We’re coming down from our Showgirl high, and taking it back to 1989 this week. Uncle Jerry takes us through Clean, and breaks down the metaphors and themes found in the poem, including addiction, healing, personal growth, and personal agency.

He also asks Angela who this song was inspired by, and admits that he’s now wondering about that in all of these songs. :)

There are links below to (most of!) the recommended literature from the episode. Some links are affiliate links, which means if you click and purchase, we will make a small commission at no cost to you.

Works Cited:

Metaphors We Live By – George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

The Great War and Modern Memory – Paul Fussell

Not Waving but Drowning – Stevie Smith

Afterwards – Sara Teasdale

After Love – Sara Teasdale

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The Swiftie and The Scholar took a field trip to the movie theater this weekend to hang out with Taylor and the Swifties! This was Uncle Jerry's first in-person swiftie experience, and he gives us his thoughts, along with his first impressions of a few of the new tracks.

Angela gives her first impressions on the album and discusses which songs the podcast will cover first.

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In this episode, Uncle Jerry and Angela get caught up on the latest Swiftie news, including the engagement and The Release Party of a Showgirl, and then they get into answering your questions from Instagram and TikTok. We cover poetry curriculum, how to get into scholarly pursuits, how Angela convinced Uncle Jerry to do the podcast, and how we select which songs we cover.

There are links below to (most of!) the recommended literature from the episode. Some links are affiliate links, which means if you click and purchase, we will make a small commission at no cost to you.

Works Cited:

i carry your heart with me – e.e. cummings

Epithalamion – Edmund Spenser

The Hornblower Series – C.S. Forester

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (Book 1) – C.S. Forester

African Queen – C.S. Forester

The Good Shepherd – C.S. Forester

2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke

Stranger in a Strange Land Paperback – Robert A. Heinlein

The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Oxford Book of Modern Verse – W.B. Yeats

The Oxford Book of English Verse – Christopher Ricks

The Norton Anthology of American Literature – Robert S. Levine

E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904–1962

The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens: The Corrected Edition

Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman

Metaphors We Live By – George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair – Pablo Neruda

The Poet and His Book: The Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton

The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry Paperback – Rita Dove

American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume 1: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker – Robert Hass

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories – Joyce Carol Oates

A Cool Million Paperback – Nathanael West

Lucky Jim Paperback – Kingsley Amis

Cold Comfort Farm Paperback – Stella Gibbons

Bleak House – Charles Dickens

The Old Curiosity Shop – Charles Dickens

Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens

Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens

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