Soundtrack to this episode
Topics discussed in this episode include:
-Listen to my talk on Melville here
-Listen to my poetry reading with Dan Brown here
-Outsider poetry
-The Education of Henry Adams
-Metrical hijinks
-The inherent negations of blindness
-"Durer: Insbrook, 1495" by Ern Malley
-"Lycidas" by John Milton
-Forging a new sensibility in identitarian poetry
Text of poem:
The Education of the Blind Poet; Or, Ars Poetica Ending with a Line from Milton
When I was 9 they taught me how to look
at someone as they spoke though I could see
nothing: it's polite they said & I was, look
I'm staring at the nothing of you, see?
My Nothing reader, pelted in your silence:
silent in History I drilled my lack
of stare into the history-shaped silence
of the confidential blackboard's black.
The teacher, standing slightly to its right
scrawled her timelines onto its cold chalk down.
See, teacher, have I not been studious: "Write
what's on the board." & I noted nothing down.
My No-Thing reader, ear pressed to the board
of words, how has your face become hers? mute
light stained her hair as she addressed the board,
& I presided over absence, mute.
All blind things learn to cleave to absence:
stiff-uniformed moles shoulder their chalk-blank dome
of earth. O Teacher to you I was absence,
you who'd only bring yourself to speak óf me
asking always Does hé need help? in a voice
hushed & mailed by its pity, pitywords
cringing between your jaws. I knew that voice
as my inheritance: these blind mouths full of words.
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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 (/ /)
