Read this essay at The Sonneteer! Sonnet types discussed: The Sicilian: ABAB ABAB, CDC DCD The Italian: ABBA ABBA, CDC DCD The English: ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG The French: ABAB, CDCD, EEF, GGF The Spenserian: ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, EE The Miltonic: Italian, with enjambment, delayed volta, and non-courtly/erotic content The Meredithian: ABBA, CDDC, EFFE, GHHG The Pushkin: aBaB, ccDD, eFFe, GG The Hilbertian: ABC ABC, DEF DEF, GG The Terza Rima: ABA, BCB, CDC, DED, EE The Hybrid: Various. Ex: ABB...

-Read this essay on Substack! -What is meter? -10 Reasons to write in meter -Kinds of meter (Accentual, Syllabic, Parellelist, Quantitative, Accentual-Syllabic) -Kinds of feet (Iamb, Trochee, Anapest, Amphibrach, Dactyl) -“Junk” by Richard Wilbur -“Considering the Snail” by Thom Gunn -KJV Psalm 23 -Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare -“The Tyger” by William Blake -“The Destruction of Sennacherib” by Lord Byron -“O Where Are You Going?” by W.H. Auden -Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “To...

Read this essay on Substack! Topics discussed: -Disco Demolition Night -Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death" -See Matthew's great episode on the above -Alice's essay, "On Fear" -My essay, "The Iron Lyre" -The Sleerickets episode "This Was Poetry" Support the show VISIT 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 her...

-Read the poems on my Substack! -If there is a “West,” all Semites and Aryans are part of it -Arab Classicism and the House of Wisdom -Al Ma’arri -Afzaladdin -Moses Ibn Ezra -Sehnsucht -Ibn Iyad -Manjik -Dick Davis -Samuel Johnson’s “Rasselas” -Proto-Imagism -My long road to appreciating haiku -Zen in the Art of Archery -Matsuo Basho -Ethan McGuire -Kireji, Kigo, Jisei -Minamoto no Shitago -Howard Nemerov -Derek Walcott -Anne Stevenson -Mary Jo Salter -Motherhood and the feminine mystique -Jo...

Read this essay (and view the poems) on Substack! Topics discussed include: The Monumentalist Manifesto The Iron Lyre Bright Soft Things (Crashaw Essay) The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse trans. Christopher Childers Asclepiades 6 Zonas 9 Argentarius 26 Martial 5.73, 1.73, 3.65 "Prayer" by George Herbert "Cold Turkey" by Joshua Mehigan "Upon the Body of Our Blessed Lord, Naked and Bloody" by Richard Crashaw "To Our Lord, Upon the Water Made Wine," by Richard Crashaw "God is my F...

Read this episode on Substack! Text of the poem here. Mea culpa: Yes, in the heat of the moment, I mispronounced mise en scene. A la guillotine! Topics discussed include: -Some po-biz kvetching -Morri Creech! -The telos of Versecraft -The "ghost" of pentameter -The Stevensian cosmovision and the metaphysics of metaphor -The axis mundi -Nicholas of Cusa and coincidentia oppositorum -The Moirai -Contronyms -"An Ordinary Childhood" by Morri Creech -Selve oscura dolce -I.A. Richards a...

Read this episode on Substack and subscribe! Text of poem Topics discussed include: -Plato's "Ion" -The Muses and Schizophrenia -Poets must be weirdos -The normies are the willing slaves of the mad -Lewis's trilemma -The American Confessionals and the French Decadents -The Wild 18th century -Go read William Cowper's "The Task!" -Samuel Johnson, Richard Savage, William Collins, Christopher Smart, William Blake, Friederich Holderlin, The Marquis de Sade -Jubilate Agno, The Sorrows of Young ...

Read this episode (and the poem) on Substack! Topics discussed include: -Going to Oaxaca! -"Poetry and Music" and "Rhyme's Reason" by John Hollander -My Nemerov episode -My Donaghy episode -Jacques Lacan and the "mirror phase" -The nightmare of the self vs. the nightmare of the unconscious -The survival of Romanticism Support the show VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE. BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE. VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE. Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listenin...

Read this essay on Substack! Read the poems: "The Early Purges" and "Limbo." Topics mentioned: -Poetry careerism in the 21st century -"The Iron Lyre" -The perennial appeal of the Gentleman Farmer Poet -Heaney's bog poems -The value of exposure to death -Rural vs. Urban morality -"The Need of Being Versed in Country Things" by Robert Frost -Piscine Christianity -"At the Fishhouses" by Elizabeth Bishop -My Yucatan travelogue -My most recent Sleerickets appearance Support the show VISI...

Read this essay and support the show on Substack! Topics discussed in this episode include: R.S. Thomas's poems: -Mediations -Kneeling -Via Negativa -The Absence -Revision -Ernest Hilbert -Alexander Fayne's essay on R.S. Thomas -Pascal's "Night of Fire" -Apophatic theology -John Scotus Erigena, Philo, Pseudo-Dionysius, Weil, etc. -Keats's "Ode On A Grecian Urn" -Milton's "On His Blindness" Support the show VISIT MY WEBSITE HERE. BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE. VISIT T...