"The Metaphysical Amorist" by J.V. Cunningham

Topics discussed in this episode include: -The "Plain Style" -Epigrams-"Stoner" by John Williams -Stanzaic asymmetricity -Wacky rhyme schemes as evidence of revision -Stanzaic palindromes -The triplet as the couplet of couplets -Ladies (feminine endings) last -The curious case of iambic tetrameter -A gloss of glose -Plato, the worst third-wheel ever, returns -Earthy kids -"Love" as heuristic -Western love poets as pseudo-incels -Christianity is Platonism for the masses -Do we ever really know the ones we love? -Plato gets dumped, again -Hume slides in the DMs, gets curved -Duns Scotus lookin like a snack tho -Scotistic realism -Plato's epistemology in the Theaetetus -Amor Vincit Philosophia Text of the poem: The Metaphysical AmoristYou are the problem I propose, my dear, the text my musings glose: I call you for convenience love. By definition you’re a cause inferred by necessary laws— you are so to the saints above. But in this shadowy lower life I sleep with a terrestrial wife and earthy children I beget. Love is a fiction I must use, a privilege I can abuse, and sometimes something I forget. Now, in the heavenly other place Love is in the eternal mind the luminous form whose shade she is a ghost discarnate, thought defined. She was so to my early bliss, she is so while I comprehend the form my senses apprehend, and in the end she will be so. Her whom my hands embrace I kiss, her whom my mind infers I know. The one exists in time and space and as she was she will not be; The other is in her own grace and is She is eternally. Plato! you shall not plague my life. I married a terrestrial wife. And Hume! She is not mere sensation in sequence of observed relation. She has two forms— ah, thank you, Duns!— I know her in both ways at once. I knew her, yes, before I knew her, and by both means I must construe her, and none among you shall undo her. Support the showVISIT MY WEBSITE HERE.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:  @versecraftSend me a note at: [email protected] 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 AssociationArt by David Anthony KlugList 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 (/ /)