoln's Inn. Two years later he succumbed to religious pressure and joined the Anglican Church after his younger brother, convicted for his Catholic loyalties, died in prison. Donne wrote most of his love lyrics, erotic verse, and some sacred poems in the 1590s, creating two major volumes of work: Satires and Songs and Sonnets.In 1598, after returning from a two-year naval expedition against Spain, Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. While sitting in Queen Elizabeth's last Parliament in 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, the sixteen-year-old niece of Lady Egerton. Donne's father-in-law disapproved of the marriage. As punishment, he did not provide a dowry for the couple and had Donne briefly imprisoned.This left the couple isolated and dependent on friends, relatives, and patrons. Donne suffered social and financial instability in the years following his marriage, exacerbated by the birth of many children. He continued to write and published the Divine Poems in 1607. In Pseudo-Martyr, published in 1610, Donne displayed his extensive knowledge of the laws of the Church and state, arguing that Roman Catholics could support James I without compromising their faith. In 1615, James I pressured him to enter the Anglican Ministry by declaring that Donne could not be employed outside of the Church. He was appointed Royal Chaplain later that year. His wife died in 1617 at thirty-three years old shortly after giving birth to their twelfth child, who was stillborn. The Holy Sonnetsare also attributed to this phase of his life.In 1621, he became dean of Saint Paul's Cathedral. In his later years, Donne's writing reflected his fear of his inevitable death. He wrote his private prayers, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, during a period of severe illness and published them in 1624. His learned, charismatic, and inventive preaching made him a highly influential presence in London. Best known for his vivacious, compelling style and thorough examination of mortal paradox, John Donne died in London on March 31, 1631.From https://poets.org/poet/john-donne. For more information about John Donne:“Devotions Upon Social Isolation”: https://www.berfrois.com/2020/06/ed-simon-john-donne-social-isolation/“John Donne”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-donne“No Man Is An Island”: https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/island.html“Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne”: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/04/100-best-nonfiction-books-no-96-john-donne-devotions-emergent-occasions

In an episode from the 2021 vault, May and Clinton discuss horror-comedies as they relate to spoofs, parodies, and satires. To explain the concept, May and Clinton review Phantom of the Paradise, One Cut of the Dead, and What We Do in the Shadows (series). The episode is currently streaming on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, PocketCasts, and RadioPublic. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by the poet A. E. Stallings to reconsider the ground-breaking work of Edna St Vincent Millay, a modern but not modernist poet, once judged 'the most glamorous, sexually-dangerous since Byron'; Thomas Morris, the author of medical and crime histories, delves into the often-troubling history of medical transplants; plus, a new poem by Ben Wilkinson, ‘What We Were''Poems and Satires' by Edna St Vincent Millay, edited by Tristram Fane Saunders 'Spare Parts: A surprising history of transplants' by Paul CraddockProduced by Sophia Franklin. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Happy Satireday: Holiday Edition! "White House Sends Out Christmas Cards With Heartfelt Message: 'You Will Get Sick And Die This Winter'" "10 Christmas Gift Ideas For Your Leftist Child" MERRY CHRISTMAS! Have a wonderful Holiday Season, starting with these entertaining Satires! *No Satireday next Saturday, because...it's Christmas* JOIN ME: commonsenseacrat.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER/GETTR: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Happy Satireday, Common SenseAcrats! Check out these Satires on The Babylon Bee (www.thebabylonbee.com): "Cruel: Jussie Smollett Will Be Forced To Share A Jail Cell With His Attacker" & "It's Time To Panic: Here's Everything You Need to Know About Omicron." Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy!! JOIN ME: commonsenseacrat.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER/GETTR: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Happy Satireday! Check out these Satires from The Babylon Bee (www.thebabylonbee.com): "Rittenhouse, Sandmann Agree To Share Custody of CNN" "Media Found Guilty On All Counts" "'Instead Of A Dark Lord, You Will Have A Queen! Not Dark, But Beautiful And Terrible As The Dawn! All Shall Love Me and Despair!' Says Acting President Kamala Harris" Enjoy! JOIN ME: commonsenseacrats.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER/GETTR: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Shana Cooper directed the outstanding five-actor American Players Theatre production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (which runs in person and online until November 14, 2021) and returns to the podcast to discuss how this production differs from the previous two times she's directed it. Featuring pandemic producing on the fly; changing identities; learning how to watch to play; embracing chameleonic warriors in a pandemic-inspired minimalist aesthetic; how Shakespeare continues to interrogate our society; how the play redefines the power of vulnerability; complicated feelings; and which of Shakespeare's Histories, Comedies, and Tragedies should more accurately be designated as Satires. (Length 20:50) The post Shakespeare's Marriage Play appeared first on Reduced Shakespeare Company.

Happy Satireday! Check out these hilarious Satires from The Babylon Bee (www.thebabylonbee.com) and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your weekend! JOIN ME: commonsenseacrats.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER/GETTR: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

As our spooky special Scares and Satires series comes to a close we are covering From Dusk Till Dawn, and it is truly terrifying indeed! This movie is full of monsters, and not just of the vampire kind, and it can be damn hard to tell who is the most bloodthirsty of them all...okay fine, you want us to admit it? It's Tarantino, he's the most twisted and bloodthirsty villain as far as we can tell. We stared into the inky blackness unflinching, and dared the horrors of this film, all for you dear listeners, so strap on your favorite earbuds, cuddle up with a warm blanket, and listen to our frightful tale.

Happy Satireday! In these Satires from The Babylon Bee (www.thebabylonbee.com), this feel the most real to what is happening right now...but don't fret, you still will laugh as much as I did reading these for you! Enjoy and have a wonderful rest of your weekend! See you this upcoming week! xo JOIN ME: commonsenseacrats.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER/GETTR: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

It's that time of year again, another month of Scares and Satires for the hauntingly beautiful month of October! This week we cover our take on a modern witchy fantasy classic, Practical Magic. This one is a favorite of our crew, a beloved film about magic, love, hardship, and solidarity that has the essence of a pumpkin spice latte come to life. We also discuss about how the messaging of finding your community and being true to yourself fits nicely into a queer allegory within the story. So put on your Uggs and your coziest sweater and join us as we talk about this heartwarming and spooky classic!

Satires today are: "General Milley is Releasing A Revised Version of 'The Art Of War'-The Babylon Bee "Woman Attending Ultra-Exclusive Gala For the Elite In Expensive Designer Dress Lectures Nation on Inequality"-The Babylon Bee JOIN ME: commonsenseacrats.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER/GETTR: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Happy Satireday! "Chris Cuomo Reports Slow News Day" and "Six Fears You Try to Suppress When Dating" are the two Satires in this episode and they may be a little too real...tune in to this fun "Satireday"! Have a wonderful weekend everyone! **NEW WEBSITE COMING SOON** JOIN ME: commonsenseacrats.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER/GETTR: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common.senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Check out this holiday edition of Satireday! Both of these ‘too real' Satires are from The Babylon Bee (theBabylonbee.com) Enjoy! JOIN ME: commonsenseacrats.locals.com E-MAIL: common.senseacratgmail.com FACEBOOK: www.Facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Happy Satireday! Enjoy these relatable Satires from The Daily Mash (thedailymashuk.com). Have a wonderful weekend! JOIN ME: commonsenseacrats.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Welcome to this very entertaining Satireday! I hope you enjoy these Satires from www.babylonbee.com and thedailymash.com. Look out for new full episodes next week! Have an amazing weekend! JOIN ME: commonsenseacrats.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Five Items of Clothing Men Should Not Wear After They Turn 30 from The Daily Mash and McDonald's Drive-Thru Backs Up for Miles As Dr. Fauci Keeps Changing His Mind from The Babylon Bee are two hilarious Satires for this Satireday! Enjoy and have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! JOIN US: commonsenseacrats.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @common.senseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

7 Shows That Got Better Ratings Than Oscars and Penguin Random House Announces Revised Dr. Seuss Book 'Oh, The People You'll Cancel' Enjoy these Satires from The Babylon Bee. Big mentions: Wilford Bigley, Arlo Huckleberry's Infrared Camera, Owen Wilson's 'Wow!' and so much more! JOIN ME: commonsenseacrats.locals.com EMAIL: common.senseacrat@gmail.com FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @commonsenseacrat TikTok: @common_senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

7 Reasons You Must Go To College To Be Successful and 6 Things That Will Happen At Oscars So You Don't Have to Watch It...these "hit em where it hurts" Satires from Babylon Bee and The Daily Mash, will make you nod and laugh the whole time. Enjoy! FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat TWITTER: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @commonsenseacrat TikTok: @common.senseacrat TELEGRAM: t.me/commonsenseacrat commonsenseacrats.locals.com common.senseacrat@gmail.com COMING SOON: www.commonsenseacrats.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Wouldn't you love to watch James McAvoy do your chores, especially to make them sexier? Oh YES! Would you burn your house down just to avoid cleaning your spill? ....I guess it depends on the spill...Enjoy these 2 dirty/hilarious Satires from The Daily Mash in this entertaining "Satireday" Facebook: www.facebook.com/common.senseacrat Twitter: @CSenseacrat Instagram: @commonsenseacrat TikTok: @common.senseacrat Telegram: t.me/commonsenseacrat common.senseacrat@gmail.com commonsenseacrats.locals.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Now that April Fool's Day is over, we can go back to our normal lives of believing politicians, media, and internet reads/celebrating the Life of St. April O'Fool...enjoy these Satires by Babylon Bee --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

Welcome to the 1st episode of Common SenseAcrat! In this episode, it's full of Satires featuring Governor Andrew Cuomo's romance novel, 600 page stimulus: nudie mag edition, celebrating Governor Abbott's unconstitutional mandate, and getting into Biden's daily planner, checking with Dr. Fauci, and entertainment recommendations, with a surprise mention! You don't wanna miss the first episode of Common SenseAcrat.  SOCIAL MEDIA: FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/Common.SenseAcrat TWITTER: @CSenseacrat INSTAGRAM: @commonsenseacrat YOUTUBE: Common SenseAcrat TIK TOK: @common_senseacrat RUMBLE: CarringtonR CommonSenseAcrats.locals.com PODCAST: SPOTIFY, GOOGLE, POCKETCAST --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/common-senseacrat/support

A caller from Florida asks for help finding books that explore social class with humor and are not set in New York City. Vox's book critic Constance Grady recommends: Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld  Ask a Book Critic is an exclusive series from Vox Quick Hits. New episodes every other Wednesday and you can read the column here.  If you'd like Constance to recommend a book for you, email constance.grady@vox.com with the subject line “Ask a Book Critic.” The more specific your mood, the better! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As we kick off the New Year, we take a brief diversion from our Medieval True Crime miniseries to explore the world of precious stones and the extraordinary properties attributed to them through a look at the Lapidary of Marbodus and a couple of other short texts. Today's Texts Shackford, Martha Hale, editor. Legends and Satires from Mediæval Literature. Ginn and Company, 1913. Google Books. Marbodus. The Lapidarium of Marbodus. Translated by C.W. King. In C.W. King, Antique Gems, Their Origin, Uses, and Value as Interpreters of Ancient History; and as Illustrative of Ancient Art, John Murray, 1860, pp. 389-417. Google Books. References Doyle, Arthur Conan. "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle." The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Project Gutenberg. Duffin, Christopher John. "Chelidonius: The Swallow Stone." Speculum, vol. 124, no. 1, Apr. 2013, pp. 81-103. JSTOR. Holmes, Urban T. "Mediaeval Gem Stones." Speculum, vol. 9, no. 2, Apr. 1934, pp. 195-204. JSTOR.

Brandon, James, and Britnee discuss three recent satires that lampooned the 2020 presidential election cycle: The Hunt (2020), Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020), and Mister America (2019). https://swampflix.com/2017/02/01/movie-of-the-month-society-1992/ 00:00 Welcome 09:35 Judy & Punch (2020) 12:00 Relic (2020) 15:15 The Painter and the Thief (2020) 18:10 His House (2020) 23:15 Tito (2020) 24:38 Misery (1990) 28:10 Doctor Sleep (2019) 32:05 The Hunt (2020) 50:05 Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) 1:05:00 Mister America (2019)

Welcome Back to Movieland Video!In this week's episode, the crew (Tyler, Angel, and Jason) talk about the election and what our future could look like (even though, you all know what the results are), we delve deep into some horror films, political films that are not only satire, but we're believed to be the real thing at their respective times, and the wonderful amazing talent that was John Hughes!All this and more on the Movieland Video Podcast!--------------------------------We now officially have a Patreon that you can support us on with monthly perks such as getting the podcast one day early before anyone else, brand new commentary tracks from the three of us once a month, and so much more!You can head to https://www.patreon.com/MovielandVideo for more info on all the tiers we have available and how you can help us make this hobby we are loving deeply become our jobs!--------------------------------You can follow Movieland Video on Twitter and Instagram - @MovielandVideoTyler's Social Media: Instagram - @tyler_ortega / Twitter - @TylerOrtegaTube / Letterboxd - Tyler OrtegaAngel's Social Media: Instagram - @horror.angel / Twitter - @suckitupbabyboy / Letterboxd - Angel GarciaJason's Social Media: Instagram - @fullecircle / Twitter - @FulleCircle / Letterboxd - Jason Anders--------------------------------STAFF RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK!Angel’s Pick of the Week: Prom Night [1980] - Paul Lynch (Synapse Films)If paired as a Double Feature: Terror Train [1980] - Roger Spottiswoode (Scorpion Releasing)Jason’s Pick of the Week: Primary Colors [1998] - Mike Nichols (Universal Pictures)If paired as a Double Feature: Wag the Dog [1997] - Barry Levinson (New Line Cinema)Tyler’s Pick of the Week: Weird Science [1985] - John Hughes (Arrow Video)If paired as a Double Feature: She’s Having a Baby [1988] - John Hughes (Paramount Pictures)

This story is taken from my book Satires in Short available on Amazon Kindle. This story is about Lado who is appearing for board examination. Instead of studying she is busy with shopping because her Chhotu Mama is exercising his gray matter to help her out.

This week the Satirists kick off another Scares and Satires season with Errementari, a period gothic fantasy horror film featuring demons, gods among men (blacksmiths), and little girls who kick ass. The crew discusses the beautifully dark aesthetics of the film, how the bland evil of bureaucratic systems is equated with the pure evil of demonic agendas in the movie, and what it must be like to work for your corporate overlords in Hell. Listen in to hear them talk about their take on this unique film, and to hear their special intro skit!

From Modesty Blaise to Branded to Kill, Bart picks a wild mix of international James Bond spoofs with a special deadpan something.

Andrew has another chat with his friend Julian about life stuff and random anime stuff and the "issues" with streaming. They somehow start a conversation about satire vs deconstructions again but it ends abruptly due to life stuff. There's some random talk about capitalism and somehow they never actually talk about the anime SNAFU but it made for a nice title. Enjoy!  Time Stamps: [0h00m00s] Intro  [0h03m04s] Main Topic Part - Chat with Julian [1h28m02s] Outro and Info You can follow the hosts on Twitter/Instagram: Andrew: @frigimonfanatic / @frigimonfanatic You can find more info on the show at Website: http://roaajcast.com  E-mail: roaajcast@gmail.com  Twitter: @roaajcast  Instagram:@roaajcast Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/goattcast  Anime Radicals Network Information: Website: www.animeradicals.com E-mail: animeradicalsnetwork@gmail.com Twitter: @animeradicals  Facebook: www.facebook.com/animeradicals/ We are also on iTunes/Google Play/Spotify/TuneIn/Stitcher, just type Recovery of An Anime Junkie Podcast or Geeking Out At The Tower Podcast or Anime Radicals in the search bar. Episode Topics: Anime, Streaming, Netflix, Crunchyroll, Funimation, Computer, Parts, Capitalism, Satires, Deconstructions, Konosuba, Evangelion

Andrew talks to his friends Kevin from the Geeking Out at the Tower Podcast and Peter from Medallion Comics about the anime they have been watching recently. They talk about a bunch of isekais, satires vs deconstructions, about anime that don't get second seasons, give some recommendations and Andrew goes a little hard on his issues with Goblin Slayer, with some more random anime and a hint of Hamilton for fun. Enjoy!  Time Stamps: [0h00m00s] Intro  [0h12m24s] Main Topic Part - Anime We've Been Watching [1h54m28s] Outro and Info You can follow the hosts on Twitter/Instagram: Andrew: @frigimonfanatic / @frigimonfanatic Kevin: @GOATTKevin  Peter: @medallioncomics / @medallioncomics You can find more info on the show at Website: http://roaajcast.com  E-mail: roaajcast@gmail.com  Twitter: @roaajcast  Instagram:@roaajcast Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/goattcast  Anime Radicals Network Information: Website: www.animeradicals.com E-mail: animeradicalsnetwork@gmail.com Twitter: @animeradicals  Facebook: www.facebook.com/animeradicals/ We are also on iTunes/Google Play/Spotify/TuneIn/Stitcher, just type Recovery of An Anime Junkie Podcast or Geeking Out At The Tower Podcast or Anime Radicals in the search bar. Episode Topics: Anime, Kemono Michi, Konosuba, Isekais, Deconstructions, Satire, Digimon, Isekai Quartet, Shield Hero, Goblin Slayer, Tower of Druaga, Log Horizon, Gundam, Bleach, Hamilton

Time to go to SPACE! In the mid 90s there were a couple space movies that really took a swing at political commentary; Mars Attacks and Starship Troopers! The post Episode 248: Satires, IN SPACE! Mars Attacks & Starship Troopers appeared first on So...I'm Watching This Show.

In this episode of Fly Casual Podcast, the boys talk the pop culture news of the day. In discussion the boys talk Star Wars Satires! Suit up and strap in. It's time once again to Fly Casual!

In this episode of Fly Casual Podcast, the boys talk the pop culture news of the day. In discussion the boys talk Star Wars Satires! Suit up and strap in. It's time once again to Fly Casual!

Juvenal’s Satires, produced some time in the decades around 100 CE, mercilessly mock some of the more colorful aspects of Roman life. Episode 72 Quiz: http://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-72-quiz Episode 72 Transcription: http://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-072-bread-and-circuses Bonus Content: http://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/bonus-content Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/literatureandhistory

The Patented Non-Comprehensive Review© of @ParasiteMovie on The Real Butter™ Buttercast

It’s time for another cult classic as Erika and Paul take on 1999’s Drop Dead Gorgeous! Have some coffee & bars and check out the ep! -Are you afraid of clowns? If you answered yes, do NOT click this link taking you to the music video for Don’t Cry Out Loud by Melissa Manchester! - Erika recommends another mockumentary Waiting for Guffman as her palate cleanser. -Paul offers On Becoming a God In Central Florida, which just wrapped up its first season on Showtime.

The Real Butter™ Buttercast #19: In which Peter, Theodore, and Amanda review "Jojo Rabbit", the new film by Taika Waititi (THOR: RAGNAROK, HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE). The official Real Butter™ Buttercast Top 5 Wartime Satires! Hot Goss (award-winners, Scorsese controversy)! New Releases and Poppy being creepy!

Reviewed: JoJo Rabbit I for an I: Terminator Dark Fate Trivia: Terminator Cast Movie Trivia Sponsored by: Backblaze

Charlie Chaplin lampooning Hitler’s bombast and fragility in “The Great Dictator” (1940) marked one of comedy’s all-time “truth to power” moments. But 80 years after WWII, how best to laugh at fascists when they seldom don the brownshirt? With the release of Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit”—a would-be charming comedy about a Hitler youth whose imaginary friend is der Führer—we’re again asking ourselves why, how, and when skewered Nazis are funny. After reviewing “Jojo,” Chance and Noah duck back to “The Producers” (1967) and “Top Secret!” (1984) to examine how Nazis became a source of irony and camp in pop culture. As always—down with Hitler; all the way down.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace (65-8BC), who flourished under the Emperor Augustus. He was one of the greatest poets of his age and is one of the most quoted of any age. Carpe diem, nil desperandum, nunc est bibendum – that’s Horace. He was the son of a freedman from southern Italy and, thanks to his talent, achieved high status in Rome despite fighting on the losing side in the civil wars. His Odes are widely thought his most enduring works, yet he also wrote his scurrilous Epodes, some philosophical Epistles and broad Satires. He’s influenced poets ever since, including those such as Wilfred Owen who rejected his line: ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’. With Emily Gowers Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College William Fitzgerald Professor of Latin Language and Literature at King’s College London and Ellen O’Gorman Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol Producer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace (65-8BC), who flourished under the Emperor Augustus. He was one of the greatest poets of his age and is one of the most quoted of any age. Carpe diem, nil desperandum, nunc est bibendum – that’s Horace. He was the son of a freedman from southern Italy and, thanks to his talent, achieved high status in Rome despite fighting on the losing side in the civil wars. His Odes are widely thought his most enduring works, yet he also wrote his scurrilous Epodes, some philosophical Epistles and broad Satires. He’s influenced poets ever since, including those such as Wilfred Owen who rejected his line: ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’. With Emily Gowers Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College William Fitzgerald Professor of Latin Language and Literature at King’s College London and Ellen O’Gorman Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol Producer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace (65-8BC), who flourished under the Emperor Augustus. He was one of the greatest poets of his age and is one of the most quoted of any age. Carpe diem, nil desperandum, nunc est bibendum – that’s Horace. He was the son of a freedman from southern Italy and, thanks to his talent, achieved high status in Rome despite fighting on the losing side in the civil wars. His Odes are widely thought his most enduring works, yet he also wrote his scurrilous Epodes, some philosophical Epistles and broad Satires. He’s influenced poets ever since, including those such as Wilfred Owen who rejected his line: ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’. With Emily Gowers Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College William Fitzgerald Professor of Latin Language and Literature at King’s College London and Ellen O’Gorman Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol Producer: Simon Tillotson

On this episode, Elric and Brian have their first guest of season three as they are joined by director Adam Rifkin to discuss movie satires (and Adam's new films THE LAST MOVIE STAR and DIRECTOR'S CUT). Some good Burt Reynolds talk to be had here too! You can help support this show by going to: https://www.patreon.com/purecinemapod Follow the Show on Twitter: twitter.com/purecinemapod Instagram: www.instagram.com/purecinemapod/ and Facebook: www.facebook.com/purecinemapod/ Elric's Twitter: twitter.com/elrickane Brian's Twitter: twitter.com/bobfreelander

Juvenal was a poet from the second century CE, and was one of the last and greatest satirical poets of the Roman empire. His five books, collectively known as the Satires, can be a brutal critique of life in Rome, but his use of comedic expression and his tendency to exaggerate has made interpreting them a field of debate.

What happens when a very bad Santa, a wacky folk singing duo, a maker of parade floats, a British talk show host, and a naughty department store get together? Well listen to this episode and find out!

April 30, 2016. David Plylar interviews composer Frederic Rzewski and violist Charlton Lee of the Del Sol String Quartet about their collaboration at the Library of Congress. Rzewski received a Library of Congress McKim Fund commission for "Satires," a work for violin and piano. The world premiere was given at the Library of Congress with Rzewski on piano and violinist Jennifer Koh on April 30, 2016. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=7572

With the presidential election cycle eating itself (and many of our souls), this week's episode takes on three recent electoral satires: 1999's "Election," 2012's "The Campaign" and 2003's "Head of State." In them, races for student council president, a rural Congressional seat and the highest office in the land are wrought with the betrayal, the puppeteering and the backroom handshakes we imagine (or try not to) in the political system. This week, we're joined by journalist Leo Adam Biga, author of "Alexander Payne: His Journey In Film," to talk about "Election," a young Payne trying to capture Omaha, and a sneak preview into Payne's return to satire with 2017's "Downsizing." Table of Contents: 3:40 - "Election" and its fearlessness 16:00 - Leo Adam Biga on Alexander Payne's career and his next movie 29:00 - "The Campaign" doesn't understand satire 39:40 - "Head of State" gets a bad rap

Tom gives a recap about the previous week's recording. Please rage quit the podcast on Facebook. Please. Metaphysics is defined by Tom at least. With a slight detour through music. Satires of science come through insects going forwards. Can Tom make a point without referring to specifics? We'll have to wait and see. Taking it back to 2007 to the near future. Heron is optimistic. Tom is asked about Tom Ray.

Tom gives a recap about the previous week's recording. Please rage quit the podcast on Facebook. Please. Metaphysics is defined by Tom at least. With a slight detour through music. Satires of science come through insects going forwards. Can Tom make a point without referring to specifics? We'll have to wait and see. Taking it back to 2007 to the near future. Heron is optimistic. Tom is asked about Tom Ray.

This round we define and discuss PARODIES & SATIRE in film. We are also getting caught up on some of last years film highlights and some 2015 new favorites. Listen, comment, contribute, and share the love! cultfollowing.co

First class in a course called (not by me) "Exploring the Self in 17th Century Poetry."  But since that's pretty much what all my courses are (though I don't like the word "exploring" there: sounds a bit new-agey), it's an accurate enough name for the course.  Here we discuss general principles and a couple of Donne's Holy Sonnets (VII and XIX).  Correction to a mistake: when I said Dryden I meant (as many people do) Pope, who was of course the "versifier" of the Satires of Dr. Donne.

Matthew Parris invites writer and comic Natalie Haynes to explain why her nomination for a Great Life is a Roman poet about whose life we know very little. Dr Llewelyn Morgan of Brasenose College Oxford helps her explain the enduring appeal of this scurrilous writer. On the face of it, Juvenal's life is hard to defend as a Great one. In the first place - as Dr Llewelyn Morgan, lecturer in Classical Languages and Literature at Oxford, confirms - we know very little about his life. He may have been a first-generation Roman from a Spanish family; he may have served in army; he may have been sent into exile. None of this can be confirmed. What we do know is that he uses his Satires to rant and rail against women, foreigners, gays and the upstarts who are all ruining Rome - which might make him hard to love. But Natalie Haynes, veteran of the stand-up circuit and now a writer and critic, finds Juvenal an indispensable part of her life and is very happy to explain why. Producer Christine Hall From 2012.

Penn Press's own Sara Davis reads selections from The Satires of Horace, translated by A.M. Juster. In the Satires, the Roman philosopher and dramatic critic Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-3 B.C.), known as Horace, provides trenchant social commentary on men's perennial enslavement to money, power, fame, and sex. Juster's striking new translation relies on the tools and spirit of the English light verse tradition while taking care to render the original text as accurately as possible.

Pope's style, speed, and compression.  His dialogues with a friend in the Imitations of Horace.  The psychological subtlety and beauty of his "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady"

Satires

Satires

Science News; Satires

Science News; Satires