English Romantic poet
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Remember where you come from.According to John Ortberg, remembering where you truly come from gives you two remarkable gifts: Identity and hope.In this reflection on Psalm 139, John explores what it means to be “fearfully and wonderfully made.”In this episode:Psalm 139 and where we truly come fromWhy remembering your origin gives you identityWhat it means to be fearfully and wonderfully madeYour body as your “little kingdom”The biblical word golemGollum and the Ring“What's your ring?”William Wordsworth and “trailing clouds of glory”Why we lose our sense of wonderThe danger of “peaking too soon”Jesus and the lilies of the fieldWhy remembering where you come from gives you hopeThe more important question: Where are you headed?Scriptures:Psalm 139:13–16 • Genesis 2:7 • Matthew 6:28–30#Psalm139 #JohnOrtberg #Psalms #Identity #Hope #SpiritualFormation #ChristianFaith #BibleStudy #Purpose #FearfullyAndWonderfullyMade
De engelska romantiska diktarna var inga världsfrånvända skönandar, utan politiska poeter som radikalt ville förändra samhället. Gabriella Håkansson berättar en historia som ofta glöms bort. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radios app. ESSÄ: Detta är en text där skribenten reflekterar över ett ämne eller ett verk. Åsikter som uttrycks är skribentens egna. Ursprungligen publicerad 2019-08-15.Tanken på att promenera har något idylliskt över sig. Ett slags frid förknippad med naturen – kanske ser man en romantisk poet som William Wordsworth framför sig, som strövar runt i grönskan och stannar till för att besjunga en blomma eller en antik ruin vid vägkanten.Första gången jag hörde talas om den engelska romantiken var på gymnasiet, vi läste John Keats dikt ”Ode till en grekisk urna” och diskuterade dess olika metapoetiska aspekter. Vi fick lära oss ord som ekfras och sonett, men inte i vilket sammanhang den här vackra poesin skrevs. Och visst fascinerades jag av lord Byrons incestuösa kärlekshistorier och Mary Shelleys tragiska liv – men romantiken blev ändå för mig en estetisk, lite världsfrånvänd rörelse som målade upp ruiner i månljus, stilla promenader och vild natur, och jag tror att den här gymnasiala bilden av romantiken lever kvar hos många, ännu idag.Sällskapets syfte var att upprätta en självstyrande republik, där man och kvinna ska leva i enhet med naturen, dela makten och arbetet lika, och där allt privatägande är avskaffat.Man brukar säga att startskottet för den engelska romantiken var diktsamlingen ”Lyrical Ballads”. Den kom ut 1798, och skrevs gemensamt av Samuel Taylor Coleridge och William Wordsworth. Boken kom till medan de gick långa promenader i det engelska landskapet, och avhandlade Spinoza och tysk metafysik.Så sägs det i varje fall.Men Historien kan berättas på många sätt, och jag tänkte berätta en annan version, med mindre månljus – och mer action, som tar sin utgångspunkt i Samuel Coleridge politiska engagemang.Redan som sjuttonåring skrev den unge poeten sin första prorevolutionära dikt "Bastiljens fall", och tre år senare år senare vann han en poesitävling med ett kritiskt ”Ode till slav-handeln”. Hans rum på Cambridge blev snabbt ett centrum för den radikala studentrörelsen och han kom att umgås med den ökända klick ultraradikaler som kallades för ”de engelska jakobinerna”. Bland dem fanns framstående författare som William Blake, filosofen Mary Wollstonecraft och hennes sambo William Godwin. Själva kallade de sig demokrater och ordnade massmöten där tiotusentals människor kom för att kräva allmän rösträtt. Staten fick kalla fötter och svarade med inskränkt mötesfrihet och gav kronan rätt att kasta vem som helst i fängelse.Konflikten mellan demokraterna och överhögheten förde England farligt nära inbördeskrigets rand, och det var i de här kretsarna den 20-årige Coleridge befann sig när han formade som poet. Sommaren 1794 beslutade han sig för att prova den nya flugan – att fotvandra. Att gå sågs inom rörelsen som det yttersta uttrycket för demokrati. Man klädde sig folkligt, hängde på lokala värdshus och umgicks med allmogen. Filosofiskt knöt man an till de antika vandrande föreläsarna, men promenaden var också ett sätt att återerövra den gamla medeltida idén om allmänningen, ja, att gå till fots var på alla sätt ett politiskt statement. Iklädd arbetarjacka, lösa byxor och ett bärbart bläckhorn vandrade Coleridge över 80 mil på en månad.Tillsammans med en annan radikal poet – Robert Southey – arbetade han därefter fram ett politiskt program där epokens alla progressiva idéer fördes samman till en messiansk häxbrygd.Under namnet ”Det pantisokratiska sällskapet” skulle Coleridge och Southey frälsa världen från sedelkapitalismens och civilisationens fördärv. Sällskapets syfte var att upprätta en självstyrande republik, där man och kvinna ska leva i enhet med naturen, dela makten och arbetet lika, och där allt privatägande är avskaffat. Pantisokratin får många anhängare, och 1796 lämnar Coleridge, Southey och en tredje kamrat storstan för att utropa den första pantisokratiska kommunen, i en liten lägenhet i Bristol. Men verkligheten kommer snart ikapp. Efter någon månad står man inte ut med varandra. Projektet kollapsar.karaktärerna hämtas från vardagslivet – man skriver om barn, gamlingar och dårhjon – figurer som aldrig tidigare existerat i diktens värld.Men Coleridge ger inte upp. När han senare samma år gifter sig och bildar familj gör han ett nytt försök att realisera utopin, nu i mindre skala, på engelska landsbygden, och det är där han träffar William Wordsworth och dennes syster, Dorothy. Han ordnar ett hus åt syskonen bara ett stenkast från sitt eget, och fortsätter – nu i deras sällskap – sina radikala fotvandringar. I pantisokratisk anda diskuterar de tanken på att revolutionera litteraturen, och skapa ett verk som upplyser och förändrar människan i grunden. Wordsworth är entusiastisk, och 1797 påbörjas det gemensamma projektet med en diktsamling som ska komma att bryta med tidens alla estetiska ideal.Istället för högstämda parabler om grekiska gudar hämtar man stoff från balladen och folksagan, istället för hexameter använder man blankvers. Motiven lånas in från låga genrer som gotiken, och karaktärerna hämtas från vardagslivet – man skriver om barn, gamlingar och dårhjon – figurer som aldrig tidigare existerat i diktens värld. Boken utkommer 1798 under titeln ”Lyrical Ballads”– och resten är historia.Men historien kan som sagt berättas på många olika sätt, och man kan undra varför just den här radikala, politiska bakgrunden till romantiken så ofta har hamnat i skymundan? Kanske för att författarna själva tog avstånd från sin radikalitet när franska revolutionen övergick i blodbad och Frankrike blev Englands ärkefiende. Man reviderade sina ungdomsdikter, och många vände kappan efter vinden och blev konservativa. Den ende som vägrade göra avbön var William Hazlitt, som dyrkade Napoleon ända till sin död. Som tack för det blev han bortglömd i 150 år.Men den förklaringen räcker ändå inte, för den andra generationens romantiker, med lord Byron och makarna Shelley i spetsen, var ju ännu mer avantgardistiska. De skrev en litteratur som öppet fördömde religionen, tog avstånd från äktenskapet och rasade över såväl kommersialismen som miljöförstöringen. Pantisokratin i all ära, men 1812 drog Percy Bysshe Shelley radikaliteten till sin yttersta spets och pekade ut köttätandet som roten till allt ont. Han förespråkade en vegetarisk kostreform som måste genomföras innan någon radikal utopi alls kunde bli verklighet.Shelley hade inte bara hämtat sitt tankegods från föregångarna Godwin och Wollstonecraft, han äktade också deras dotter, Mary. Hon, som 1814 i ett svar på makens subversiva dikt, ”Den befriade Prometheus”, skriver romanen ”Frankenstein”.de gamla romantikerna lyfts fram ur glömskan och nu påstås utgöra Englands guldålder. Men först dammas de av och skrubbas rena från obehagligt politiskt godsFem år senare sätter staten definitivt stopp för den radikala rörelsen genom att i Manchester skicka in kavalleriet när en folkmassa på 60 000 person i söndagskläder kräver rösträtt. Arton dör och 650 skadas i vad som kom att kallas för Peterloomassakern – och med det är romantikens dagar räknade. Coleridge, Shelley och de andra börjar betraktas som mossiga, och det är inte förrän Viktorianerna långt senare försöker skapa en nationell kanon som de gamla romantikerna lyfts fram ur glömskan och nu påstås utgöra Englands guldålder. Men först dammas de av och skrubbas rena från obehagligt politiskt gods - och vips står den bildsköne lord Byron gipsbyst på var mans spiselhylla.Det är några av förklaringarna till hur en av Europas mest progressiva litterära rörelser kunde förvandlas till vacker, men uddlös estetik.I England närmar man sig nu tvåhundraårsdagen av Peterloomassakern och säkert kommer man hedra de som föll offer för statens våld. Kanske kommer vi nu äntligen få se en renässans för alla de galna, visionära utopiska idéer som romantikerna också brann för?Gabriella Håkansson, författare
How do you find joy in suffering? That's one of the questions Christian Wiman explores in his poetry and his life.The former editor of Poetry magazine, Wiman is the author of seven books of poetry, including his latest, The Dance. He also teaches at Yale Divinity School. He's been called “the most important Christian writer in America,” though his relationship with God is marked by uncertainty as much as faith. That tension runs through his poetry, where mystical experience, doubt, suffering, and joy continually collide.His understanding of mortality is also shaped by a 20-year battle with cancer. Diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma and initially given only a few years to live, Wiman has come close to death several times. Yet he speaks about suffering not simply as something to endure, but as a strange territory in which beauty and wonder can sometimes be found.Wiman craves direct experiences of the world, but he finds that writing poetry helps him fully appreciate these fleeting moments of awe and wonder. A frosted hosta, an old candlestick, the trills of a red-winged blackbird—small encounters like these can open onto deeper questions about meaning, eternity, and what Wordsworth called “seeing into the life of things.”—00:00:00 Intro00:02:40 Poetry, Awe and Wonder00:15:10 Twenty Years Battling Cancer00:21:55 Joy in Suffering00:30:45 Seeing Into the Life of Things00:39:40 A Last Poem and Farewell—Links: Book: The Dance Book: Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian Book: Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair Yale Divinity School website Profile of sculptor Lee Bontecou Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
Clue 4 of the Bank of Utah Where's the Wallet Cash Quest is out, and it is four lines of pure anagram bait. What's something that's sweet that you always want ample. Solve for M and you'll have something for the old hippocampal. Look for a place that's in the wrong spot, that's pretty and fun and feels like a plot.We ran the whole thing through a new segment called Start, Bench, Cut. Maple started, apple got benched, jingles got cut. Slope started, because M is slope. On hippocampal, Christian went full Greek mythology: the hippocampus is a creature with the head and body of a horse and the tail of a fish, horses get apples as treats, and the thing in the wrong spot is the tail. That is Horsetail Falls in Alpine, which sits in Phelps Canyon, which is the trail from last week's census question. It rated a 6.8. Chad liked the orchard on Dry Creek better.Also: the bonus clue came out as narcissus, which is a genus of daffodil, one week after we spent an episode on Wordsworth and the daffodils. Confirmation bias at its absolute best, and Christian's confidence in Alpine went down anyway.If you're here for real solve work, there's an anagram, a slope, and a 16th century anatomist in here. If you're here for Dolphin To Go, we have that too.In This Episode:Chad wants a spreadsheet tracking everyone who speaks in absolutes about their solveMaple or apple, and whether the line even has to make sense in the sentenceSolve for M, where M is slope, John Moyle, or nothing at allWhether they picked ample to rhyme with hippocampal or hippocampal to rhyme with ampleThe big P on the Alpine mountain, which is on Peterson's land and is therefore in the wrong spotPlot as a cemetery plot, a literary device, a garden bed, or the button on a TI-83Half-baked ideas, biggest robberies, and the worst lines from past hunt poemsLast week's question is answered: the one Alpine trail that shares a name with the 1850 census is Phelps Canyon.One ask. People have been searching the Alpine Cemetery. It's not there, we've looked, and it's a real cemetery with real families buried in it. Please leave it alone.We're hitting the trail this week and doing an Instagram Live from it. With audio this time.#utah #treasure #utahtreasurehunt #bankofutah #wheresthewallet
Wordsworth was not unusual among Romantic poets for his enthusiastic support of the French Revolution, but he stands apart from his contemporaries for actually being there to see it for himself (‘Thou wert there,' Coleridge wrote). This episode looks at Wordsworth's retrospective account of his 1791 visit to France, described in books 9 and 10 of The Prelude, and the ways in which it reveals a passionate commitment to republicanism while recoiling from political extremism. Mark and Seamus discuss why, despite Wordsworth's claim of being innately republican, discussion of the intellectual underpinnings of the revolution is strangely absent from the poem, which is more often preoccupied with romance and the imagination, particularly in their power to soften zealotry. Get 50% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings with the code SUMMER50 at checkout when you sign up here: https://lrb.me/crtravelpp Find our full Close Readings travel playlist here: https://lrb.me/travelwebpp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Misbehave, make something beautiful, and try to win.” — Curtis White's motto for resistance How to say no to fascism? Curtis White, the literary thinker dubbed “the splendidly cranky utopian,” has published what he calls a “manifesto” of “resistance.” On Resistance, the 75-year-old White told me, is his last work of non-fiction. He still has worlds to invent, novels to write. Enough with the manifestos. But don't expect a program. On Resistance is more of an anti-manifesto. “That's not for me to say,” White responds when asked what, exactly, we're supposed to do to resist fascism. His resistance is cultural. It's an attitude. Borrowing from Ted Gioia's subversive history of music, White likes the idea of “psychic treason.” Its patron saints are the first dropouts, romantics like Wordsworth and Coleridge who rejected the military, clergy and family to write poetry in the countryside. But On Resistance isn't simply sixties nostalgia. White, a veteran of Berkeley and the Haight, prefers the Nietzschean imperative to forget the past and move on to the next joyful deed. So the only good manifesto is the anti-manifesto. If you want to say no to fascism, become a cranky utopian. Or at least pick up On Resistance. Five Takeaways • Psychic Treason. White's resistance is not conventionally political — Trump appears once or twice, party politics not at all. Borrowing “psychic treason” from Ted Gioia's Music: A Subversive History, he argues that the arts are subversive by nature: sometimes formally, sometimes by allying with social movements. His founding example is the Romantics, the first dropouts — Wordsworth and Coleridge refusing the military, the clergy, and the family estate to write poetry in the countryside, declaring cultural war once the church was out of the way. The treason White wants is the one the arts commit constantly, whether or not anyone calls it politics.• Not Nostalgia — Nietzsche. The sixties made White: Berkeley in high school, San Francisco after, and the formative discovery that his country “had lied to me” and was indifferent to whether he lived or died. But On Resistance opens with the confession “I am living in a world that no longer exists” — and refuses to make anyone else live there. One chapter is bluntly titled “Forget The Beatles.” His position is Nietzschean: move on to the next joyful deed. And the rot, he insists, didn't start with Trump but with Reagan — the decades-long withdrawal of public money from public goods, education above all.• The Three False Resistances. The book's first half is ideology critique: our culture says resistance is unnecessary because it has already been provided — by philanthropy, virtuous corporations, and liberalism. White's exhibits: Steve Jobs Buddha-branding the counterculture to sell machines to people who thought they were subverting something; the “big green” foundations (via Mark Dowie) taking over grassroots fights and defanging them; the Gates Foundation vaccinating children against polio downwind of a polluter it was invested in. Philanthropy, he argues, self-limits to protect the source of its own wealth. Patagonia may be the quiet exception that proves the rule.• Dropping Out, Together. White's alternative is dropping out — plural: doing something else, and doing it with other people. The organic farms and farmers markets that have created communal well-being in most American cities; FC2, the author-run press he co-founded with Ronald Sukenick, past its fiftieth anniversary; the thriving-but-invisible independent presses — Graywolf, Coffee House, Rochester's Open Letter — for which he's now plotting a group Substack. The obstacle is the money jail: everyone's struggle for money limits what it is possible to do. The goal isn't overturning the status quo. “What we need right now is companions.”• Misbehave, Make Something Beautiful, Try to Win. White's motto since The Middle Mind — the making beautiful needn't be art; the trying to win is where misbehavior gets socialized. His lineage runs Thoreau, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and above all John Berger: Marxist, art critic, poet, writer of lively living books. His Marxism, such as it is, is the humanist 1844 Manuscripts — alienation, not expropriation — via Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man. And the book itself is the argument: playful and fierce, a performance that moves like a novel, reinvigorating worthy old ideas rather than hunting new ones. At 75, it's his last nonfiction — written in a spirit of play, to be left in one. About the Guest Curtis White is a novelist and social critic whose books include Memories of My Father Watching TV, The Middle Mind, The Science Delusion, and Living in a World That Can't Be Fixed. Called by Elle “the most inspiringly wicked social critic of the moment,” he is co-founder, with Ronald Sukenick, of FC2, the publisher of innovative fiction run collectively by its authors, and taught English for many years at Illinois State University. His new and, he says, final work of nonfiction is On Resistance: A Manifesto (Melville House, August 11, 2026). He lives in Port Townsend, Washington. References: • On Resistance: A Manifesto by Curtis White (Melville House, August 11, 2026). Jeffrey St. Clair: “a trail guide through our disorienting and perilous political landscape.”• Music: A Subversive History by Ted Gioia — the source of “psychic treason” and the argument that the arts subvert by nature.• The Middle Mind by Curtis White — where the motto was coined: misbehave, make something beautiful, and try to win.• Jon Taplin in Rolling Stone — the recent essay asking whether the counterculture can rise again, and a recent Keen On conversation in the same key.• One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse — the Western Marxist tradition, via the 1844 Manuscripts, that taught White to worry about alienation rather than expropriation.• FC2 — the author-run press of innovative fiction White co-founded with Ronald Sukenick, now past its fiftieth year. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 3,000 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTube
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the first people to hear ‘The Ruined Cottage', read aloud to him on a visit to the Wordsworths in 1797, and he later described it as ‘one of the most beautiful poems in the language'. Like ‘Michael' (1800), it depicts the disintegration of ordinary lives under social and psychological pressures, reflecting Wordsworth's interest in rural poverty as much as the natural world. In this episode, Seamus and Mark look at the two poems as part of the literary revolution brought about by the Lyrical Ballads, in which everyday language is used to depict marginal lives without sentiment, guided by Wordsworth's assertion that ‘men who do not wear fine clothes can feel deeply.' Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignupnp Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/scsignupnp Read more in the LRB: Marilyn Butler on The Lyrical Ballads: https://lrb.me/npep702 Jonathan Wordsworth: Wordsworth in Love: https://lrb.me/npep701 Seamus Perry on 'The Prelude': https://lrb.me/npep703 Colin Burrow on Wordsworth: https://lrb.me/npep704 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full show: https://kNOwBETTERHIPHOP.com Artists Played: Marvin Gaye, TzariZM, conshus, Devin Morrison, J Littles, Kong The Artisan, EAST WEST HONEY, Lyric Jones, Wake The Wild, Wyclef Jean, Theo Croker, Ella Thompson, Lice Aesop Rock, Homeboy Sandman, Oliver James, Marco Benevento, Mugs and Pockets, fabric, A Stolen Nova, Dirt E. Dutch, Bruk Rogers, Roberta Silva, Onj, Dave Dar, Wordsworth, The Tangiers, Thvnos, Allison Russell, Brittney Spencer, Mic King, LR Blitzkrieg, OutKast, GOODie MOb, IMAKEMADBEATS
In this episode of the Anglotopia Podcast, Jonathan Thomas sits down with Professor Paul Robichaud — Professor of English at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut — to discuss his remarkable new book, Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany, published by Reaktion Books on July 6th. Paul is not an archaeologist but a literary scholar, and his book takes a completely different approach to prehistoric monuments: rather than asking who built them or how, he asks what stories people have told about them across the centuries — and what those stories reveal about us. From the earliest Greek account of a possible spherical temple on a northern island (possibly Callanish), through Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century account of Merlin flying Stonehenge from Ireland, through the antiquarian fantasies of Inigo Jones (who decided Stonehenge was Roman and helpfully corrected its geometry to fit) and William Stukeley (who invented the Druid connection that has never entirely gone away), through the Romantics — Wordsworth's visions of human sacrifice, Blake's prophetic paintings, Turner's atmospheric canvases — to the 1970s counterculture, folk horror films, and our own climate-anxious present, the book traces how five millennia of imagining these ancient places tells us as much about the people doing the imagining as it does about the stones themselves. Jonathan and Paul also share their personal favorite prehistoric sites, including Avebury, Wayland Smithy, and — Jonathan's top pick — Castlerigg in Cumbria. Links Stories of the Stones by Paul Robichaud (Reaktion Books, July 6) Stores of Stones - Amazon Stonehenge — English Heritage Avebury — National Trust Wayland's Smithy, Oxfordshire — English Heritage Castlerigg Stone Circle, Cumbria — National Trust Callanish Standing Stones, Isle of Lewis Stanton Drew Stone Circles, Somerset Newgrange, Ireland The Ridgeway National Trail Albertus Magnus College Friends of Anglotopia Club Takeaways The word "prehistoric" didn't exist until the mid-19th century. For most of human history, people encountering these monuments had no framework for understanding them as ancient — they were simply there, part of the landscape, and the stories told about them reflected whatever worldview the storyteller brought: giants, biblical patriarchs, Roman engineers, druid priests, or earth energies. Stonehenge is unique among stone circles not because of its age or size but because of its distinctive architecture — upright stones with lintels resting on mortise-and-tenon joints, clearly intentional and clearly extraordinary. Its location on a relatively populated southern English plain also meant it was seen by far more people across the centuries than monuments in Wales or the Outer Hebrides. The Stonehenge we see today is not how it looked for most of recorded history. Many of the stones that appear upright were raised during restoration work in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the contemporary visitor's experience of a cleaned-up, presented monument is itself a kind of modern imagination of what people thought it should look like. Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century account — in which Merlin magically flies the stones from Ireland to Salisbury Plain as a memorial to fallen British nobles — dominated the medieval imagination for centuries because there simply were no rival stories. With no archaeological framework and no competing account, his version was accepted as genuine British history. Inigo Jones concluded that Stonehenge must be a Roman temple, and helpfully corrected its irregular geometry in his drawings to make it look properly classical. William Stukeley correctly identified the Druids as the likely builders — and then spent decades constructing increasingly elaborate Druidical fantasies connecting ancient Britain to biblical monotheism. Both men are cautionary examples of how we make evidence fit our assumptions. The Druid/Stonehenge association is almost entirely modern — an 18th-century invention that has almost no basis in archaeological evidence. The Iron Age Celts we associate with Druids arrived in Britain centuries after Stonehenge was built. But the association was cemented through repeated reproduction in engravings and illustrations — like a cultural meme — and has proved impossible to dislodge. The Romantics found in prehistoric monuments the perfect embodiment of the Sublime — Edmund Burke's idea of awe and terror in the presence of something vast and unknowable. Wordsworth had what he described as visions of ancient Britons and human sacrifice after being stranded near Stonehenge in a carriage accident; Blake incorporated megaliths into his prophetic paintings; Turner painted Stonehenge in dramatic atmospheric light. These Romantic responses shaped how visitors expected to feel at these sites for generations afterward. Paul's most unexpectedly moving site visit was to Wayland's Smithy in Oxfordshire — a Neolithic chambered tomb accessible via the ancient Ridgeway path. He had it entirely to himself in the rain, found a fresh offering of flowers left by a previous visitor, and experienced the kind of quiet communion with place that Stonehenge, with its crowds and visitor management, rarely allows. Jonathan's personal favorite prehistoric site is Castlerigg in Cumbria — a stone circle set on a hill and surrounded by mountains, relatively unknown and often visitable in near-solitude. Paul's is Avebury, which he recommends over Stonehenge for anyone wanting to actually walk among the stones rather than view them from a distance. Our contemporary fascination with prehistoric monuments is increasingly shaped by environmental anxiety — a need to reconnect with the landscape and with deep human time at a moment of climate crisis and technological acceleration. The stories we now tell about standing stones are as revealing of our own moment as Geoffrey of Monmouth's were of the 12th century. Soundbites "I had one book that had a picture of a druid kind of surfing on a large stone coming into Stonehenge — like he's landing. The idea was that they must have levitated the stones using Earth energies. The 70s was a time when there was a lot of interest in what we call New Age thinking. All that was kind of in the air when I was a kid." — Paul on his childhood introduction to prehistoric Britain. "I'm more interested in what these stories are doing and what they reveal about the people who are telling them. We can get some insight into what these places have meant to people who have visited them and lived alongside them for centuries and even millennia. The stories are interesting in their own right." — Paul on what a literary scholar sees that an archaeologist might not. "Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed to get his information from a mysterious book in Welsh that no one else had ever heard of and has never been identified or located. He was clearly a fabulator. But his account dominated the Middle Ages and kept getting retold all through the Renaissance because there were no rival stories." — Paul on Geoffrey of Monmouth's enduring influence. "Inigo Jones with his very careful architectural drawings, correcting the shape of Stonehenge to make it fit his vision, is a kind of exaggerated form of what we're all tempted to do — which is make things fit our assumptions about the world." — Paul on antiquarian projection. "The controversy around Druids in the 1700s was not whether they conducted their rites at Stonehenge — that was assumed — but whether the Druids were noble philosophers who had a secret wisdom, or bloodthirsty priests using human sacrifice to terrify the population into submission. Stukeley and his friend Borlase fell out over this." — Paul on the 18th-century Druid debate. "You've got a stone circle, you've got a druid there, and they're just always together. It becomes like a meme. And then they're taken up by the Romantics. So it really gets cemented in the popular imagination." — Paul on how the Druid/Stonehenge association became inescapable. "The Romantics find this admiration for the rugged beauty of these sites. Edmund Burke's idea of the sublime — that we experience awe in wild places that provoke a frisson of fear — becomes a kind of defining experience that travelers have at Stonehenge. These sites are viewed through the same lens as Niagara Falls." — Paul on the Romantic discovery of the prehistoric sublime. "I walked from the visitor center and I was glad I did. You see the barrows and the wooded land and then finally, a little bit in the distance, Stonehenge itself. And it really is impressive. You get at least a little bit of that experience of what it must have been like to suddenly see it in front of you in the landscape." — Paul's practical advice for visiting Stonehenge. "I drove up to Wayland's Smithy and I had the place to myself. It was raining, just one of those English drizzles. You walk down this pathway and then all of a sudden this really magnificent tomb is in front of you with standing stones around it. Someone had left an offering of flowers there. It was really beautiful." — Paul on his most unexpectedly moving prehistoric site visit. "As we're living in this increasingly dire moment of climate change, there's a sense of urgency in thinking about our relationship to the landscape. And we live in a time of unprecedented technological change — we spend so much of our time staring at screens. I think this interest in the deep past is something more and more people are developing as a way of connecting to our cultural and human origins." — Paul on why prehistoric monuments still matter today. Chapters 00:26 Introduction — Jonathan introduces Paul Robichaud and Stories of the Stones 02:15 Origin Story — Leonard Nimoy's In Search Of, Usborne books, and a trip to Callanish in 1998 03:42 A Literary Scholar Looks at Standing Stones — What Paul's approach reveals that archaeology alone can't 05:28 Why Britain, Ireland and Brittany? — The megalithic density of northwestern Europe and the span from 4500 BC to 3000 BC 07:42 A Catalog of Monument Types — Burial mounds, menhirs, stone circles, dolmens, earthworks, and what distinguishes them 08:57 The Word "Prehistoric" Didn't Exist Until the 19th Century — How the lack of a framework shaped every story told before it 11:13 Why Stonehenge Above All Others — The lintels, the mortise-and-tenon joints, the location, and the architecture of uniqueness 13:49 Stonehenge Is Not What It Looked Like — Restoration, re-erected stones, and why we see a cleaned-up version 16:33 Avebury vs. Stonehenge — Why Avebury often offers a more powerful experience, and the tip to walk rather than take the bus 18:06 Diodorus Siculus and the Spherical Temple — The earliest possible written reference to a British megalithic monument 20:51 Geoffrey of Monmouth and Merlin — The 12th-century account that dominated the medieval imagination for centuries 23:54 The Welsh Tradition — Arthurian connections, early saints, St. Samson, and the distinct Welsh relationship with prehistoric places 26:04 Old English Anxiety — Giants, barrow demons, Beowulf's dragon, and the fear that ran through early medieval English culture 28:26 The Antiquarians — Inigo Jones decides Stonehenge is Roman and corrects its geometry to fit 31:05 William Stukeley — The genuine archaeological pioneer who invented the Druid connection that has never gone away 36:05 Why Modern Druids at Stonehenge Are Performing a Modern Tradition — And why that doesn't make it meaningless 38:15 The Romantic Imagination — Burke's Sublime, Wordsworth's visions, Blake's prophecies, Turner's light 41:01 Wordsworth's Carriage Accident and the Wicker Man — How personal experience and literary reading combine at these sites 43:38 The Modern Era — Counterculture, New Age, Doctor Who, folk horror, and our climate-anxious present 46:33 Practical Tips for Visiting — Stonehenge, Avebury, Stanton Drew and its pub, Callanish, and what to prioritize 48:33 Personal Favorites — Wayland's Smithy (Paul) and Castlerigg in Cumbria (Jonathan) 51:00 Wrap-Up — Stories of the Stones out July 6 from Reaktion Books Video Version
Wordsworth, with all the meaning and depth that is so common in all of his poems, lays out for us a blueprint for the kind of character we should look for in the provision of political leadership. He may have written this poem as an ode to Lord Nelson, but we can take from it much more. Wordsworth's happy warrior need not only be happy as a warrior, but also as a politician, a leader, a MP or a PM.When considering the challenges that lie ahead and how grossly recent leaders have failed us in the challenges their ineptitude has created, we would do well to start employing happy politicians with the character Wordsworth outlines here.This is TwoandaMic. Rise Up and be curious Episode art is taken from: Henry_William_Pickersgill_-_Portrait_of_William_Wordsworth_(1770-1850)_British_Poet_Painting_by_Henry_Willia_-_(MeisterDrucke-1011374).jpg (896×1260)This podcast is maintained with the efforts of my guests' participation and as much free time as I can dedicate to it. I would appreciate it greatly if you could help spread the word and bring a few more people to the channel. Thanks in advance.I welcome opinions of every kind so please come and find me on social media at:Instagram: TwoandaMicTwitter: TwoandaMic1TikTok: Twoandamic2Should I really have to ask?
In Wordsworth's 1807 description of ‘golden daffodils', the breeze animates both the scene and the inner life of the speaker. Like many poets, Wordsworth turned to the weather to mediate between internal and external experiences. In this episode, Sarah and Sandeep look at the ways in which weather has functioned as a poetic tool, and consider three recent poems which describe the intimate and communal effects of atmospheric events: Maureen McLane's ‘Rocks', with its ‘rain/when I'd just told her it would hold off'; ‘Surface Mapping' by Jake Skeets, describing the death of 191 horses on Navajo land during a drought; and Ishion Hutchinson's ‘After the Hurricane', in which the silence after a violent storm becomes a space to assess different forms of aftermath. Read Maureen McLane's 'Rocks' in the LRB: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n01/maureen-n.-mclane/rocks Book tickets to a live recording of this series: https://lrb.me/ptwtickets Get 25% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings with the code 'POETRY25' at checkout here: https://lrb.me/crpoetry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
…in which we take a midsummer stroll through Hawkshead to learn about the village's deep history and its tiny school that had a big impact – not just locally, but on the world stage. Accompanied by Joanne Heather, director of the Hawkshead Grammar School Foundation, we set out from the meadows above the village to explore Hawkshead's long history – its Norse roots, the chapelry that served Furness Abbey, and the wool trade that put the market town on the map, long before neighbouring Ambleside, Coniston and Windermere. Visiting the church of St Michael & All Angels, Joanne introduces us to the Sandys family of Graythwaite, and Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York during the reign of Elizabeth I, who founded the school to train new generations of clergy. Arriving at the Grammar School, museum assistant manager Hollie Barker talks us through life at the school: the hours of Latin and scripture; the cock fights and sword fights; the strict rules that allowed boys (no girls) to smoke and drink, but never gamble. In the confines of the school library, we learn about old boy and London vintner Daniel Rawlinson – great grandson of Daniel Hechstetter, the patriarch of Keswick mining – who founded the school's collection of priceless books, which includes a guide to dissecting elephants. Finally, we turn our attention to the school's most famous alumnus, William Wordsworth, enrolled into the school after his mother's death, who excelled at maths and who led a seemingly idyllic school life 'midst the family trauma, with days off spent ice skating, visiting the Duddon sands and eating strawberries and cream. Hawkshead Grammar School Museum is open 1 April–31 October, Thursday–Monday 11am–4pm during term time, and daily 11am–4pm during school holidays. 2026 exhibitions are ‘Friends Before Fame', about Wordsworth's school friends, and ‘America 250', highlighting the school's links with America. More information about the museum and library conservation project can be found on Bloomberg Connects and at www.hawksheadgrammar.org.uk. New volunteers are always welcome; contact Joanne at hgsmuseum@gmail.com. The museum is hosting a series of evening talks, usually on the last Monday of the month. The talk on Monday 29 June is Mark Hatton (see Countrystrides past) discussing the history of Coniston Copper Mines and its links to the school. For details and tickets go to EventBrite and search for ‘A Talk at the School', or see www.hawksheadgrammar.org.uk.
Wordsworth joins the WeGoinIN Presents... pod for another great interview, this time talking about his work with Stu Bangas, his upcoming books, staying healthy, and much more! https://linktr.ee/seven3zero https://instagram.com/seven3zero https://twitter.com/seven3zero Cop the Words 7 book, featuring interviews with top-tier artists including Wordsworth, Masta Ace, Supastition, junclassic, and others: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CP46CNS8?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tpbk_6&storeType=ebooks
The poems that nourish us, and the myths that nourish poems. What can a connection with a mythical figure give us, or a legendary flower? Ian McMillan is joined by Zeus, Poseidon, the Green Man, the trees of Under Milk Wood, and Wordsworth's favourite flower - courtesy of The Verb's guests - the philosopher Angie Hobbs, and poets Rishi Dastidar, Bradley Taylor, and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch.Bradley Taylor brings Brummie legends like 'Pete the Feet' into a poem with the likes of Zeus and Icarus, in his slam-winning poem 'I don't care about the gods'. Bradley's book is called 'You Missed the Best Parts', and he writes a brand new poem during the programme.Angie Hobbs is Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Sheffield. and her most recent book is called 'Why Plato Matters Now'. Angie shares 'a neon line', a stellar line of poetry that can help us get through uncertain times. Rishi Dastidar shares a new commission on the theme of 'how to get through' - and celebrates William Wordsworth's favourite flower, the lesser celandine. Rishi also reads from his new collection 'Cherry Blossom at Nightbreak' - and we discover the mythic name of the legendary entertainer Bruce Forsyth.Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch's new book is 'Milk Wood Memoir'. It includes a legendary tree, and family recollections of that mythic Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Samantha's poetry has been nourished by living in the Welsh fishing village of New Quay - also an influence on Dylan Thomas's play 'Under Milk Wood'
Spoiler alert: this week we're analyzing the Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man.” Romney Wordsworth enters a cold, dark courtroom What are the charges? One count of professing to the vocation of a librarian, and the more serious charge of being obsolete–no longer useful to the State. You see, if you can no longer be of service to the State, you can no longer be of service to anyone. But, despite the thundering of the Chancellor atop his pulpit of hate, Mr. Wordsworth will hold on to his integrity and keep his head high through his sentencing. He shall be liquidated at midnight, but how it happens is a bit of a mystery. However, it will be televised for the world to see. And when the Chancellor himself shows up to bid Mr. Wordsworth adieu, things get interesting. On this episode of KOI: A Twilight Zone Show, we're going to be discussing whether or not we are heading to a place where men shall be obsolete; we'll ask why it's so disturbing for the State that Wordsworth is a librarian; and I'll reveal my moment of awe, a look into why I avoid telling my students what to think. So, grab your keys, and let's open up this door to the fifth dimension. Want to support the KOI show, get extra content, and give money to two awesome charities at the same time? Consider becoming a member in one of our tiers. 50% of every dollar, after the platforms take their fees, will go to charity: 25% to the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation and 25% to the Gary Sinise Foundation. Our goal is to preserve a way of life that Rod Serling himself would be proud of. However, even by just watching the show, subscribing, commenting, giving it a thumbs up, and sharing it with friends, you are doing your part. Thank you. You can learn more about the monetization plan for this channel from this video, which I recorded live from Serlingfest 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efhcWe1dK-8&t=89sPatreon account: https://patreon.com/TheKeyofImaginationShow?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkYouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thekeyofimagination/joinWe're walking through Rod Serling's class Twilight Zone series and asking difficult questions about life. So, if you love The Twilight Zone, science fiction, or even just philosophizing about life, consider joining us on this journey. There's always room for more. Google form to rate this Twilight Zone episode: https://forms.gle/4Lhsxu1bQNRbHpLV9Patreon: https://patreon.com/TheKeyofImaginationShow?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkDiscord: discord.gg/QjNY9jcyFZX Handle: x.com/keyofishowYouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thekeyofimaginationHead over to thekeyofimagination.com to learn more about me, check out my Twilight Zone trinkets and collectibles, and to to continue the conversation. Episode outline:00:00 - Introduction00:42 - Plot03:14 - Episode Details03:48 - Episode Tidbits04:51 - Question 115:16 - Question 222:18 - Question 324:51 - Episode rating25:13 - Next episode and questions25:44 - Announcements and comments26:48 - How to support the showNo show did a better job than The Twilight Zone at generating awe and wonder within its audience. It just so happens that awe is exactly what we need in these difficult, divisive times. So, join me, Joe Meyer, and let's walk through the fifth dimension with Rod Serling. Along the way, we'll discuss big questions and relate them back to our Twilight Zone episodes.Background artwork by James Seehafer: https://pixels.com/profiles/j-mark?tab=artworkOpening and Ending theme: by Jacob Williams @jakeproduces on FiverrPictures not belonging to the Twilight Zone show generally come from Pixabay and are under the free use license.#twilightzone #rodserling #scifi #zone #outerlimits #sciencefiction
Episode 237: In this episode, Mark is joined by Hip Hop artist Gaine$. We talk about his new project "Mr. Gaine$", The growth he has taken as an artist and as a person, the idea behind incorporating a charachter from the TV series "A Diffrent World" as the title and cover of the album, working with Toney Boi and much more. Check out Gaine$ music here-https://gaines.bandcamp.com/musicWatch Mark on Wordsworth's podcast "What Words Are Worth" here- https://youtu.be/bpQCoe8NlkQ?si=ulr9Mr5WRIP9Th_PExclusive deal for listeners of The Infinite Banter Podcast, get a discount for Circle House Coffee. A great deal on your entire order when you use the link- http://circlehousecoffeeonline.com/discount/mark10Watch "Things and Stuff” where Mark reviews collectibles on The Infinite Banter Youtube channel. Direct link for current video- https://youtu.be/TvQro7ftL7Y?si=ZNyFYV7n_UHj78kOCheck out our sponsor Super 7, for the latest in action figures and merch featuring pop culture icons. Click the link for the latest figures and more- https://super7.com/INFINITEBANTERPODCAST
Episode 236: In this episode, Mark is joined by actor, juggler and comedian Marcus Monroe! We talk about his viral videos, where he performs stand up, while dressed as characters and doing jokes about those characters. We also discuss his stand up comedy, his start doing stand up, juggling, how he comes up with the concept to do stand up on trains, doing jokes based on Star Wars, Wrestling, political figures, making the costumes, his podcast-The Boyfriends Podcast, getting banned from Delta Airlines and much more. Check out Marcus Monroe for merch here- https://marcus-juggles-shop.fourthwall.com/Find the next comedy show with Marcus Monroe at- https://punchup.live/marcusmonroeMark also ranks his top 6 favorite train themed movies. Watch Mark on Wordsworth's podcast "What Words Are Worth" here- https://youtu.be/bpQCoe8NlkQ?si=ulr9Mr5WRIP9Th_PExclusive deal for listeners of The Infinite Banter Podcast, get a discount for Circle House Coffee. A great deal on your entire order when you use the link- http://circlehousecoffeeonline.com/discount/mark10Watch "Things and Stuff” where Mark reviews collectibles on The Infinite Banter Youtube channel. Direct link for current video- https://youtu.be/TvQro7ftL7Y?si=ZNyFYV7n_UHj78kOCheck out our sponsor Super 7, for the latest in action figures and merch featuring pop culture icons. Click the link for the latest figures and more- https://super7.com/INFINITEBANTERPODCAST
Episode 236: In this episode, Mark is joined by actor, juggler and comedian Marcus Monroe! We talk about his viral videos, where he performs stand up, while dressed as characters and doing jokes about those characters. We also discuss his stand up comedy, his start doing stand up, juggling, how he comes up with the concept to do stand up on trains, making the costumes, getting banned from Delta Airlines, doing jokes based on Star Wars, Wrestling, his podcast- The Boyfriends Podcast, political figures and much more. Check out Marcus Monroe for merch here- https://marcus-juggles-shop.fourthwall.com/Find the next comedy show with Marcus Monroe at- https://punchup.live/marcusmonroeMark also ranks his top 6 favorite train themed movies. Watch Mark on Wordsworth's podcast "What Words Are Worth" here- https://youtu.be/bpQCoe8NlkQ?si=ulr9Mr5WRIP9Th_PExclusive deal for listeners of The Infinite Banter Podcast, get a discount for Circle House Coffee. A great deal on your entire order when you use the link- http://circlehousecoffeeonline.com/discount/mark10Watch "Things and Stuff” where Mark reviews collectibles on The Infinite Banter Youtube channel. Direct link for current video- https://youtu.be/TvQro7ftL7Y?si=ZNyFYV7n_UHj78kOCheck out our sponsor Super 7, for the latest in action figures and merch featuring pop culture icons. Click the link for the latest figures and more- https://super7.com/INFINITEBANTERPODCAST
Is digital media preventing us from accessing the most exciting part of culture? Final episode of the hiatus special series: it's a new era! It's a new episode structure with new segments!Find out more about:the unacknowledged difference between wonder and wander – wonderment: what is it?A poem by Wordsworth & Agnes Martin's writingsart etiquettethat time when I went viral and Snoop Dog (or his team) reposted my performance showand more... (author and podcaster Katy Hessel (Great Women Artists Podcast), author Lauren Elkin...)Visit Worlding online and sign up to our newsletter or follow us on Instagram: @worldingprojecthttps://www.worldingproject.comSmall donations are great! "Buys us a book": https://buymeacoffee.com/exhibitionistaDonate: https://exhibitionistaspodcast.com/support-usTo know more about our guests and our ideas → SIGN UP TO THE EXHIBITIONISTAS FILES.https://joanaprneves.substack.com/s/exhibitionistasMy definition of wonderment is actually taken from the noun ‘wonder': https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/wonder Hollis Frampton's text: Digression on the Photographic Agony, Artforum, November 1972: https://www.artforum.com/features/digressions-on-the-photographic-agony-209932/Agnes Martin's photo credits: Agnes Martin in the mesas near Cuba, New Mexico, 1974. Photo Gianfranco Gorgoni.Pliny the Elder's mention of the origin myth of art is in Natural History Book XXXVMy strange viral experience article Going Viral: if your exhibition is reposted by Snoop Dog, does it matter? https://substack.com/home/post/p-157358364The article where I mention Katy Hessel's strange Art Self Help Book, Art as Function, Automatic Education, and Self-Care: the Politics of Culture Replaced by the Commodification of Creativity: https://substack.com/@joanaprneves/p-190450394Find Walter Benjamin's first “read Walter Benjamin with me” here” https://joanaprneves.substack.com/s/your-crazy-aunt-book-shelfDiscover other podcasts regularly: https://www.womenwhopodcastmag.com/00:00 Introduction to Exhibitionistas and New Format01:30 Wonderment06:03 Reading Out Loud08:25 Agnes Martin on Joy12:58 Ekphrasis19:51 Digital Hygiene41:32 Build Exhibitionistas With Me!46:33 Brainstorm in a Teacup47:37 OutroFollow, Subscribe, Comment, or write joana@exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Waardeer je onze video's? Steun dan Café Weltschmerz, het podium voor het vrije woord: https://www.cafeweltschmerz.nl/doneren/Het is weer hip voor politici - die zelf nooit onder de wapenen vielen of zelfs maar in dienst zaten- om oorlog te hitsen. Daarom bespreken we vandaag twee klassiekers over hoe je als militair zo'n oorlog wint of juist verliest. Het 2500 jaar oude “De Kunst van het Oorlog voeren” van Sun Tzu en de klassieker van Carl von Clausewitz. (1831) In hun tijd kon je nog spreken van een ‘duel' tussen naties: de ‘absolute' oorlog was verschrikkelijk en dodelijk voor wie het treft, maar wel een gelijkwaardig treffen als in Martial Arts. Met moderne wapens en drones is toen gepromote ridderlijkheid onmogelijk geworden.Boeken van de week:Andrew W. Ziegler (vertaler) (2010): Sun Tzu's origional Art of War, Colors Network PublishingCarl von Clausewitz (1831, 1997) On War, Engelse vertaling Wordsworth classics of World LiteratureHoofdstuk 3 uit Liever dood dan Slaaf: “De Strijd om het Bestaan”Boek en StrijdT Bier bestellen viahttps://lieverdooddanslaaf.com/Volg Rypke ook dagelijks op https://www.interessantetijden.nl/ en wekelijks Interessante Tijden op Youtubehttps://www.youtube.com/@interessantetijden---Deze video is geproduceerd door Café Weltschmerz. Café Weltschmerz gelooft in de kracht van het gesprek en zendt interviews uit over actuele maatschappelijke thema's. Wij bieden een hoogwaardig alternatief voor de mainstream media. Café Weltschmerz is onafhankelijk en niet verbonden aan politieke, religieuze of commerciële partijen.Wil je meer video's bekijken en op de hoogte blijven via onze nieuwsbrief? Ga dan naar: https://www.cafeweltschmerz.nl/videos/Wil je op de hoogte worden gebracht van onze nieuwe video's? Klik dan op deze link: https://bit.ly/3XweTO0
Episode 235: In this episode, Mark is joined by Hip Hop icon Chill Rob G. We talk about his early days in Jersey, working with Mark The 45 King, The Flavor Unit, Queen Latifah, Lakim Shabazz, his debut album "Ride The Rhythm", and the story behind "The Power" record. We also discuss his new album, produced by C-Doc entitled "Survival Of The Better", plus Chuck D and Spit Slam Records reaching out to him to make new music and some funny takes on seafood and food choices. Check out Chill Rob G's music at- https://spitslamrecords.com/products/chill-rob-g-survival-of-the-better-cd-rMark also weighs in his expectations for the upcoming Star Wars movie- The Mandalorian and Grogu" and the return of the 1986 Transformers movie coming this Fall. Watch Mark on Wordsworth's podcast "What Words Are Worth" here- https://youtu.be/bpQCoe8NlkQ?si=ulr9Mr5WRIP9Th_PExclusive deal for listeners of The Infinite Banter Podcast, get a discount for Circle House Coffee. A great deal on your entire order when you use the link- http://circlehousecoffeeonline.com/discount/mark10Watch "Things and Stuff” where Mark reviews collectibles on The Infinite Banter Youtube channel. Direct link for current video- https://youtu.be/TvQro7ftL7Y?si=ZNyFYV7n_UHj78kOCheck out our sponsor Super 7, for the latest in action figures and merch featuring pop culture icons. Click the link for the latest figures and more- https://super7.com/INFINITEBANTERPODCAST
How often have you heard someone say they aspire to be an ISO consultant? Likely not at all! That's not surprising as it's quite a niche world to find yourself in, yet despite that, there are still thousands of ISO professionals worldwide. We're continuing with our mini-series where we introduce members of our team, to explore how they fell into the world of ISO and discuss the common challenges they face while helping clients achieve ISO certification. In this episode we introduce Steve Mason, a Principle isologist® at Blackmores, to share the journey of how he went from intern, to ISO Assessor, to ISO consultant and the challenges he's faced while working with clients. You'll learn · What is Steve's role at Blackmores? · What does Steve enjoy outside of consultancy? · What path did Steve take to become an ISO Consultant? · What is the biggest challenge he's faced when implementing ISO Standards? · What is Steve's biggest achievement? Resources · Isologyhub · ISO 14001:2026 What's Changed And How to Comply Webinar Registration In this episode, we talk about: [00:30] Episode Summary – We introduce Steve Mason, a Principle Isologist® here at Blackmores, to discuss his journey towards becoming an ISO consultant who specialises in ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO 27018, ISO 27017 and ISO 20000-1. [02:40] What is Steve's role at Blackmores? Her role primarily involves supporting clients in two key areas: maintaining and continually improving their existing ISO management systems and helping them establish and implement new standards. As part of that support, he: · Makes Standards understandable and accessible to clients · Conduct internal audits · Reviews and updates management system documentation · Facilitate management reviews · Train internal teams and prepare them for certification audits. Steve is the Standard champion for ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO 27017, ISO 27018 and ISO 20000-1 at Blackmores, but he also deals with ISO 9001, ISO 41001, ISO 22301 and ISO 42001 related projects and support. Steve's other main role at Blackmore's is as a Mental Health First Aider, which is shared with Minoo Agarwal. Together, they provide resources and offer support to the team. [06:00] The importance of Mental Health management in the workplace: Steve had faced bullying in previous roles, so preventing others from experiencing the same had become a big motivator for him taking on the role of Mental First Aider for Blackmores. He emphasizes it's importance, and highlights 2 key Standards that you can use to help support mental first aid within your business. This includes ISO 45003 Mental Health in the Workplace and BS 30480 Suicide and the Workplace. [09:10] What does Steve enjoy doing outside of consultancy?: Steve has a wide variety of interests and hobbies, including: Lay Minister: Steve is a Lay Minister in the United Reform Church and mainly based at the URC Chapel in Walkern, but can be found leading worship and preaching at Ashwell, Baldock, Stevenage and Knebworth chapels. Poetry: Steve enjoys writing poetry about anything and everything, racking up an impressive 190 poems so far. Some of his main inspirations include Wordsworth and Keats. If you ever see a poem on the Blackmores LinkedIn page, odds are, it was written by Steve! Classical Music: He's a fan of classical music, anything by Beethoven, Mahler or Shostakovich specifically. He likes these composers in particular due to their stretching of the rules of music for the time. Exploring hidden London: Steve often goes on hidden London tours which explore disused underground stations which may have been shut down as long as 100 years ago! Buses and Trains: Steve was lucky enough to drive a bus in his past, of which he has the licence plate of sitting in his office. He collects bus and train models and will go out to snap a photo or two of their real world counterparts when he comes across them. History: Steve is a huge mystery buff, with a particular fondness for Richard III and the War of the Roses and the Anglo Saxon period of history. Family Tree: Steve has been tracing his family tree back as far as he can on his mother's side, which extends as far back as 1547! Interestingly enough he found out that relatives from way back then got married in the church that he currently lives nearby and got qualified as a Lay Minister for the Church of England in Stevenage! Cats: He's owned his fair share of feline friends through the years, with one particular tabby holding the name 'Spartacus'. [22:35] What was Steve's path towards becoming an ISO Consultant?: Steve was once told in the 1980s 'There is no future in Standards; find another career, perhaps in Sales or Purchasing'. How wrong that turned out to be! He's always worked with standards, from the first day he started work doing inspection in Goods Inwards, he was referring to them. The direction towards Management systems came in 1983 when he started implementing BS 5750. From that day onward he had been involved in Management Systems. Steve completed a management apprenticeship at Racal-Guardall where he was able to do 3 months' work experience in all departments, which helped him appreciate how companies function and how important it is to maintain good communication channels. He was at the end of this apprenticeship that the opportunity arose in the QA department to work on BS 5750. His career path has included other organisations such as Tektronix, BOC Ohmeda, Cirkit, Deta, TDK and BSI, all of which earned Steve a lot of experience in Manufacturing and Service and Distribution, mainly in Quality and Customer Service roles. Steve has always felt a bit like a closet consultant, even when he worked as an assessor at BSI. He feels as if Blackmores has enabled him to fully flourish and develop his portfolio of standards – not bad for a career where there was apparently no future in standards! [28:45] Born to be a consultant – Steve mentions that consultancy is a skill that many are born to be. You can train and learn the skills of course, but for some it comes very naturally and it can be hard to replicate that skillset in others. [30:15] What is Steve's favourite aspect of being a Consultant? Steve loves talking with clients and working with them to explore solutions that can address the requirements of the standards. His motto is 'Mould the Standard to the organisation and not the organisation to the standard' This means, always producing a management system that benefits the organisation first and then adjusting it to meet the requirements of the standard. Organisations that mould the business to the standard usually end up with a management system that is a 'bolt-on' and an uncomfortable, sometimes irrelevant, fit. Everyone in the organisation needs to feel that the management system is a natural fit to what they do. He also enjoys supporting his colleagues at Blackmores. We're a business built on knowledge sharing, and there's no point gatekeeping anything we've learned as a team. So consultants often get together to discuss lessons learned and ensure best practice is a shared experience. Ironically enough, one of Steve's least favourite aspects of being a consultant is auditing! Mostly since he's been doing it for some 40 years now, so he can be forgiven for finding the exercise a bit tedious at times. However, he never let's that affect the end result of an audit. [37:00] What Standards does Steve specilaise in and why? Steve initially started with ISO 9001 but was steered towards ISO 27001 and ISO 20000-1 during his time as BSI. This was based upon his career path up to the point he joined BSI as they align assessors to familiar business and technical environments. In Blackmores, he has been able to develop these areas of Quality, Service and Risk by adding standards related to Business Continuity, PII and Cloud Security, Facilities Management and AI Management. Steve's favourite standard is ISO 20000-1 which started off as an IT Service Management System but can also be used effectively for all services. He always refers to ISO 20000-1 as 'ISO 9001 on Steroids' because it is much more specific and focuses on the subject of service management. Sadly, ISO20000-1 is under rated, under sold and in some cases, never heard of – this is usually because contracts require IS O9001 but the people writing those contracts don't actually know or understand what they are asking for. In simple terms it is a Service Quality Management System and Steve has come across organisations which have shoe-horned ISO 9001 into the business instead of using the natural fitting standard ISO 20000-1. Steve would advise any company that is providing a service with helpdesk support to look at ISO 20000-1, especially if they find that ISO 9001 isn't working well for them. [43:00] What is the biggest challenge Steve had faced during a project and how did he overcome it?: Creating a management system in 10 days for a client which was due to lose a major contract because they had let their certification to ISO 9001 lapse between the 2008 and 2015 versions. Quite the undertaking in such a short amount of time! Steve refuses to claim full responsibility for the success however, as the client was totally invested in getting the system up and running and put in a lot of effort to work with Steve to get it done in time. If it had been any other standard, it would have been impossible, but because it was ISO 9001 and wthey were drawing on what had been in place previously it was possible. Generally, problems arise when there is limited or no Leadership support and commitment, because without this management systems can't be set up in a way that benefits the organisation. All management systems must align with the Business Strategy and should be used to ensure that the strategy is achieved. If you'd like to learn more about the importance of Leadership and aligning your management system with strategic direction, check out a few of our previous episodes. [50:10] What is Steve's proudest achievement? Steve isn't really one to collect achievements, so he cites winning 1st Prize at 6 years old in a fancy-dress competition, dressed as a Snowman was a proud achievement for 6 year old him. He is also proud of becoming a Lay Reader initially in the Church of England at 37 and latterly in the URC. Another highlight is appearing on The Chase back in 2017, successfully passing the auditions which saw 40,000 applicants. If you want to go see him go up against the Chasers, he was in Series 10 episode 119. He can't point to any one ISO related project as he sees them all as an equal success. He puts all his effort into every project, and his success track shows this to be evident. [54:35] ISO 14001 Transition Webinar: If you currently hold a 2015 certificate for ISO 14001, then the countdown has already started to transition to the latest 2026 version. We'll be covering the changes and what you need to do to comply and complete your transition in a webinar on the 29th May. You can register your place here. If you'd like any assistance with implementing ISO standards, get in touch with us, we'd be happy to help! We'd love to hear your views and comments about the ISO Show, here's how: ● Share the ISO Show on Twitter or Linkedin ● Leave an honest review on iTunes or Soundcloud. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one. Subscribe to keep up-to-date with our latest episodes: Stitcher | Spotify | YouTube |iTunes | Soundcloud | Mailing List
‘Tam o' Shanter' first appeared as a lengthy footnote in Francis Grose's Antiquities of Scotland (1791) after Robert Burns convinced Grose to include the ruined Alloway Kirk in his volume, and its supernatural associations (invented by Burns). Its story of the drunken Tam's encounter with witches in the stormy Ayrshire landscape has served as both a celebration and chastisement of Scottish masculinity ever since its publication, but the attitude of its narrator remains elusive throughout. In this episode, Seamus and Mark discuss the poem's moral and stylistic turns, its influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge, and what it owes to the Augustan perfectionism of Pope. They then turn to a much darker example of Romantic narrative poetry, George Crabbe's ‘Peter Grimes' (published in his collection The Borough in 1810), and explore the bracing realism and psychological insight in the story of a cruel Suffolk fisherman who destroys the apprentices placed in his care. This episode also features a bonus conversation with Andrew O'Hagan, who reads extracts from 'Tam o' Shanter' and explains why the poem's reliably contradictory narrative voice is so useful for anyone learning to write stories. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignupnp Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/scsignupnp Read more in the LRB: Karl Miller: Peeping Tam: https://lrb.me/npep501 Neal Ascherson on Burns's life: https://lrb.me/npep502
Full show: https://kNOwBETTERHIPHOP.com Artists Played: The Beat Ministry, Wordsworth, WordChemist, MurDoc, Marz Mello, conshus, Okito, fabric, Thee Sacred Souls, Bop Alloy, Substantial, Marcus D, One Be Lo, Les Imprimes, DIRT E DUTCH, Jalen Ngonda, John Sarastro, Sankofa, Zilla Rocca, EDS, Jose Gonzalez, B Dolan, MyGrane McNastee, Fantastic Negrito, MRKBH, Rico James, Sosyete 25, OutKast, GOODie MOb, IMAKEMADBEATS
What if poetry is not optional to human flourishing, but essential to it? In this second dialogue, John Vervaeke and Adam Walker explore poetry as a way of knowing reality rather than merely describing it. Their conversation moves through imagination, inexhaustible meaning, beauty, sacredness, freedom, embodiment, and the possibility of a new renaissance in culture. Along the way, they discuss voluntary necessity, spiritual senses, participatory knowing, and why modern notions of freedom can become hollow when detached from gratitude, devotion, and love. This is a rich and wide-ranging episode for listeners interested in philosophy, literature, spirituality, and the future of meaning. Adam Walker is a public scholar and recent Harvard PhD graduate whose work explores the spiritual dimensions of poetry. After stepping away from the traditional academy, he founded Versed, a platform devoted to making serious literary study accessible to everyday readers through teaching, close reading, and conversation. Adam Walker Website: https://www.adamgagewalker.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@closereadingpoetry Versed: https://versedcommunity.mn.co/ Support The Lectern Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke Teachable: https://lectern.teachable.com/p/lectern-lounge Follow John Vervaeke Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/ X: https://x.com/DrJohnVervaeke YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke/videos Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 01:27 "The imaginal is not about entertainment. It's about attainment." 02:20 Poetry as a practical path to meaning 04:40 Why poetry is quietly subversive 05:30 Inexhaustible meaning and the sacred 08:20 Is imagination a way of knowing reality? 12:40 Why great poetry turns toward infinity 15:00 The landscape of intelligibility 20:20 Can poetry educate wisdom? 21:30 Coleridge and the power of symbol 24:20 Voluntary necessity explained 30:20 The modern misunderstanding of freedom 31:30 How digital culture exploits the will 34:40 The advent of the sacred 36:20 Wordsworth and awakening through nature 41:20 What are the spiritual senses? 52:20 Beyond the religion vs. secular binary 58:20 Why renaissances need shared language 1:02:20 Symbolic thought and Meditations on the Tarot 1:16:20 Meaning crisis, madness, and sanity 1:18:30 Closing reflections
Can reclaiming poetry spark a second renaissance and wake us from our digital slumber? John welcomes Adam Walker to the Lectern dialogue series, praising his balanced critique of higher education and his work on poetry as a spiritual practice and the possibility of a second renaissance. Adam, an English PhD from Harvard, explains he developed a critical vocabulary for "spiritual poetics" (using Wordsworth) and now teaches public literature courses outside the academy to bridge the widening gap between universities and the public. They discuss causes of the chasm: humanities shifting from teaching to research, insular theory-driven discourse, rising college costs, and market pressures that displace a "hermeneutics of beauty." They argue imagination has been reduced to entertainment, digital media erodes attention, and art is evolutionarily vital. Adam describes his dialogic, analytic-spiritual-creative classes (e.g., Eliot's Four Quartets) and concludes with hope that cultural "turns" and renaissances can emerge from dark periods through renewed engagement with beauty and art. Adam Walker is a public scholar and recent Harvard PhD graduate who specializes in the spiritual dimensions of poetry. After stepping away from the traditional academy , he founded the Versed community, a platform dedicated to making university-level literature accessible to everyday readers. Through his teaching and growing YouTube channel , Adam advocates for the close reading of poetry as a transformative spiritual practice. He believes that engaging with art and beauty is essential to awakening from our modern "materialist slumber" and actively champions the arrival of a "Second Renaissance". Website Substack YouTube Versed Resources: Rainer Maria Rilke Abigail Adams Institute William Wordsworth Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome to the Lectern 02:30 Adam's background and mission 05:30 Why the chasm exists 13:30 Hermeneutics of beauty 16:00 Imagination and spirituality 21:30 Digital age attention crisis 23:30 Art is not optional 33:30 Inside the Verse classroom 38:30 Dialogue and Platonic loop 41:30 Poets as presence 42:30 War poems and culture 43:30 Credibility and imitation 46:00 Translucent language 48:00 Theosis and greatness 49:40 "The encounter with the angel doesn't leave you the same. You walk away with a limp for the rest of your life, and you have to be okay with that". 51:30 Spinoza aspect shift 54:00 Poetry as transformation 55:30 Embodied confirmation 57:00 Returning to the cave 01:04:00 Wordsworth awakens spirit 01:07:30 Next talk questions 01:09:30 Hope and renaissance Explore courses and teachings from The Lectern https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/ Support the Lectern and join a growing community of wisdom seekers https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke Follow John Vervaeke: Website | Twitter | YouTube | Patreon Thank you for watching!
Episode 230: In this episode, Mark is joined by Hip Hop artist Ullnevano. We talk about his latest project "Playground Legend". We discuss, the concept of the album, how it is has a basketball theme and references "And 1". The discussion also includes his coming up on The Baltimore scene, the influence of Nas, how basketball helped transition him to doing music, the 90's era, sports and wearing comfortable shoes. Check out Ullnevano on Bandcamp- https://magnetikmoments.bandcamp.com/album/playground-legendMark also talks about his recent trip to DC & Baltimore, his daughter's dismissal of 3rd Bass and a preview of his appearance on Wordworth's podcast "What Words Are Worth". Watch Mark on "What Words Are Worth" here- https://youtu.be/bpQCoe8NlkQ?si=ulr9Mr5WRIP9Th_PExclusive deal for listeners of The Infinite Banter Podcast, get a discount for Circle House Coffee. A great deal on your entire order when you use the link- http://circlehousecoffeeonline.com/discount/mark10Watch "Things and Stuff” where Mark reviews collectibles on The Infinite Banter Youtube channel. Direct link for current video- https://youtu.be/TvQro7ftL7Y?si=ZNyFYV7n_UHj78kOCheck out our sponsor Super 7, for the latest in action figures and merch featuring pop culture icons. Click the link for the latest figures and more- https://super7.com/INFINITEBANTERPODCAST
durée : 00:55:18 - Very Good Trip - par : Michka Assayas - Au menu de ce Very Good Trip, la voix d'une femme qui ne ressemblait à aucune autre. Michka Assayas consacrait cette émission à Marianne Faithfull à l'occasion de la sortie d'un album ou elle ne chantait pas mais récitait ses poèmes anglais préférés, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Keats et Byron. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comMichael is quite simply one of the best nonfiction writers out the planet: a real role model. He's been a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine since 1987, and he's the bestselling author of many books, including How to Change Your Mind — which I reviewed in 2018 — and its sequel, This Is Your Mind on Plants, which we discussed on the Dishcast in 2021. This week we covered his new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness.For two clips of our convo — on the magic of spontaneous thoughts, and the consciousness of kids — head to our YouTube page.Other topics: toasters and other things that don't have consciousness; Thomas Nagel's bat; panpsychism; Francis Crick trying to solve consciousness; the global neuronal workspace theory; how brains are not like computers; AI and consciousness; Proust; James Joyce; Wordsworth and the Romantics; William James and stream of consciousness; Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport; words on the tip of your tongue; phenomenology; letting your mind wander; Addison's Walk at Oxford; how smartphones distract from thinking; Trump taking up our headspace; Oakeshott and “the deadliness of doing”; AI and UBI; Allison Gopnik's lantern vs spotlight consciousness; how a child's brain resembles an adult's on psychedelics; ego death; the default mode network; meditation; the flow state of deep reading; the benefits of boredom; habit and ritual; my 10-day silent meditation retreat; the sentience of plants; Buddhism and Matthieu Ricard; the soul; the film Into Great Silence; and the disenchantment of the Enlightenment.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power, Derek Thompson on abundance, Matt Goodwin on the earthquake in UK politics, Jonah Goldberg on the state of conservatism, Tom Holland on the Christian roots of liberalism, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy, Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism,” Tom Junod on his memoir and masculinity, and Kathryn Paige Harden on the genetics of vice and virtue. As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
How can Michael and his companions hope to cross the mile wide Yenisei River, with no boat, raft or ferry? Jules Verne, today on The Classic Tales Podcast. Welcome to The Classic Tales Podcast, where we use an audiobook format to give you an immersive experience in classic literature. You can get friendlier with the classics you know, and discover new favorites. I'm your host BJ Harrison. I'm a professional audiobook narrator, and I'm glad you could join us. With the Audiobook Library Card, you gain access to everything I've personally curated from the public domain and recorded over the past 18 years. Every title was chosen with intent because it was calling to me for some reason. I needed to record it. After 18 and a half years of doing this, we're still winning awards and turning heads. Subscribe for the Audiobook Library Card for $9.99 a month and get access to it all. Thousands of hours of content at your disposal. It's the best audiobook deal on the internet. Go to audiobooklibrarycard.com or follow the link in the show notes, and download and listen all you want. I've discovered a new and easier way to listen to the audiobooks downloaded from the store, through the Audiobook Library Card or otherwise – it's the PocketBook App. It's just a little more intuitive than the KyBook app, and it's available for iPhone and Android. Links can be found in the show notes. I've also made a new video walkthrough so you can see how easy it is to download and listen using Pocketbook. Feel free to check it out. Before we dive into today's story, I want to start a new little feature called the Word for the Week. Each week, we'll have a definition from the Devil's Lexicographer himself – Ambrose Bierce. Over the course of 30 years, Bierce nearly weekly wrote a cynical definition of a common word, sometimes consisting of poems, which he sold to various newspapers and periodicals. After 30 years, he collected all of these into one volume which came to be called The Devil's Dictionary. In keeping with the spirit of its creation, we'll hear one of his jocular definitions before we begin today's show. So, the Word for the Week is Infancy, and here to read it is Ambrose Bierce himself: INFANCY, n. The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward. Thank you Mr. Bierce. And now, Michael Strogoff, Part 8 of 9, by Jules Verne. Follow this link and watch the new video walkthrough using PocketBook. Follow this link to get The Audiobook Library Card for a special price of $9.99/month Follow this link to subscribe to our YouTube Channel: Follow this link to subscribe to the Arsène Lupin Podcast: Follow this link to follow us on Instagram: Follow this link to follow us on Facebook:
Poetic Keys An Ode to County Clare - The Prelude [Wordsworth] by Clare FM
BANG! @southernvangard radio Ep462! Groundhog Day vibes are abound Vangardians, and even if that little furry animal said 6 more weeks of winter, we gonna keep it warm and toasty for you until we hit spring time. This weeks episode is also the debut of EDDIE MEEKS upcoming single with the homies AOS and DJ POCKET, make sure you cop it at DJPOCKET.COM when it drops ‘cause that's the only place you gonna get it other than here. OUI OUI #YOUWAAAAALCOME and it's forever that #SMITHSONIANGRADE! // southernvangard.com // @southernvangard on all platforms #hiphop #rap #undergroundhiphop #boombap ---------- Recorded live February 1, 2026 @ Dirty Blanket Studios, Marietta, GA southernvangard.com @southernvangard on all platforms #SmithsonianGrade #WeAreTheGard twitter/IG: @southernvangard @jondoeatl @cappuccinomeeks ---------- Pre-Game Beats - Noisy Neighbor Talk Break Inst. - “Aquarius” - Apollo Brown “Southern Vangard Radio Theme Song” - Bobby Homack & The Southern Vangard All-Stars “La Bandera” - Doza The Drum Dealer & Spit Gemz “People In The Neighborhood” - Stu Bangas & Wordsworth ft. Masta Ace “Hunting Season” - Duck City Music ft. The Hoodies (prod. Young Bangas, cuts Tone Spliff) “Divide & Conquer” - DNTE & Ché Uno "Grand Priests” - Squeegie Oblong ft. Seemore Bluntz (prod. TrueCipher) "New World” - Born Allah ft. Blu & Lakim Shabazz (prod. Apakalips) Talk Break Inst. - “Hold On” - Apollo Brown “God Level” - Wounded Buffalo Beats & Ruste Juxx “Prime Time” - YBG “Crom! (Beatminerz Remix)” - Krohmefeat. Vast Aire, Breez Evahflowin & Empuls “Rakim Scheme” - Squeegie Oblong (prod. Unknown Spook) “Brick and Mortar” - Black Thought x 9th Wonder “Slick Talkin” - Imported Goodz x Rome Streetz “A Brooklyn Tale Part 1” - Wounded Buffalo Beats & Ruste Juxx “Username” - Stu Bangas/Wordsworth “Already” - Khrysis & Pete Rock Talk Break Inst. - “Moon At Midnight” - Apollo Brown “Assassination Day '25" - Squeegie Oblong (prod. Unknown Spook) “Keepers Of The Culture” - Amadaye The Apostle ft. Ill Conscious “Spoon & Razor” - Bub Rock ft. Rome Streetz “Respectfully Disrespectful" - Rufus Sims & Machacha ft. Knowledge The Pirate & Jae Haze “Give Em Hell” - Recognize Ali & D-Styles “Under The Floor” - Imported Goodz x Rome Streetz “Lord Protect Me” - The Alchemist & Budgie ft. Roc Marciano “Still I Rise (Dr. Maya Angelou C.R.T. Remix)” - Eddie Meeks ft. AOS (prod. DJ Pocket) ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE ** Talk Break Inst. - “Opulence” - Apollo Brown
Good Morning. ‘Speak about hope:' I hear those words everywhere in these frightening times At synagogue, we've just read the Ten Commandments, beginning with ‘I am your God.' Two rabbis whose teachings I admire experienced those words very differently. The struggle for hope lies in the tension between their explanations. Hugo Gryn, whose warm voice, often heard on radio, I hugely miss, survived Auschwitz. He wrote: Auschwitz-Birkenau was the … perversion of all the Ten Commandments… God was replaced by a Fuehrer and his minions who claimed for themselves the power of life and death… Murder was at the heart of that culture and killers were promoted and honoured… That's what ‘I am your God' reminded him of. Nazism is gone, but tyranny, killing and contempt are at large in our world, threatening our freedoms and future. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh-Leib of Ger, who died last century, intuited a very different voice in the Commandments. He wrote: When God said, ‘I am,' the world fell silent; every living being listened. They heard the words not from Heaven, but within themselves. They felt: “This is about who I truly am. The life-force which flows through everything is speaking to me.” In that moment, a deep awareness connected all existence, humans, animals, every breathing being, and cruelty and hatred vanished. I believe that may be what we feel when humbled by some act of kindness; when touched by closeness to another person; when silenced by listening to the birds; when we sense in woodlands: ‘These trees – some hidden life-force connects us.' A consciousness infinitely greater than ‘Me, me, me,' flows through us then. It's what Wordsworth called: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.Here lies a quiet, but powerful, antidote to the horror Rabbi Gryn was forced to experience, when tyrants replaced god, dictating who must live or die. Here is an understanding that motivates us to love and give. I think of my Israeli friend, who despite the violence afflicting both peoples, supported her Palestinian colleague who bravely made soup in Gaza for hungry children. I'm mindful of the Ukrainian grandma, since killed, who refused to leave her front-line home in Kherson and, despite the bombing, sent me a gift of honey. What makes people do that? I believe it's the deeper voice that calls us, beyond all differences and hatreds, to care for each other and our world. In that voice lies our hope.
Episode 226: In this episode, Mark talks with Hip Hop artist Wordsworth. We discuss his new project with Stu Bangas entitled "Chemisty". We also talk about his early days working on songs with "Black Star" and "A Tribe Called Quest", as well doing freestyle sessions, linking up with Stu Bangas, finding ways to branch out as an artist into new ventures, appearing on "Mr. Peabody and Sherman" show with Prince Paul, being self relaint on recording music videos, his podcast- "What Words Are Worth", working on books and his memories of the recently passed Mr. Complex. Find Wordsworth and Stu Bangas album "Chemistry" at- https://brutalmusicstore.ecwid.com/STU-BANGAS-AND-WORDSWORTH-CHEMISTRY-c193928536Check out Wordsworth's book "Socks" - https://www.amazon.com/Socks-Mr-Vinson-Jamel-Johnson/dp/B0BHCFJ7L9Mark also talks about The Super Bowl and the halftime show, as well as his silly thoughts on going to CostcoExclusive deal for listeners of The Infinite Banter Podcast, get a discount for Circle House Coffee. A great deal on your entire order when you use the link- http://circlehousecoffeeonline.com/discount/mark10Watch "Things and Stuff” where Mark reviews collectibles on The Infinite Banter Youtube channel. Direct link for current video- https://youtu.be/TvQro7ftL7Y?si=ZNyFYV7n_UHj78kOCheck out our sponsor Super 7, for the latest in action figures and merch featuring pop culture icons. Click the link for the latest figures and more- https://super7.com/INFINITEBANTERPODCAST
Full show: https://kNOwBETTERHIPHOP.com Artists Played: MyGrane McNastee, Erykah Badu, conshus, The Commission Beer Chamber, E-Turn, Sean Shakespeare, Soy Is Real, LEclair, Erin Kimberly, Stu Bangas, Wordsworth, James Alexander Bright, Faye Meana, J.PERIOD, Lauryn Hill, Antonio Carlos, Jocafi, Adrian Younge, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Gabriel Teodros, Odell, Julianna Barwick, Mary Lattimore, Rasheed Chappell, DJ Dolo76, Kurious, K-Rec, Shannon and The Clams, Ill Conscious, Jake One, DOOM, MidaZ The BEAST, Girl Talk, T-Pain, Yaeji, Dillon, Paten Locke, Wordsworth, Black Sheep Dres, Kumail, OutKast, GOODie MOb, IMAKEMADBEATS
BANG! @southernvangard radio Ep460! Meeks and Doe return after a brief scare - Meeks thought Doe had been abducted. The good news is - he wasn't - and the better news is, this episode gonna get you right with all kinds of new joints including a WORLD EXCLUSIVE from our good friend SUPASTITION, who has a project dropping with the one and only RJD2 very very soon. Oh boy #YOUWAAAAALCOME for this #SMITHSONIANGRADE! // southernvangard.com // @southernvangard on all platforms #hiphop #rap #undergroundhiphop #boombap |:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::| Recorded live January 18, 2026 @ Dirty Blanket Studios, Marietta, GA southernvangard.com @southernvangard on all platforms #SmithsonianGrade #WeAreTheGard twitter/IG: @southernvangard @jondoeatl @cappuccinomeeks |:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::| Pre-Game Beats - Ill Conscious “Southern Vangard Radio Theme" - Bobby Homack & The Southern Vangard All-Stars Talk Break Inst. - “Open Until” - K-Def “Don't Get In The Way” - Stu Bangas & Wordsworth “Top Tier” - Shabaam Sahdeeq ft. General Steele (prod. ES-K) “Genuine Article (K-Kruz Remix)” - Nowaah The Flood x Bad News “Spells” - Hus Kingpin (prod. PA Dre) “Aqua Blue Camo” - Shottie ft. Swab “Perpetual Stew” - Recognize Ali & D-Styles Talk Break Inst. - “Mystery In The Mansion” - K-Def “Nominated” - Stu Bangas & Wordsworth ft. DJ Jon Doe “Kingdom” - Bald Halfwit ft. Bobby J from Rockaway & J57 “Back Talk” - RJD2 & Supastition ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE ** “Machines Like Us” - RJD2 & Supastition “How Ya Light It Up” - DJ Dremond “Parle Vous” - Aktu El Shabazz ft. Ilajide “Murky Depths” - Nowaah The Flood & X-Ray “Beast Mode” - Blu & Kev Brown ft. Cashus King, Shawn Jackson, Yamin Semali & Local Blac Talk Break Inst. - “My Beat Inspo 1” / “No More Love” - K-Def “Fred Fenster” - TrueCipher ft. Doza The Drum Dealer “Men Over Mice” - CERTAIN.ONES “Pot Of Gold” - Kut One ft. Reek Osama & Flee Lord “Tsunamic Styles” - Oh No ft. Al.Divino “Waxy Gordon” - Eff Yoo & Rob Viktum ft. DJ Jon Doe “ArtistOfficial Intelligence” - Mic Bles x Maniac ft. God´s Gift, Nemesis & Tone Spliff “Bust Down Rollie” - BoneWeso ft. Codenine “Woolworths” - Eff Yoo & Rob Viktum ft. DJ Jon Doe Talk Break Inst. - “Pondering The Next Move” - K-Def ** TWITCH ONLY SET - Lisbon Vinyl - DJ Jon Doe **
A scrap of Coleridge's handwriting. The sugar that Wordsworth stirred into his teacup. A bracelet made of Mary Shelley's hair... In this episode, Jacke talks to award-winning scholar and literary sleuth Mathelinda Nabugodi (The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive) about what she found in the Romantic archive - and why it matters. PLUS Richard Kopley (Edgar Allan Poe: A Life) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Will this biographer of Edgar Allan Poe choose one of Poe's works? Or opt for something else? Join Jacke on a trip through literary England! Join Jacke and fellow literature fans on an eight-day journey through literary England in partnership with John Shors Travel in May 2026! Scheduled stops include The Charles Dickens Museum, Dr. Johnson's house, Jane Austen's Bath, Tolkien's Oxford, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, and more. Learn more by emailing jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or masahiko@johnshorstravel.com, or by contacting us through our website historyofliterature.com. Act soon - there are limited spots available! The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he/That every man in arms should wish to be?” In today's poem, Wordsworth asks unfamiliar questions. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Tracklist: Slik Jack & Vincent Pryce - The List feat. Bub Styles & Grea8Gawd Hus Kingpin - Black Mirror feat. MF Grimm (prod. by OneSession) M.A.V. - Mickey Blue Eyes feat. Crimeapple & Rome Streetz Eddie Kaine & Wavy Da Ghawd - 98 (Feat. Indigo Phoenyx) DeAngelo Xavier & Malinisoundz - Bag Back feat. Mondo Slade Andy Savoie - Purple Face Emoji Click Erg One x BoneWeso - Madden 96 feat. The Hidden Character & Estee Nack Nas & DJ Premier - NY State Of Mind Pt. 3 Eddie Kaine & Wavy Da Ghawd - By The Window Foul Mouth - Lucky Number (Feat. DJ Clay, J-Classic, Choke Uno, Metasyons, Tru Klassick & Isaac Castor) Mikey Strange - Perception (Feat. Jamar Equality, Garcia Vega & Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire) Recognize Ali & Anu EL - Word Is Bond Substance810 & Big Trip - Stone Cold (Prod. By J Quest) Big L - Stretch & Bob Freestyle ('98) Hus Kingpin - Percentage feat. Tritty (prod. by Relense) Nas & DJ Premier - Pause Tapes Slik Jack & Vincent Pryce - Katch Me If You Kan feat. Bub Styles & Daniel Son Westside Gunn - Free Roleys feat. Benny The Butcher (prod. by Crucial The Guillotine & Cee Gee) A-F-R-O - Da Dungeon (Feat. Felcon, CanonMouz, Pulse Reaction & Emsee Prospekt) Nowaah The Flood & X-Ray - Murky Depths G.Dep - You Ain't Me Skyzoo - Pardon Me (prod. by Tuamie) A-F-R-O - Neck Broken Skit (Feat. Wordsworth, John Jigg$, Emsee Prospekt & George Paez) Al Skratch - Go Off Nas & DJ Premier - Madman August Fanon - Severe Punishment feat. U-God, GZA, Raekwon, RZA & Masta Killa
BANG! @southernvangard radio Ep458! Here we are, the last episode of 2025 - 10 years of Southern Vangard Radio is in the books. See y'all in January 2026 - our ELEVENTH YEAR and the beginning of our SECOND decade. Best believe it's that #SMITHSONIANGRADE and #YOUWAAAAALCOME // southernvangard.com // @southernvangard on all platforms #hiphop #rap #undergroundhiphop #boombap |----------| Recorded live December 14, 2025 @ Dirty Blanket Studios, Marietta, GA southernvangard.com @southernvangard on all platforms #SmithsonianGrade #WeAreTheGard twitter/IG: @southernvangard @jondoeatl @cappuccinomeeks |----------| Pre-Game Beats - Sol Messiah, John Robinson & Invizible Handz “Southern Vangard Radio Theme Song” - Bobby Homack & The Southern Vangard All-Stars Talk Break Inst. - “Down With Us” - Key-Kool & Rhettmatic “Madman” - Nas & DJ Premier "Sidewalk Executives” - Erick Sermon ft. M.O.P. “Sure Shot” - Key-Kool & Rhettmatic “Voices” - NapsNDreads x Wordsworth (prod. Jacques Retro) ”Hillz Have Eyes" - A-F-R-O ft. Illa Ghee & Rim “Hope & Pray" - Skyzoo (prod. DJ Manipulator) “Natural High” - DJ Pocket & Eddie Meeks Talk Break Inst. - “The Big Bang Intro” - Key-Kool & Rhettmatic “GiT Ready” - Nas & DJ Premier “Down With Us” - Key-Kool & Rhettmatic feat The Visionaries “Writers” - Nas & DJ Premier “Catchin You Off Guard” - Key-Kool & Rhettmatic “Nautical Lanes” - Ill Conscious ft. Debonair P “Folk Song” - Homeboy Sandman (prod. Ciao Ciao Marigold) “No Waiting List” - NapsNDreads x Wordsworth (prod. Dub Z) Talk Break Inst. - “Reconcentrated 2.0” - Key-Kool & Rhettmatic “NY State Of Mind Pt. 3” - Nas & DJ Premier “Mahogany Walls” - Conway The Machine (prod. Conductor Williams) “Basically” - The Bad Seed (prod. Murda Megz) “Blood In The Wifi” - J. Arrr & BP Infinite ft. Ransom “Blap Jazz” - Ill City ft. Gunsmoke & Spoda “Free Dope” - XP The Marxman ft. DoamPeace & ethemadassassin “Never Sleep” - Conway The Machine (prod. Apollo Brown) Talk Break Inst. - “Quite Unique” - Key-Kool & Rhettmatic ** TWITCH ONLY SET ** “It's Time” - Nas & DJ Premier ft. Steve Miller Band “Nasty Esco Nasir” - Nas & DJ Premier “Pause Tapes” - Nas & DJ Premier “Natural High” - DJ Pocket & Eddie Meeks
Episode 87 Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold. https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/87_Dover_Beach_by_Matthew_Arnold.mp3 Poet Matthew Arnold Reading and commentary by Mark McGuinness Dover Beach By Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night. Podcast Transcript This is a magnificent and haunting poem by Matthew Arnold, an eminent Victorian poet. Written and published at the mid-point of the nineteenth century – it was probably written around 1851 and published in 1867 – it is not only a shining example of Victorian poetry at its best, but it also, and not coincidentally, embodies some of the central preoccupations of the Victorian age. The basic scenario is very simple: a man is looking out at the sea at night and thinking deep thoughts. It's something that we've all done, isn't it? The two tend to go hand-in-hand. When you're looking out into the darkness, listening to the sound of the sea, it's hard not to be thinking deep thoughts. If you've been a long time listener to this podcast, it may remind you of another poet who wrote about standing on the shore thinking deep thoughts, looking at the sea, Shakespeare, in his Sonnet 60: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,So do our minutes hasten to their end; Arnold's poem is not a sonnet but a poem in four verse paragraphs. They're not stanzas, because they're not regular, but if you look at the text on the website, you can clearly see it's divided into four sections. The first part is a description of the sea, as seen from Dover Beach, which is on the shore of the narrowest part of the English channel, making it the closest part of England to France: The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; – on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. And as you can hear, the poem has a pretty regular and conventional rhythm, based on iambic metre, ti TUM, with the second syllable taking the stress in every metrical unit. But what's slightly unusual is that the lines have varying lengths. By the time we get to the third line: Upon the straits; – on the French coast the light There are five beats. There's a bit of variation in the middle of the line, but it's very recognisable as classic iambic pentameter, which has a baseline pattern going ti TUM, ti TUM, ti TUM, ti TUM, ti TUM. But before we get to the pentameter, we get two short lines: The sea is calm tonight.Only three beats; andThe tide is full, the moon lies fair – four beats. We also start to notice the rhymes: ‘tonight' and ‘light'. And we have an absolutely delightful enjambment, where a phrase spills over the end of one line into the next one: On the French coast the light,Gleams and is gone. Isn't that just fantastic? The light flashes out like a little surprise at the start of the line, just as it's a little surprise for the speaker looking out to sea. OK, once he's set the scene, he makes an invitation: Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! So if there's a window, he must be in a room. There's somebody in the room with him, and given that it's night it could well be a bedroom. So this person could be a lover. It's quite likely that this poem was written on Arnold's honeymoon, which would obviously fit this scenario. But anyway, he's inviting this person to come to the window and listen. And what does this person hear? Well, helpfully, the speaker tells us: Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in. Isn't that just great? The iambic metre is continuing with some more variations, which we needn't go into. And the rhyme is coming more and more to the fore. Just about every line in this section rhymes with another line, but it doesn't have a regular pattern. Some of the rhymes are close together, some are further apart. There's only one line in this paragraph that doesn't rhyme, and that's ‘Listen! You hear the grating roar'. If this kind of shifting rhyme pattern reminds you of something you've heard before, you may be thinking all the way back to Episode 34 where we looked at Coleridge's use of floating rhymes in his magical poem ‘Kubla Khan'. And it's pretty evident that Arnold is also casting a spell, in this case to mimic the rhythm of the waves coming in and going out, as they ‘Begin, and cease, and then again begin,'. And then the wonderful last line of the paragraph, as the waves ‘bring / The eternal note of sadness in'. You know, in the heart of the Victorian Age, when the Romantics were still within living memory, poets were still allowed to do that kind of thing. Try it nowadays of course, and the Poetry Police will be round to kick your front door in at 5am and arrest you. Anyway. The next paragraph is a bit of a jump cut: Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; So Arnold, a classical scholar, is letting us know he knows who Sophocles, the ancient Greek playwright was. And he's establishing a continuity across time of people looking out at the sea and thinking these deep thoughts. At this point, Arnold explicitly links the sea and the thinking: weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea. And the thought that we hear when we listen to the waves is what Arnold announces in the next verse paragraph, and he announces it with capital letters: The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. And for a modern reader, I think this is the point of greatest peril for Arnold, where he's most at risk of losing us. We may be okay with ‘the eternal note of sadness', but as soon as he starts giving us the Sea of Faith, we start to brace ourselves. Is this going to turn into a horrible religious allegory, like The Pilgrim's Progress? I mean, it's a short step from the Sea of Faith to the Slough of Despond and the City of Destruction. And it doesn't help that Arnold uses the awkwardly rhyming phrase ‘a bright girdle furled' – that's not going to get past the Poetry Police, is it? But fear not; Arnold doesn't go there. What comes next is, I think, the best bit of the poem. So he says the Sea of Faith ‘was once, too, at the full', and then: But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world. Well, if you thought the eternal note of sadness was great, this tops it! It's absolutely fantastic. That line, ‘Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,' where the ‘it' is faith, the Sea of Faith. And the significance of the line is underlined by the fact that the word ‘roar' is a repetition – remember, that one line in the first section that didn't rhyme? Listen! you hear the grating roar See what Arnold did there? He left that sound hovering at the back of the mind, without a rhyme, until it came back in this section, a subtle but unmistakeable link between the ‘grating roar' of the actual sea at Dover Beach, and the ‘withdrawing roar' of the Sea of Faith: Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Isn't that the most Victorian line ever? It encapsulates the despair that accompanied the crisis of faith in 19th century England. This crisis was triggered by the advance of modern science – including the discoveries of fossils, evidence of mass extinction of previous species, and the theory of evolution, with Darwin's Origin of Species published in 1859, in between the writing and publication of ‘Dover Beach'. Richard Holmes, in his wonderful new biography of the young Tennyson, compares this growing awareness of the nature of life on Earth to the modern anxiety over climate change. For the Victorians, he writes, it created a ‘deep and existential terror'. One thing that makes this passage so effective is that Arnold has already cast the spell in the first verse paragraph, hypnotising us with the rhythm and rhyme, and linking it to the movement of the waves. In the second paragraph, he says, ‘we find also in the sound a thought'. And then in the third paragraph, he tells us the thought. And the thought that he attaches to this movement, which we are by now emotionally invested in, is a thought of such horror and profundity – certainly for his Victorian readers – that the retreat of the sea of faith really does feel devastating. It leaves us gazing down at the naked shingles of the world. The speaker is now imaginatively out of the bedroom and down on the beach. This is very relatable; we've all stood on the beach and watched the waves withdrawing beneath our feet and the shingle being left there. It's an incredibly vivid evocation of a pretty abstract concept. Then, in the fourth and final verse paragraph, comes a bit of a surprise: Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! Well, I for one was not expecting that! From existential despair to an appeal to his beloved. What a delightful, romantic (with a small ‘r') response to the big-picture, existential catastrophe. And for me, it's another little echo of Shakespeare's Sonnet 60, which opens with a poet contemplating the sea and the passing of time and feeling the temptation to despair, yet also ends with an appeal to the consolation of love: And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,blockquotePraising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. Turning back to Arnold. He says ‘let us be true / To one another'. And then he links their situation to the existential catastrophe, and says this is precisely why they should be true to each other: for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; It sounds, on the face of it, a pretty unlikely justification for being true to one another in a romantic sense. But actually, this is a very modern stance towards romantic love. It's like the gleam of light that just flashed across the Channel from France – the idea of you and me against an unfeeling world, of love as redemption, or at least consolation, in a meaningless universe. In a world with ‘neither joy, nor love, nor light,' our love becomes all the more poignant and important. Of course, we could easily object that, regardless of religious faith, the world does have joy and love and light. His very declaration of love is evidence of this. But let's face it, we don't always come to poets for logical consistency, do we? And we don't have to agree with Matthew Arnold to find this passage moving; most of us have felt like this at some time when we've looked at the world in what feels like the cold light of reality. He evokes it so vividly and dramatically that I, for one, am quite prepared to go with him on this. Then we get the final three lines of the poem:We are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night. I don't know about you, but I find this a little jarring in the light of what we've just heard. We've had the magnificent description of the sea and its effect on human thought, extending that into the idea of faith receding into illusion, and settling on human love as some kind of consolation for the loss of faith. So why do we need to be transported to a windswept plain where armies are clashing and struggling? It turns out to be another classical reference, to the Greek historian Thucydides' account of the night battle of Epipolae, where the two armies were running around in the dark and some of them ended up fighting their own side in the confusion. I mean, fine, he's a classical scholar. And obviously, it's deeply meaningful to him. But to me, this feels a little bit bolted on. A lot of people love that ending, but to me, it's is not as good as some of the earlier bits, or at least it doesn't quite feel all of a piece with the imagery of the sea. But overall, it is a magnificent poem, and this is a small quibble. Stepping back, I want to have another look at the poem's form, specifically the meter, and even more specifically, the irregularity of the meter, which is quite unusual and actually quite innovative for its time. As I've said, it's in iambic meter, but it's not strictly iambic pentameter. You may recall I did a mini series on the podcast a while ago looking at the evolution of blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, from Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare's dramatic verse, then Milton's Paradise Lost and finally Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey. ‘Dover Beach' is rhymed, so it's not blank verse, but most of the techniques Arnold uses here are familiar from those other poets, with variations on the basic rhythm, sometimes switching the beats around, and using enjambment and caesura (a break or pause in the middle of the line). But, and – this is quite a big but – not every line has five beats. The lines get longer and shorter in an irregular pattern, apparently according to Arnold's instinct. And this is pretty unusual, certainly for 1851. It's not unique, we could point to bits of Tennyson or Arthur Hugh Clough for metrical experiments in a similar vein, but it's certainly not common practice. And I looked into this, to see what the critics have said about it. And it turns out the scholars are divided. In one camp, the critics say that what Arnold is doing is firmly in the iambic pentameter tradition – it's just one more variation on the pattern. But in the other camp are people who say, ‘No, this is something new; this is freer verse,' and it is anticipating free verse, the non-metrical poetry with no set line lengths that came to be the dominant verse form of the 20th century. Personally, I think you can look back to Wordsworth and see a continuity with his poetic practice. But you could equally look forward, to a link with T. S. Eliot's innovations in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' and The Waste Land. Eliot is often described as an innovator in free verse, which is true up to a point, but a lot of his writing in that early period isn't strictly free verse; it's a kind of broken up metrical verse, where he often uses an iambic metre with long and short lines, which he varies with great intuitive skill – in a similar manner to Arnold's ‘Dover Beach'. Interestingly, when ‘Dover Beach' was first published, the reviews didn't really talk about the metre, which is ammunition for the people who say, ‘Well, this is just a kind of iambic pentameter'. Personally, I think what we have here is something like the well-known Duck-Rabbit illusion, where you can look at the same drawing and either see a duck or a rabbit, depending how you look at it. So from one angle, ‘Dover Beach' is clearly continuing the iambic pentameter tradition; from another angle, it anticipates the innovations of free verse. We can draw a line from the regular iambic pentameter of Wordsworth (writing at the turn of the 18th and 19th century) to the fractured iambic verse of Eliot at the start of the 20th century. ‘Dover Beach' is pretty well halfway between them, historically and poetically. And I don't think this is just a dry technical development. There is something going on here in terms of the poet's sense of order and disorder, faith and doubt. Wordsworth, in the regular unfolding of his blank verse, conveys his basic trust in an ordered and meaningful universe. Matthew Arnold is writing very explicitly about the breakup of faith, and we can start to see it in the breakup of the ordered iambic pentameter. By the time we get to the existential despair of Eliot's Waste Land, the meter is really falling apart, like the Waste Land Eliot describes. So overall, I think we can appreciate what a finely balanced poem Arnold has written. It's hard to categorise. You read it the first time and think, ‘Oh, right, another conventional Victorian melancholy lament'. But just when we think he's about to go overboard with the Sea of Faith, he surprises us and with that magnificent central passage. And just as he's about to give in to despair, we get that glimmering spark of love lighting up, and we think, ‘Well, maybe this is a romantic poem after all'. And maybe Arnold might look at me over his spectacles and patiently explain that actually, this is why that final metaphor of the clashing armies is exactly right. Friend and foe are running in first one direction, then another, inadvertently killing the people on the wrong side. So the simile gives us that sense of being caught in the cross-currents of a larger sweep of history. With all of that hovering in our mind, let's go over to the window once more and heed his call to listen to the sound of the Victorian sea at Dover Beach. Dover Beach By Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin, and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night. Matthew Arnold Matthew Arnold was a British poet, critic, and public intellectual who was born in 1822 and died in 1888. His father was Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School. Arnold studied Classics at Oxford and first became known for lyrical, melancholic poems such as ‘Dover Beach', ‘The Scholar-Gipsy', and ‘Thyrsis', that explore the loss of faith in the modern world. Appointed an inspector of schools, he travelled widely and developed strong views on culture, education, and society. His critical essays, especially Culture and Anarchy, shaped debates about the role of culture in public life. Arnold remains a central figure bridging Romanticism and early modern thought. A Mouthful of Air – the podcast This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday. You can hear every episode of the podcast via Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favourite app. You can have a full transcript of every new episode sent to you via email. The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman. A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant. Listen to the show You can listen and subscribe to A Mouthful of Air on all the main podcast platforms Related Episodes Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Episode 87 Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Mark McGuinness reads and discusses ‘Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold.Poet Matthew ArnoldReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessDover Beach By Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies... Recalling Brigid by Orna Ross Orna Ross reads and discusses ‘Recalling Brigid’ from Poet Town. From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Episode 85 From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Mark McGuinness reads and discusses a passage from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Poet Samuel Taylor ColeridgeReading and commentary by Mark McGuinnessFrom...
Welcome to Episode 51 of “The 2 View,” the podcast for EM and urgent care nurse practitioners and physician assistants! Segment 1 Rodríguez, M. Á., Quintana-Cepedal, M., Cheval, B., Thøgersen-Ntoumani, C., Crespo, I., & Olmedillas, H. (2025, October 7). Effect of exercise snacks on fitness and cardiometabolic health in physically inactive individuals: Systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2025-110027 Rodgers, L. (2025, October 17). As pickleball continues to gain players, injuries are increasing. JAMA. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2025.18833 Segment 2 Baos, S., Lui, M., Walker-Smith, T., Pufulete, M., Messenger, D., Abbadi, R., Batchelor, T., Casali, G., Edwards, M., Goddard, N., Abu Hilal, M., Alzetani, A., Vaida, M., Martinovsky, P., Saravanan, P., Cook, T., Malhotra, R., Simpson, A., Little, R., Wordsworth, S., Stokes, E., Jiang, J., Reeves, B., Culliford, L., Collett, L., Maishman, R., Chauhan, N., McCullagh, L., McKeon, H., Abbs, S., Lamb, J., Gilbert, A., Hughes, C., Wynick, D., Angelini, G., Grocott, M., Gibbison, B., & Rogers, C. A. (2025). Gabapentin for pain management after major surgery: A placebo-controlled, double-blinded, randomized clinical trial (the GAP Study). Anesthesiology, 143(4), 851-861. https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0000000000005655 NEJM Journal Watch. (2024, December 30). Growing evidence of harms associated with gabapentinoid drugs. JWatch. https://www.jwatch.org/na58203/2024/12/30/growing-evidence-harms-associated-with-gabapentinoid-drugs Moeindarbari, S., Beheshtian, N., & Hashemi, S. (2022). Cerebral vein thrombosis in a woman using oral contraceptive pills for a short period of time: A case report. Journal of Medical Case Reports, 16, Article 260. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13256-022-03473-w Peckham, A. M., Evoy, K. E., Ochs, L., & Covvey, J. R. (2018). Gabapentin for off-label use: Evidence-based or cause for concern? Substance Abuse: Research and Treatment, 12, 1178221818801311. https://doi.org/10.1177/1178221818801311 The 2 View: Emergency Medicine PAs & NPs. (2025, January 22). 41 – RCVS and CVT, CPR care science, prehospital tourniquets, blood pressure [Audio podcast episode]. Fireside. https://2view.fireside.fm/41 Strahan, A. E., Rikard, S. M., Schmit, K. M., Zhang, K., Guy, G. P., Jr., & [Additional Authors]. (2025). Trends in dispensed gabapentin prescriptions in the United States, 2010 to 2024. Annals of Internal Medicine. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.7326/ANNALS-25-01750 Segment 3 Brown, R. F., Lopez, K., Smith, C. B., & Charles, A. (2025). Diverticulitis: A review. JAMA, 334(13), 1180-1191. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2025.10234 Carr, S., & Velasco, A. L. (2024, July 25). Colon diverticulitis. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541110/ Bob Tubbs on Emergency Radiology: https://youtu.be/Jg1JG67eoJQ Our social media: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ccmecourses Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ccmecourses Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CenterForMedicalEducation LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickbukata Our podcasts: The 2 View Podcast (Free): Subscribe on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3rhVNZw Subscribe on Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/2MrAHcD Subscribe On Spotify: http://spoti.fi/3tDM4im Risk Management Monthly Podcast (Paid CME): https://www.ccme.org/riskmgmt ** The information in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional. emergencymedicine #cme
This week is all poetry—our first all-poetry week of the Immersive Humanities project! After struggling through young Werther, I decided I needed to step back and understand Romanticism as a movement. I offer a brief review of the history leading up to Romanticism; after all, most movements are reactions against what precedes them. The printing press and Protestant Reformation blew open European thought, leading to centuries of philosophical upheaval. Empiricists like Bacon and Hume insisted that knowledge must be tested; rationalists like Descartes and Spinoza trusted pure reason. Kant eventually tried to unite both. Their world gave rise to the Enlightenment—and then came the Romantics, pushing back with emotion, imagination, and nature.That's the world our poets wrote in. This week I used Pocket Book of Romantic Poetry and read Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats (skipping Novalis and Hölderlin). I loved some poems, disliked others. Blake's mystical, anti-Christian tone left me cold. Wordsworth's childhood wonder won me over. Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner shocked me--it's gripping, almost epic. Byron was brilliant, scandalous, and endlessly readable. His Prisoner of Chillon might have been my favorite poem of the week. Shelley felt dreamlike and visionary, while Keats, to me, seemed talented but young. What did the world lose when he died?Reading these poets in their historical context changed everything. They're passionate, experimental, and surprisingly radical—not quaint! We are missing out when we resort to tired anthologies to get to know these poets--something that I didn't expect to feel so strongly about! Paired with Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Chopin's preludes, this week was a revelation.LINKTed Gioia/The Honest Broker's 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)That cool Medieval Science Book The Genesis of Science by James HannamCONNECTThe complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2rTo read more of my writing, visit my Substack - https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ LISTENSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bdApple Podcasts -
The Hunter Thompson of the 19th Century, de Quincey is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium Eater (an activity shared with his hero, Samuel Coleridge, much to Wordsworth's dismay). However, de Quincey's literary genius is best captured in his essays, which, according to Wikipedia: His immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow and Charles Baudelaire, but even major 20th century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges admired and claimed to be partly influenced by his work.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Hunter Thompson of the 19th Century, de Quincey is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium Eater (an activity shared with his hero, Samuel Coleridge, much to Wordsworth's dismay). However, de Quincey's literary genius is best captured in his essays, which, according to Wikipedia: His immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow and Charles Baudelaire, but even major 20th century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges admired and claimed to be partly influenced by his work.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Hunter Thompson of the 19th Century, de Quincey is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium Eater (an activity shared with his hero, Samuel Coleridge, much to Wordsworth's dismay). However, de Quincey's literary genius is best captured in his essays, which, according to Wikipedia: His immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow and Charles Baudelaire, but even major 20th century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges admired and claimed to be partly influenced by his work.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Hunter Thompson of the 19th Century, de Quincey is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium Eater (an activity shared with his hero, Samuel Coleridge, much to Wordsworth's dismay). However, de Quincey's literary genius is best captured in his essays, which, according to Wikipedia: His immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow and Charles Baudelaire, but even major 20th century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges admired and claimed to be partly influenced by his work.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The Hunter Thompson of the 19th Century, de Quincey is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium Eater (an activity shared with his hero, Samuel Coleridge, much to Wordsworth's dismay). However, de Quincey's literary genius is best captured in his essays, which, according to Wikipedia: His immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow and Charles Baudelaire, but even major 20th century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges admired and claimed to be partly influenced by his work.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Ronan Wordsworth addresses a persistent recruitment and retention crisis in Five Eyes militaries, spanning decades. Younger generations, particularly Gen Z, favor STEM careers offering flexibility and better pay over military discipline. Militaries are responding with increased advertising, flexible service models, lateral entry for skilled professionals, and significant pay raises and bonuses. Low morale, stemming from unpopular past wars and perceived institutional guilt, also significantly impacts retention rates. 1870 GARDE NATIONAL