PODCAST · arts
Reading and Writing
by Michael Lavers
Reading great books and trying to write some of our own.
Episodes
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Adam Zagajewski
We talk about the life-affirming poems of Adam Zagajewski.
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Frank Norris, McTeague
Claire and I have one of my favorite discussions about a very under-read book. We talk about the relationship between America and money, love and money, obsession, greed, expectations vs. reality, imagination vs. fantasy, nature, beauty, truth, hoarse-voiced entertainers on sub-par cruises, and...
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Robert Frost, ”Home Burial”
In this episode, I present a recording from a class in which students and I discuss Frost's masterpiece, "Home Burial."
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Don Quixote
Claire and I talk about the strange wonderful pleasure of this book, focusing on the first 250 pages. More Cervantes discussions to come!
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James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
"Everything that is is holy." Translation: CLAIRE IS BACK!!!!!!
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”As Kingfishers Catch Fire...”, a poem by GM Hopkins
Some students and I walk through Hopkins' poem, celebrating its particular pleasures and insights, as well as talking in general about how easy it is to access the strange mysterious power of a poem.
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Hamlet
Who's there? Who are you? Why are you here? What is it all for? Are these the right questions? Can we even know?
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How to Enjoy Poetry, and Why
I yammer on for a while about how inadequate any theory of poetry is, and then I think I end up outlining a tentative theory of poetry. Oops.
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The Upanishads
I aim for a brief glimpse of the grandeur of these ancient scriptures, and think out loud about their central message: all is one. Along the way I ramble about death, unity, grief, the Self, the transcendent vs. the immanent, and more.
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The Book of Chuang Tzu
In this episode, I talk for an entire hour as if I know something. I make many statements that have the cadence of "understanding," but mostly I'm just rambling about a very beautiful and fascinating book, The Book of Chuang Tzu. And the worse thing of all is that Claire--the only reason these...
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Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Claire and I swoon over our favorite bits of Romeo and Juliet, and discuss why this play is not a cautionary tale of unbridled passion and the excesses of youth, but rather a hymn to the redemptive powers of love itself.
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Lawrence Durrell, Justine
Claire and I celebrate this under-read hidden gem, the first novel in Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet." We wander through topics like love, sex, memory, time, prose style, modernism, and much more.
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Dante, Paradiso
Claire and I weep over the end of Dante's sublime poem and try to describe, in some small way, the power of his mystical vision of unity for the modern reader.
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Dante, Purgatory
Claire and I climb the mountain of purgatory with Dante and Virgil and talk about pride, love, morality, freedom, pleasure, Christ, grief, trials, suffering, and lots lots more.
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Dante, Inferno
Claire and I walk with Dante and Virgil through hell. Along the way, we talk about all manner of things: pity, sin, reading, love, exploration, tradition, heresy, truth, and most of all why Dante is important to us, just two common readers, in the 21st century.
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Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
Check out my new book of poems here. Claire and I fall under the spell of Shakespeare's Macbeth, and walk through some of our favorite moments in this play. Among other things, we talk about the dangers of the imagination, the nature of paradox and truth, the cyclical nature of tragedy, the milk…
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Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Claire and I swoon over one of our favorites, Conrad's Heart of Darkness. We talk about how and when to approach great books, what makes Conrad a master prose stylist, how this work subverts too-easy dichotomies of light and dark, Kurtz as a distillation of Europe, why Marlowe stays loyal to him,...
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Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu
Claire and I chat about our love for another ancient religious text, the Tao Te Ching. We talk about doing noble things simply, and simple things nobly. We also discuss ideas like emptiness, peace, humility, immateriality, fate, balance, how this text could be relevant for artists, writers, and...
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Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," and more.
Claire and I use Emerson's life-changing essay(s) to think out loud about genius, inspiration, instinct, truth, authority, failure, beauty, good and evil, history, the literary tradition, appropriation, America, and more.
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Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Claire and I savor our favorite bits of the Meditations, and talk about the unity of all things, living in the moment, bearing our trials nobly, accepting pain as a part of life, how to think about change, what the duty of humans is, and much more. Also, Nietzsche somehow sneaks in to help us…
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Bob Dylan
Happy 80th Birthday Bob Dylan!!! Check out Claire's art, music, and writing here: https://www.claireakebrandart.com/
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The Bhagavad Gita
Check out Claire's art, music, and writing here: https://www.claireakebrandart.com/ Claire and I celebrate the Hindu epic scripture the Bhagavad Gita. We talk about the indescribability of the divine, what it means to perform worship and feel awe, the unity of all things, the divinity inside each...
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John Steinbeck, The Pearl
Claire and I talk about Steinbeck's novella The Pearl, and consider the genre of parable, the downside of dreams, the risks of interpretation, the poisonous nature of desire, our exile from Eden, the dangers of wealth and fame, utopian thinking, Hamlet's claim that "there is nothing either good…
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Masterpieces of World Literature, Final Thoughts
A few final thoughts.
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Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
This time I chat with Spencer, Steven, and Cecilia about Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. We talk about silence, meaning, nothingness, God, nihilism, play, love, friendship, endurance, suicide, amnesia, King Lear, Charlie Chaplin, happiness, and more!
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Part 2
Emily, Allie, and I talk about more sections of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. We discuss the value of literature as a witness to human pain, the dangers of ideology, what it means to take responsibility for our suffering, how Solzhenitsyn could end up saying "bless you, prison," the power...
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Part 1
Carter and I discuss some early chunks of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, and consider the implications of the archipelago metaphor, why it's valuable to read about atrocities, why this book has such lyrical power, what happens when we do not value freedom enough, Solzhenitsyn's provocative...
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Shakespeare, As You Like It
Emma, Rachel, and I enthuse over As You Like It. We chat about what it can teach us about writing poetry in the 21st century, in what ways poetry can delight and instruct, how Shakespeare manages to conjure believable humans, what literary irony is, why Rosalind is so captivating, why Orlando's...
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Camus, The Plague, Part 2
Ysa and Ethan help me celebrate the beautiful conclusion of Camus' novel The Plague. We talk about the problem of evil and suffering, how Christianity can be kept honest, how we can choose between accepting everything or denying everything, what it means to attain a happiness that knows death, in...
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Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Ysa, Emily, and I celebrate Whitman's masterpiece Song of Myself. We talk about what it feels like to stand in the presence of great art, what makes Whitman's poetry timeless and democratic, what aspects of his poem we can still use as models in the 21st century, how to make truth statements in...
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Camus, the Myth of Sisyphus, and The Plague, part 1
Porter, Nathan and I talk first about Camus's parable "The Myth of Sisyphus." We describe why life can rightly be called "absurd," and ask how it's possible to be happy even in pointless or futile struggle. We then touch briefly on the first half of Camus's The Plague, asking how this novel might...
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Robert Frost 2
Remy and Kelly and I swoon over a few more Frost masterpieces, and talk about how poems offer temporary stays against confusion. We examine metrical variation, the relationship between the specific and the universal, the importance of getting lost, how poetry can turn the mundane into the sacred,...
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Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
I chat with Calli and Brenna about Woolf's A Room of One's Own. We ask why it's hard to create literary masterpieces and what particular obstacles women have faced through the centuries. We consider Woolf's claim that "it would have been impossible...for any woman to have written the plays of...
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Charlie Chaplin, The Kid
Taylor and Conner and I chat about Chaplin's masterpiece The Kid. We discuss a few things films can do that books can't, what aspects of film Chaplin perfected that are still around, the balance of comedy and tragedy, what makes this film "Modern," what it has to say about urban life in America,...
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Robert Frost 1
Esther, Alexander and I chat about three of our favorite Frost poems. We examine what specifically makes them so beautiful, including: rhythm and meter, sonic texture, the power of monosyllables, universality in poetry, aphoristic wisdom, the tension between form and content, Frost's darker side,...
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Kafka, The Metamorphosis
#WeAreAllRatLickers
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Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Melissa, Sydney, and I talk about death. What does it mean to think well about death? How much can we or should we think about our eventual demise? Should we live every day as if we were dying? Even if we could, would this be desirable? Why might it be healthy to be close to death, and how should...
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Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor, 2
I chat with Baylie and Makayla about why life is worth living. We explore Father Zosima's life as an embodied refutation to Ivan Karamazov's rational arguments about the nature of suffering. We consider how each person is indeed responsible for the sins of all people everywhere, why this attitude...
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Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor, 1
I chat with Liam and Elizabeth about Ivan Karamazov's objections to life and the world. We consider the ubiquity of human suffering, and agree with Ivan that if we had to found a universal harmony on the tears of one child, we would not do it. After this we chat about Ivan's "poem" and explore…
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Sylvia Plath, Ariel
Kailey, Lydia and I talk about Sylvia Plath's Ariel. We consider only a few of the ways this "autobiography of a fever" achieves its most daring effects: metaphor, pronouns, vivid imagery, provocative plainness, and repetitions combined with variation. We consider her bee poems as a series of ars...
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Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
Jacob, Felix, and I chat about Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. We discuss how reliable this narrator is, why humans can sometimes enjoy pain and despair, what causes us to act knowingly against our own self-interest, the dangers of Utopian thinking, the limits of human improvement, the...
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Derek Walcott 2
Josh and Heather and I talk about a few of our favorite Derek Walcott poems, and the reasons why they're so great. We discuss how being more specific actually helps poems be more universal; what makes the typical Walcott line so taut and vivid; how and why poets can echo the great poets of the...
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Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
I chat with Tacey and Cassidy about Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. We discuss some relevant details of Shelley's life, the novel's innovative structure, the Prometheus myth, the dangers of knowledge, what counts as a human and what counts as a monster, the blank slate theory, nature vs…
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Derek Walcott, part 1
William and I enjoy a few early poems by Derek Walcott, and talk about the relationship between talent and practice, how to load your poem with surprises, how to write politically without being didactic, what it means to increase the emotional stakes in a poem, what the bare minimum ingredients…
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Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey
I swoon with Claire over maybe the best poem in English, and talk about its strange non-title, what makes this poem "Romantic," the relationship between the self and nature, between the past and the present, and between childhood and adulthood. We consider Wordsworth's claim that "all which we...
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John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale
Claire and I chat about maybe the best poem in English, and discuss Romanticism and its varieties, death and immortality, why "but to think is to be full of sorrow," why we long for nature yet feel exiled from it, Eden and its aftermath, how the form of this poem helps contribute to its…
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Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 3
Zach and Kevin and I celebrate the conclusion of Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities. We talk about the transformation of Sydney Carton, the rage of Madame Defarge, the heroism of Miss. Pross, how giving even one person comfort counts as success in life, and how important it is to recognize both...
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Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 2
I chat with Liberty and Eliza about the middle third of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. We discuss which characters appeal to us the most, the relationship between vengeance and justice, how to overcome the desire for vengeance, and why keeping a list of offenses committed against us is a bad way…
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Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Part 1
I chat with Megan and Maura about the first 3rd of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. We discuss why its opening sentence has become one of the most famous sentences in English, the pros and cons of presenting history through fiction, what makes Dickens' style so appealing, how the first sections of...
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Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III
Hannah and Rachel and I enthuse over the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. We read a few of our favorites, and talk about what makes them so beautiful: their mixture of images and abstractions, their emotional restraint, their ultra-specificity, their irony, the way poetic form can mirror content,...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Reading and Writing have?
Reading and Writing currently has 91 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Reading and Writing about?
Reading great books and trying to write some of our own.
How often does Reading and Writing release new episodes?
Reading and Writing has 91 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Reading and Writing?
You can listen to Reading and Writing on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Reading and Writing?
Reading and Writing is created and hosted by Michael Lavers.
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