Topics discussed in this episode include:

Read the polished transcript of this episode on Substack!

My lecture on The Grand Style in English

My poem, "Spelunker," in New Verse Review

The 2025 ALSCW Conference

Cameron’s substack

Ethan’s substack

Poetry’s psychological effect and moral charge

The burden of genius

Poetry vs. Philosophy

Maimonides and Augustine

The decadence of the academy

"Poetry as Enchantment" by Dana Gioia

The function of meter and rhyme

The heresy of paraphrase

Bouts-rime and pleonasm

Romanticism redux

Leo Strauss

The spiritual je ne sais quoi of tragedy

The horror film “Martyrs”

“Norma” by Vincenzo Bellini

“Tristan und Isolde” by Richard Wagner

Stoic vs. Christian resignation

Bourgeois tragedy and the existential hero

“Hedda Gabler” by Ibsen

“Brand” by Ibsen

“Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller

“The Death of Tragedy” by George Steiner

“The Clouds” by Aristophanes

Tragedy vs. Comedy and the Absurd

“It’s A Wonderful Life” by Frank Capra

“Alcestis” by Euripides

History as Self-consciousness

The hazards of Protestantism

The history of the night before

“Swann’s Way” by Marcel Proust

Monuments as time capsules

The Egyptian legacy

The Book of Job

Friendship with the dead

The musical chain of being

Music as the Cosmic Will

Discord and reconciliation

You are the string that is plucked

Liebestod

The h

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Topics discussed in this episode include:

Cameron’s substack

Ethan’s substack

"The World as Will and Representation" by Arthur Schopenhauer

Why you Kant do metaphysics anymore

Matter, Phenomena, Representation, Maya vs.

Form, Noumena, Will, Nirvana

Terrains of flesh

French vs. English gardens

From Schopenhauer to Freud

Perception vs Reflection

Art vs. Philosophy

Idea vs. Conception

The Symbolist Movement

Classical Architecture supremacy?

My Case for Meter and Rhyme episodes (1 and 2)

Shane McCrae

We want stallions, not blobs!

Classical vs. Gothic

Art Deco and Brutalism

Sculpture vs. Painting

Zeuxis

David Lynch, Symboliste

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-My recent class at the Frost Farm Conference

-My trip to Europe

-Come to the ALSCW Conference!

-Part I and Part II of my essay on French poetry in Marginalia Review of Books

-New poems and translations of mine in the latest issue of Literary Matters

-My essays The Iron Lyre and The Monumentalist Manifesto

-The most recent SLEERICKETS

-The Romantic within the Classicist

-Philosophy within poetry

-The mystique of Santayana

-"The Morning Song of Senlin" by Conrad Aiken

-"The Clerk's Journal" and "The House of Dust" by Conrad Aiken

-"Under the Volcano" by Malcolm Lowry

-"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" by John Berendt

-The Colossi of Memnon

-Metrical trickery and incorporating Whitman into iambs.

-Stevensian Idealism and the Supreme Fiction

-Neoplatonism and Ukiyo

-From Solipsism to Pantheism

-From Berkeley to Kant

-The meaning of "God's Image"

-Dialectical Monism, the Dyad, and the Tao

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Topics mentioned in this episode:

-The use of the term “poetry” and the death of the genuine article

-Building metrical literacy

-My essay “The Iron Lyre”

-Modern small-souledness

-My essay “The Poisoned Well: Melville and Gnosticism”

-My essay “The Monumentalist Manifesto”

-“Science, Politics, and Gnosticism” by Eric Voegelin

-“The Whiteness of the Whale” in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”

-“The Gnostic Gospels” ed. Elaine Pagels

-“Fragment of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the 12th Century” by Melville

-“The Maldive Shark” by Melville

-My episode “Giving the Devil His Due: The Value of the Romantic Anti-Hero”

-“The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoevsky

-My episode “What is Art? What Is It For?”

-“J.V. Cunningham's Counter-Revolution” by James Matthew Wilson

-“Poetry and Religion” by Les Murray

-Myth as the missing link between philosophy, religion, and poetry

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Text of poem here

Soundtrack to this episode

Topics discussed in this episode:

-The University of St. Thomas, Houston

-"The Flaming Heart" by Mario Praz

-Giambattista Marino

-Metaphysical vs. Baroque

-The poetry of rapture

-The Greek Anthology

-Laudianism

-Crashaw's Teresa poems

-Mixed meter and phantom beats

-"Venus and Adonis" by Billy Shakes

-The saintly grief in your wedding ring

-Aurora, not Selene!

-"The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia" by Sir Philip Sidney

-"On a Drop of Dew" by Andrew Marvell

-The nurturing sublime

-A humanized heaven in human eyes

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-The MFA Program at the University of St. Thomas

-My episode on Ryan’s poem “Disobedience”

-"How to Think Like a Poet" by Ryan Wilson

-Wiseblood Books

-New editions of Dryden and Pope soon come!

-“The Catholic Writer Today” by Dana Gioia

-David Rothman

-New Verse Review’s St. Thomas issue

-“A Season in Hell” by Arthur Rimbaud

-“Pure and Impure Poetry” by Robert Penn Warren

-The Fugitives, Agrarians, and New Critics

-“The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot

-“Dante” by T.S. Eliot

-“The World’s Body” by John Crowe Ransom

-“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot

-“From Ritual to Romance” by Jessie Weston

-“Proteus Bound” by Ryan Wilson

-“El Desdichado” by Gerard de Nerval

-“An Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rainer Maria Rilke

-Joyce’s “Ulysses” and the mythic method

-Aestheticism and Theophile Gautier

-Negative Capability

-Blake, Picasso, and derangement

-Four Roses whiskey (sponsor me!)

-“Rob Roy,” by Sir Walter Scott

-“For the Highway Medians” by Matthew Buckley Smith

-“To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick

-A hypostatic, moral exegesis of the Odyssey

-The Aeneid as tragedy

-“Imitations” by Robert Lowell

-Plutarch’s “Lives”

-“Annus Mirabilis” by John Dryden

-Dryden vs. Pope

-Pope’s “Ode On Solitude” and “Essay On Man”

-“Heorot” by Ryan Wilson

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Topics discussed in this episode include:

Wiseblood Books

The University of St. Thomas MFA Program

My episode on James Matthew Wilson

"The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking" by James Matthew Wilson

"The Wayward Thomist" by James Matthew Wilson

The Complete Essays of J.V. Cunningham

Jacques Maritain

"Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky

"La Vita Nuova" by Dante

Matthew 16

"In Ghostlight" by Ryan Wilson

"The River of the Immaculate Conception" by James Matthew Wilson

"Mass of the Americas" by Frank La Rocca

"The Bridge" by Hart Crane

"The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot

“Tradition and the Individual Talent” by T.S. Eliot

“Four Quartets” by T.S. Eliot

“The Illusion of Reaction” by Yvor Winters

“All the Fun’s In How You Say a Thing” by Timothy Steele

“Missing Measures” by Timothy Steele

F.T. Prince

“Fragment of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the 12th Century” by Herman Melville

My episode on Helen Pinkerton

“Love in the Western World” by Denis de Rougemont

“Agape and Eros” by Anders Nygren

“The Marriage” by Yvor Winters

“Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor

“Wiped Out” by James Matthew Wilson

“The Moon and Sixpence” by W. Somerset Maugh

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Topics discussed in this episode include:

Matthew Buckley Smith over at SLEERICKETS

Alice Allan over at Poetry Says and In Future Posts

Ethan McGuire over at The Flummoxed

Zina Gomez Liss over at The Beauty of Things

Cameron Clark over at Minor Tiresias

Rationalist, Socialist, Humanist, Bicameral Demo-Oligarchic Utopia?

Ironkraft and Cheesecraft

An incomplete list of people I envy: Kendrick Lamar, Shane McCrae, James Matthew Wilson, Chris Childers, Dick Davis, Amit Majmudar, Matthew Buckley Smith, Bill Coyle, Don Paterson, etc. etc.

An incomplete list of people who inspire me: Yvor Winters, Irving Babbitt, Matthew Arnold, William Shakespeare, John Milton, the Attic Tragedians, E.A. Robinson, Wallace Stevens, Edgar Bowers, Richard Wilbur, Aristotle, Baruch Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, Vyasa, Simone Weil, William Morris.

The Book of Job

Isaiah 45:7

Alitu and Buzzsprout

Kol Nidre

My episode with Zina and David on Fireside Chat

Harold Bloom

The Archimedean point

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)