PODCAST · education
amimetobios
by Amimetobios
FOR THE OLDER LECTURES GO TO AMIMETOBIOS.PODBEAN.COM [There are a total of 400 and counting there] || Selected courses in literature (Shakespeare; Homer to Milton; Dryden to Wordsworth; Spenser and Milton; Skelton to Marvell; Close Reading; Thinking about Infinity) Spring 2013: The Later Romantics
Episodes
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Victorian Poetry 26: Last class: Housman after a touch of Yeats and a little Michael Field
We look at Yeats a little more, then "Michael Field," and then Housman's poem about Wilde and other poems about his own sexuality, and about the intense, Horatian ephemerality of life. A class in part about why I hope poetry, or some poems, will matter to the students throughout their lives.
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Victorian Poetry 25: Jeff Nunokawa visits to discuss Wilde’s ”Ballad of Reading Gaol”
Wilde in prison, or in Dante's hell, and the differences and similarities between the grimness of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and the charming, dazzling self-delight of his earlier self-presentations, in a class guest-taught by Princeton's Professor Jeff Nunokawa.
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Victorian Poetry 24: The Rhymers’ Club: Fin de siècle poetry, towards Wilde and Yeats
Another Kipling poem -- "Danny Deaver" and the horror of hanging (in partial anticipation of Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol"), and some discussion of Arnold, Pater, and Wilde as context for Lionel Johnson's "Dark Angel." Then two versions of Yeats's "Cradle Song."
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Victorian Poetry 23: Amy Levy, Robert Bridges and... Kipling
We discuss one poem of Amy Levy in the context of her short and painful life, then look at Robert Bridges's version of sprung rhythm -- how it differs from his friend Hopkins's and then after a brief and fractional defense of Kipling from the worst that could be said about him, we consider his…
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Victorian Poetry 22: A bit more Stevenson, George R. Sims, and the amazing Alice Meynell
The way metaphor works in one of Stevenson's songs of travel, a little attention to George R. Sim's punning in one of his "lunatic laureate" poems, and then close reading of the amazing Alice Meynell, in particular "Renouncement," "A Cradle Song," "The Modern Mother," and "Parentage," with some...
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Victorian Poetry 21: Later Victorian Forms: Stevenson, Guggenberger, MacDonald
We look at an interesting poem by Louisa S. Guggenberger, a very short poem by George MacDonald, and a couple of formal experiments by Stevenson, which mean the explanation of pantoum-like poems and triolets or rondeaux more generally -- examples of triolets from Hopkins and Chesterton. Then the...
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Victorian Poetry 20: George Eliot, Hardy, Hopkins
A lot of greats to do in a single day, and not wanting to miss Eliot we begin with a little contextualization of three of the sonnets from "Brother and Sister," then move on to a few grim Hardy poems, and then to Hopkins: "As kingfishers catch fire" compared with one of the "terrible sonnets," "I...
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Victorian Poetry 19: Swinburne and Hopkins
We discuss "The Garden of Proserpine" and the ways that it anticipates or instantiates Freud's idea of the death drive: all the repetitions in the poem. Then we turn to the poet most opposite in attitude: Hopkins, and talk briefly of "Pied Beauty" and "That Nature is a Heralcitean Fire."…
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Victorian Poetry 18: A touch of Fitzgerald and Hopkins; more on Meredith and Swinburne
We have to abandon Fitzgerald because time is short, so mainly on to Modern Love, with some context, then Hopkins's "Binsey Poplars," Swinburne (and Buck Mulligan quoting The Triumph of Time in Ulysses), and an intro to "The Garden of Proserpine," via Spenser's "Garden of Adonis" in The Faerie...
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Victorian Poetry 17: Some Meredith, then we begin The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam
We talk about George Meredith for a while -- "Lucifer in Starlight" (and the 1882 transit of Venus) and his relation to his wife, Mary Ellen Nicolls, and the relationship of both of them to Henry Wallis who'd painted Meredith as Chatterton. We plan to return to Modern Love, but first we begin...
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Victorian Poetry 16: A little Patmore, then the rest of Goblin Market
A couple of poems by Patmore, a somewhat tedious excursus into propositional attitudes and game theory, then the rest of "Goblin Market."
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Victorian Poetry 15: D.G. and C. Rossetti
We conclude our discussion of D.G. Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel," paying particular attention to the passages in parentheses and the subtlety of what they suggest about the speaker's sense of the Blessed Damozel's perception of him. We then move on to begin reading "Goblin Market," trying not so...
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Victorian Poetry 14: D.G. Rossetti and pre-Raphealitism
A brief introduction to Pre-Raphaelite poetry and painting: the perceptual psychology that it brings us to notice. A close reading of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's amazing "Woodspurge." A little bit on his "Blessed Damozel," followed, via a Mr. Magoo-inflected reading of Lewis Carroll's "Mad…
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Victorian Poetry 13: Concluding class on Clough’s ”Amours de Voyage”
What amours de voyage are. What it means to idealize what Keats calls "The fair creature of an hour," as Claude does. How such idealizations derive from "Juxtapositions." What it means to see through one's own idealization, by understanding its biochemical substrate. What's wrong with seeing...
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Victorian Poetry 12: Mainly Clough plus some narrative theory
Mainly Clough, mainly a kind of intro to Amours de Voyage, with some historical (Mazzini, Garibaldi) and biographical context as well as context in narrative theory, especially of the epistolatory novel. Clough the atheist and port-Darwinian, and his views of nature. Then a quick and fun reading…
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Victorian Poetry 11: ”Long ago he was one of the singers” (Edward Lear) plus a little Clare
Most of the class is on Edward Lear, and what his kind of nonsense poetry (very different from Carroll's) tells us about how poetry works in general. Then a return to Clare, to complete "The Winters Spring."
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Victorian Poetry 10: ”The Hunting of the Snark” and some Clare
We begin talking about Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" and what makes comic poetry what it is -- making the arbitrary tight (the way OuLiPo does, so this is this semester's excursus on OuLiPo). Then a little about the plot that some of the students may have missed. Following which, an...
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Victorian Poetry 9: ” ’Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’ ”
Having considered the title in the last class, we do the whole of R. Browning's " ' Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' " today, looking at how he (Browning/ Roland) undoes the difference between success and failure: "Just to fail as they seemed best, / And all the doubt was now - should I be...
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Victorian Poetry 8: More on R. Browning’s ”Development” and then mainly his”Thamuris Marching”
We start with a few lines from much later in EBB's Aurora Leigh (and their near explicit critique of Tennyson), then finish discussing "Development" (and its relation to modernity), then look at Pope's translation of the Thamyris passage in Book II of The Iliad, and the surviving fragments of...
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Victorian Poetry 7: more on Aurora Leigh and then some Robert Browning
Feminism and poetry for EBB. Poetry as a counter to an industrialized world and the constraints its analysts try to put on poetry. We begin discussing Robert Browning's moving late poem "Development," which shows an attitude similar to EBB's.
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Victorian Poetry 6: mainly Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A couple of great student modernizations of Barnes' "The Turnstile" (worth listening to! Don't fast forward) and then some discussion of the subtleties of Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, and its relation to the rise of the 19th century novel (Jane Eyre), with some attention to just a few lines…
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Victorian Poetry 5: E. Brontë, dialect, the amazing William Barnes
Poetry and nature as the surrounding world is industrialized; dialect and the local; experienced attitudes towards prior innocence; what "tomorrow" means in Brontë; dialect spelling; and then the amazing and heartbreakingly moving William Barnes, especially his poem "The Turnstile."
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Victorian Poetry 4: Some filiations (Barnes, Hardy, Tennyson, Fitzgerald, &c.); then ”TITHONUS”
First some process shot accounts of 19th c. affiliations between a lot of the figures we're doing. Dialectic poetry. Rubaiyat stanzas. Then Tennyson's great "Tithonus" with some attention to its similarities and differences from "Ulysses"
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Victorian Poetry 3: Tennyson’s technique, Tennyson’s despair
A consideration of the opening of "The Lotos Eaters" and the amazing way Tennyson handles sound. Repetition. How he does something similar in some despairing stanzas from "In Memoriam."
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Victorian Poetry 2: The weirdness of Tennyson
One of Tennyson's epigraphs: "Astronomy and geology: terrible muses." The importance of Arthur Henry Hallam's death to Tennyson, especially because of his religious skepticism. Gibbon on St. Simeon Stylites. Dramatic Monologues. "Ulysses," in Carey's translation of Dante and then Tennyson's poem....
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Victorian Poetry 1 -- Intro with poems by R. Browning, Beddoes, Patmore, Meynell, C. Rossetti
First class on Victorian Poetry. The best and largest corpus of really good poetry in English -- really good because the novel is the bid for greatness now. But really good is really good. The Victorians' relationship to some modernists (just a little) and to the Romantics, especially Shelley and...
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Poetry Episode 24: Last class, mainly on finishing Elisa Gonzalez’s ”Notes Toward an Elegy”
After some last class paper topic business we spend most of the time finishing our discussion of Elisa Gonzalez's amazing "Notes Toward an Elegy", and its relation to Bishop in particular (not only "Casabianca" but also "Love Lies Sleeping"; cf. Gonzalez's "And now I lie awake pretending /…
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Poetry course 23: kind of whacky but more on Bishop and then Elisa Gonzalez
People pretty punchy in penultimate palaver, especially when we have some discussion of Edward Gorey, whom almost no one had heard of! But we finish talking about Bishop, amidst lots of whackiness and then start Elisa Gonzales's great poem "Notes Towards an Elegy" from 2021 (published just before...
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Poetry: A Basic Course 22: Tennyson, Rich, Agha Shahid Ali, Hemans, Bishop
More on forms: in particular the ghazal, and the way poems quote, as in Shahid Ali's relineated quotations from Adrienne Rich, and Bishop's quotation from Hemans' "Casabianca." To be continued.
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Poetry A Basic Course episode 21: Beauty and truth in Dickinson and Keats
Understanding things (poems, songs, etc.) more deeply than their creators as an incentive for rewriting. How poets rewrite their precursors. Example: Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and Dickinson's "I died for Beauty."
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Poetry Episode 20: Chiefly ”The Emperor of Ice Cream”
A bit about forms and what they're metaphors for, and then mainly Stevens's "Emperor of Ice Cream," with other Stevens ("The Snow Man," "Auroras of Autumn") mentioned briefly.
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Poetry a basic course episode 19: Some villanelles, mainly
Discussion of Ruskin's pathetic fallacy; the metaphor of the villanelle in Rowan Ricardo Phillips; some villanelles, by AE Stallings, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop; Stevens's "Emperor of Ice Cream."
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Poetry Episode 18 Mont Blanc Concluded
A quiz (not recorded) based on the set of poems the students could write about, and some discussion of the answers. Then the conclusion of Shelley's "Mont Blanc," with some discussion of the pathetic fallacy, to be continued.
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Poetry Class Episode 17: Mont Blanc part 2
Some reminders about metaphor, and then more about the contest between mind and mountain in P.B. Shelley's "Mont Blanc." So far the mountain is like the Astros, leading the mind 3 games to 2, more or less. (This comparison is not going to have staying power, but there you go.)
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Poetry episode 16: More on metaphor, especially Shelley’s Mont Blanc: part 1 of a discussion of that poem
Assignments for a paper on metaphor. Salty discussion of metaphors, of plagiarism, of past and future assassinations. Then (most of the class) a beginning of a discussion of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mont Blanc" and the contest to see what is metaphor and what is reality.
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Class 15: More sonnets, and more on the relation of sonnet to metaphor
Metaphor: Ezra Pound (and Wordsworth). Some more consideration of sonnets and their relation to metaphor and simile: Alice Oswald, Elizabeth Bishop. Waley's translation of Tao Yuan-Ming and its similarity to Shakespeare's sonnet 73.
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Episode 14 -- some sonnets
Sonnets and metaphor: Wyatt and Surrey's translations of Petrarch, and then Some Shakespeare (with remarks about Starbuck)
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Poetry A Basic Course Episode 13 More Pope, Milton, Wyatt
Some more on Pope and how the sound seems to be an echo to the sense; another line of Milton's -- "Awake, arise, or be forever fallen" -- and how it divides; Wyatt's "They Fle From Me."
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Episode 12: Some Paradise Lost, some Pope, some more on meter, prime numbers
More on iambic pentameter. Examples from Milton and Pope. A bit on sonnets. Why poetry tends to flirt with prime numbers -- five feet per line, seven pairs of rhymes in sonnets, etc. Examples from Shakespeare.
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More on the theology of Paradise Lost (Episode 11)
More on the theology of Paradise Lost; I keep wanting to get back to the formal surface but we talked a lot about content and context. Also: The thirteen men effect!
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A day that turned out to be an intro to Paradise Lost (Episode 10)
Not what I meant to be doing to day, but it turned out we talked about the opening of Paradise Lost, and certain theological issues about free will, temptation, judgment of God, and justification of his ways.
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Different sorts of stresses (Episode 9)
Different sorts of stresses and their superposition. A lot on one line in Paradise Lost: "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime...?" And a bit on one line in Yeats: "Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose." And then the opening line of Paradise Lost: the stress in the word "first," the...
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What all poems are always about; ”We are Seven” (Episode 8)
What every poem is about: its own form. Garden path sentences (e.g. "The old man the boat.") as showing how form is almost always announced. Speaker vs. poet. Dialogue that turns into one speaker taking charge. Wordsworth's "We Are Seven."
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More on lines
Ashbery's "Wrong Kind of Insurance" -- and how to read Ashbery. Dactylic ending of that poem (or, yes, anapestic; it can be a matter of choice how you time it): "Each night / Is trifoliate, strange to the touch." Then two Cummings poems. Hearing vs. seeing. Reading vs. seeing (how the…
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What makes a line?
What is the most important criterion for a text's having a claim to being a poem? What if it's not a text? what if it's oral poetry, like Homer? What authorizes us to say that there are five feet in a pentameter line, or six in a hexameter, when Milton and Homer recite their verses orally, or...
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Rhyme. And dialogue -- alternation and conflict in ballads
Tennyson's "The Skipping Rope." Dialogue: dramatic conflict and rhyme. Ballad meter and alternation. A note on Lyrical Ballads.
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Rhyme: Making the Arbitrary Make Sense
Cole Porter's "You're the Top." Eighteenth Century bouts-rimés. The poetic task of making arbitrary rhymes make sense. Jakobson on the poetic function of language.
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More on rhyme and meter
How trochaic words overlap iambic feet. Loose onsets, strict endings. "Brought death inTO the world"? Or "Brought death INto the world"? Or both? "After great pain a formal feeling comes."
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some more on ”b o d y” and then on Alice Notley’s ”The Comfort”
We talk about Merrill's "b o d y" and its relation to Macbeth and then the words et cetera = etc. et cetera, especially in Alice Notely's wonderful four line poem "The Comfort," with some attention to enjambment and end stop.
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First episode of Poetry: A Basic Course:James Merrill’s
This is actually the second class, since we had an introductory class last week. This is a course in the close reading of poetry. Today's class largely on James Merrill's poem b o d y, on the limits of close reading (if any), and on "Roses are red..." Syllabus outline, to be updated periodically:...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
FOR THE OLDER LECTURES GO TO AMIMETOBIOS.PODBEAN.COM [There are a total of 400 and counting there] || Selected courses in literature (Shakespeare; Homer to Milton; Dryden to Wordsworth; Spenser and Milton; Skelton to Marvell; Close Reading; Thinking about Infinity) Spring 2013: The Later Romantics
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Amimetobios
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FOR THE OLDER LECTURES GO TO AMIMETOBIOS.PODBEAN.COM [There are a total of 400 and counting there] || Selected courses in literature (Shakespeare; Homer to Milton; Dryden to Wordsworth; Spenser and Milton; Skelton to Marvell; Close Reading; Thinking about Infinity) Spring 2013: The Later Romantics
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