Episode 109: Philip Larkin, Aubade
This episode continues our series on the aubade (a morning love song) with a dramatic turn. Larkin reinvents the tradition as waking to the fact that every new day brings a person.
Episode 107: John Donne, The Sun Rising
This episode begins a three-part series on the “aubade,” a poem to greet the morning (often by wishing the morning away). We discuss Donne’s many wonderful techniques and even recite a little.
Episode 105: Phillis Wheatley Peters, "To the Earl of Dartmouth"
Today, joined by Professor Kirsten Lee, we read a poem about freedom written on the eve of the American Revolution by Phillis Wheatley, the first African American to publish a book of.
Episode 100: Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
This episode takes us to a graveyard for Halloween and explores one of the most canonical poems in the English language, poised between two huge eras of poetry as it meditates on.
Episode 96: Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur
Today we look at a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins that dwells equally in the grandeur of God and the wreck made of earth. Hopkins wonders how these two aspects of our.
Episode 83: Emily Dickinson, "I went to thank Her–"
In this episode, we read and discuss Emily Dickinson’s poem about the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We discuss Dickinson’s innovative syntax, her use of deep pauses, and her meditations on death.
Episode 82: Sidney, Translation of Psalm 52
Psalm 52 concerns a lying tyrant and God’s impending judgment. Mary Sidney, who lived 1561-1621, was an extraordinary writer, editor, and literary patron. Like many talented writers of her time, she translated.
Episode 71: Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire
This episode dives into the wonderful world of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the musicality of his language, and the vision he has of becoming what we already are. This poem illustrates the cover.