Episode 314: "Best of" - Our Favorite Poems

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast

Episode 314: "Best of" – Our Favorite Poems
Date: February 3, 2026
Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks, Cindy Rollins

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Overview

In this special "Best of" episode, hosts Angelina, Thomas, and Cindy revisit one of their most beloved discussions—an open-hearted exchange about their favorite poems and journeys with poetry. From childhood nursery rhymes to the intricacies of metaphysical poets and contemporary masters, the trio delves into the personal significance of poetry, reading aloud celebrated verses, and exploring how poetry shapes our intellectual and emotional lives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Encounters with Poetry

(11:14–19:42)

• Cindy:
  • Grew up with nursery rhymes; her grandmother gifted her "101 Famous Poems" (Roy Cook) which impressed upon her both good and bad poetry.
  • Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew awakened her to poetic meter:

    “All of a sudden I realize that Shakespeare has written it in a meter...I was just like, why doesn't everybody read this all the time? This is so wonderful.” (12:41)

• Thomas:
  • Childhood readings included William Blake’s The Tyger and nonsense poetry from the Book of Virtues.
  • Notable recitation: “The Jumblies” by Edward Lear, recalling the thrill of "gratuitous heroism."
• Angelina:
  • Did not grow up with poetry; parents prioritized non-fiction.
  • Discovered love for poetry through academic study—specifically Renaissance and metaphysical poets in college and grad school.

2. The Barriers and Joys of Approaching Poetry

(19:42–23:03)

• Many adults feel alienated by modern poetry’s “specialized language,” echoing Wendell Berry’s criticism that "poets write for other poets" (21:29).
• Both Cindy and Angelina emphasize poetry’s accessibility through story-based poems and nursery rhymes for beginners.

3. The Metaphysical Poets & Seduction by Syllogism

(23:49–27:43)

• Angelina’s academic love began with metaphysical poets, especially John Donne:
  • Donne’s poetry as argument and logical syllogism:

    “Metaphysical poems were based on a logical syllogism...if this, but this, therefore this...” (25:04)

• Thomas offers a Donne-style syllogism:

  “If I, a sinful man, am a city under siege, and the army besieging me is God, then...I...will never be well until God storms the city.” (26:31)

4. Poetry’s Role in Formation and Family

(31:34–38:49)

• Cindy shares a touching story of soothing her newborn grandson with nursery rhymes, reinforcing poetry’s role in generational bonding.
• Advocacy for memorizing and reading poetry daily, as it teaches logic, metaphor, and empathy:

  “The thing about poetry is...it is teaching logic. It is also teaching how to compare unlike things...If you can do that, you can find a bridge between anything.” (37:25)

5. Favorite Poems Old and New

(41:53–1:01:06)

• Charles Wesley's "Wrestling Jacob":
  Thomas celebrates hymns as poetry:

  “Even without music, [...] hymn lyrics that make poetry of, I think, a very high rank themselves.” (41:53)

• William Cowper & “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”:
  Discussed as a hymn whose language has entered everyday speech (43:36).
• Wordsworth’s “Lucy” Poems & Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”:
  Cindy recites and analyzes their universal resonance about life’s ordinary beauty (44:34–47:17).
• Yeats’ “The Song of Wandering Aengus”:
  Thomas’s favorite for its longing and Irish lyricism:

  “It’s sort of an Irish ballad poem...a longing, kind of both a joyful and a sad poem.” (50:44)

• Modern & Minor Poets:
  • Angelina and Thomas admire Edwin Muir and Louis MacNeice for their storytelling within poems (52:44).
  • Readings include MacNeice’s “A Box of Truisms” and Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”:

    “What did I know, What did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (55:21)

• Walter de la Mare, “Arabia”:
  Thomas extols his capacity to make creation both strange and beautiful for children and adults alike (59:41).

6. Thomas Banks’s Poetry Highlighted

(1:01:06–1:03:39)

• Angelina reads Thomas’s “Adam in Exile” as an example of contemporary poetry possessing narrative and intellectual depth.
• Cindy shares that she now teaches Thomas’s poems in her courses, preferring his modern voice over Wendell Berry for its clarity and resonance.

7. Celebrated Short Poems and Poets

• Leigh Hunt’s “Jenny Kissed Me,” cherished for its brevity and poignancy (1:04:03).
• Discussion of Pre-Raphaelite muses and tangled creative relationships ensues (1:65:00).

8. Practical Advice for Entering Poetry

(1:72:17–1:76:00)

• Nursery rhymes, narrative poems, and sonnets recommended for beginners.
• Tips from all:
  • Read aloud.
  • Explore various centuries and anthologies (Oxford Book of English Verse, etc.).
  • Learn poetic forms (sonnets, ballads).
• Angelina recommends Thomas’s webinar “How to Love Poetry” for newcomers.

9. Community Engagement

(1:76:00–end)

• Listeners encouraged to share favorite poems on the Literary Life page.
• Contemporary poet Sally Thomas is lauded for her new book Motherland.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Flannery O’Connor on Shock in Art:

  “To the hard of hearing, you shout, and to the almost blind, you draw large and startling figures.” – Angelina (quoting O’Connor, 07:54)

• On Metaphysical Poetry:

  “Seduction by syllogism...It’s always, if this, but this, therefore we should be in love.” – Angelina (25:24)

• On Poetry & Logic:

  “There’s your logic. That is teaching logic. It is. And it also is teaching how to compare unlike things.” – Cindy (37:25)

• On Parenting, Pain, and Poetry:

  “As a mother at this end of life...our job as parents is to absorb the pain around us...Let it stop with me.” – Cindy (58:04)

• On the Community of Poetry:

  “It was poetry that I brought y’all together.” – Angelina, on how Cindy and Thomas first connected (39:17)

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Selected Timestamps for Important Segments

• Poetry in Childhood & First Experiences: 11:14–19:42
• Barriers to Reading Poetry: 19:42–23:03
• Metaphysical Poets & Donne: 23:49–27:43
• Poetry and Family Life: 31:34–38:49
• “Wrestling Jacob” – Poetry of Hymns: 41:53–43:29
• Wordsworth, Gray, and Austen’s favorites: 44:34–47:52
• Yeats’s Poetry and Irish Lyricism: 50:36–51:18
• Modern Minor Poets, including MacNeice: 52:44–54:41
• Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”: 55:12–57:01
• Thomas Banks’ Featured Poem “Adam in Exile”: 61:08–63:16
• Advice for Beginning Poetry & Anthologies: 72:17–75:14
• Sally Thomas’s Motherland and the Daily Practice: 76:00–77:17

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Tone & Atmosphere

The episode is warm, self-effacing, witty, and intellectually welcoming. The hosts read aloud, laugh together, gently tease, and share the kind of personal anecdotes that make literature feel like both an inheritance and a living conversation. Their reverence for poetry is balanced by their belief that poetry is for everyone—a “craft” and a “delight of imagination” accessible to all.

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Final Thoughts

The hosts affirm the deep impact of poetry on personal and communal life, recommending practical steps for “entering in” regardless of background. Whether reciting nursery rhymes to an infant, exploring classic anthologies, or writing one’s own verse, poetry is—above all—a way to make sense of the world and “find a bridge between anything.”

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"Just keep reading, I guess." – Thomas Banks (77:52)

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For more, see episode show notes and the well-loved poem “Reading in Wartime” by Edwin Muir, read by Thomas Banks in the outro.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast. We've grown quite significantly since our debut in 2019, and we've had many requests to highlight older episodes that new listeners may have missed, as well as revisit listener favorites. To honor that request, I present to you this episode of the Best of the Literary Life Podcast.

[B]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and I am here today with, well, the people I'm here with every day. At least one of them. I'm here with every day. Thomas Banks and Cindy Rollins. And today we are going to talk about our favorite poetry. You guys ready for this?

[A]

I believe I am.

[C]

I am ready. I am ready.

[B]

Two of you were born ready for this. I am gonna freely admit I will play the role of novice to the two poetry experts here.

[C]

Well, I'm gonna play the role of the low brow poetry, and Thomas will be more of the middlebrow. The middlebrow.

[B]

All right, then I will play the role of wannabe.

[C]

We'll all criticize highbrow poetry.

[B]

All right, I will play the role of critic and everything you say, I'll say, ooh, Cindy, you like that guy. No real scholar likes that guy.

[C]

What critic would even mention him?

[B]

I feel like I need a more. I gotta practice my snooty critic voice. That didn't come naturally at all, thank God.

[A]

Did any of us bring in like some obscure German symbolist or something like that? Because otherwise we won't impress our readership, I'm sure.

[B]

See, I don't even know what obscure German symbolists are, so there you go.

[C]

No, I just. I brought. Jenny kissed me.

[B]

I mean, I could recite some limericks maybe if the show gets dull. All right, well, before we jump in, let's do what we like to do at the beginning of this show. If you're a first time listener, we like to share something from Our reading something from our commonplace books. And it's kind of the running joke that I have bumper sticker quotes and Cindy has tomes, but I've got a proper paragraph, this paragraph. I'm looking at it. It's actually one really long sentence, but it's too long for a bumper sticker. Cindy, do you want to go first?

[C]

I will go. Mine's not too long this time, so everybody will be quite happy with me, I think so. It is from the Little Manual of Knowing by Esther Lightcap Meek. And of course, you'll know who she's channeling when you hear this. So the knowledge as information, vision is actually defective and damaging. It distorts reality and humanness, and it gets in the way of good knowing.

[B]

Oh, that's good. Dare I say she's channeling Charlotte Mason?

[C]

Maybe.

[B]

You know, I almost made a joke at the beginning of this episode that the Literary Life podcast Drinking Game is gonna come your way. And every time Cindy. Every time Cindy said Charlotte Mason.

[C]

Well, you know, I read Charlotte Mason every day almost because I'm reading it with a couple groups. A group. And that is one reason why always on the tip of my tongue.

[B]

Well, we're delighted every time you bring in Charlotte Mason. I'm only teasing. They were joking about the drinking game version on the Literary life group.

[C]

What is your drinking game?

[B]

Well, mine would be every time I said fairy tale or mystery or archetype. Or archetype or medieval cosmology.

[C]

Or Northrop Fry.

[B]

Or Northrop Fry.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

That's another one.

[B]

At least I don't make the sign of the cross when I say his name.

[C]

I think Thomas would get the pithy one liner.

[B]

Yes. Every time Thomas says something self effacing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I guess, you know, See.

[B]

Now you're gonna say something self effacing about being self effacing.

[A]

I mean, I have to pull my weight somehow. I guess.

[B]

Today'S the episode where I get to be self effacing in the face of these two giants of poetry here. All right, do you want to go next or should I?

[A]

Yeah. So I. This commonplace has a sort of backstory. There are a fair number of fake Twitter accounts which consist of nothing but. Okay, fake Twitter accounts, which consist of nothing but dead writers, quotations from dead writers, and one I found today is kind of relevant to these times. A quote from 1978, Auberon Waugh, the English journalist and memoirist. So Auberyn Waugh, he said in 1978, perhaps it would be a good idea for public statues to be made with disposable heads that can be changed with popular fashion. But even better would surely be to make statues without any heads at all representing simply the idea, quote unquote of a good politician. Yeah, right. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, because obviously since we're, you know, tearing down statues and all that, I mean, you know what happens in the next generation when we tear down the statues that we've set up on the now vacant pedestal. So yeah, just make them with interchangeable heads and that'll make it less expensive on the taxpayer.

[C]

Well, that's what they do with St. Petersburg, right? They just change the statues, change the name.

[A]

Right, Yeah. I mean the Russians had to deal with that in the late 80s, early 90s and all that kind of thing.

[B]

Okay, I take it back. It's not self effacing comment. That would be Tom Square on the literary life. Bingo. It would be every time he says something obscure.

[A]

Yeah, sure.

[C]

Obscure to whom?

[B]

All right, well, here's my quote, which is one long sentence. I've been doing research for my Flannery o' Connor class that I'm going to be teaching in July. You can go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com if you want to learn more about that. Anyway, I'm really excited about how the class is coming together. And so here's a quote from a letter she wrote. I think it's a letter. Let me double check here. And it's just one sentence to explain what it is she's trying to do in her stories and why it is that we, when we read her stories, we feel shocked. Right. We feel like someone just punched us in the gut or knocked us over the head and we're not really sure what happened. This is what she said about her very deliberate use of shock. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it. When you have to assume that it does not. When you have to make your vision apparent by shock. To the hard of hearing you shout and to the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. I love that. To the heart of hearing you shout.

[C]

We have a lot of hard of hearing people in the world right now. We're getting a lot of shouting.

[B]

We are getting a lot of shout. I think we're feeling like this is what happens.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Though Flannery o' Connor was not always an author who shouted herself. I mean, some of her stories require actually kind of a, you know, a fine tuned ear.

[B]

I agree with that, that's. That's her typical kind of self effacing statement.

[A]

Yeah, I like that about her, though. She didn't take her own creations too seriously.

[B]

Well, part of what's going on is that she points out in several places that her audience is not Christians, which doesn't mean Christians can't read her work. But that if she was writing specifically for other Christians, there would be some common assumptions she could work with. But she is writing to an audience that is modernist and materialist and doesn't believe in a spiritual realm and is essentially, you know, nihilist. And it's those people she's trying to communicate to, so she feels like she has to draw things large for them to see.

[C]

That's a really good point.

[B]

Yeah. And so there's always a couple of reasons, I think, why people struggle with Flannery o'. Connor. One, we're shocked. Like, how could she talk like that? How could she say these things? Well, you're not the audience. Maybe that's one level. The other level is sometimes we are uncomfortable because shots were fired and they hit their target and we didn't like finding out we were the target.

[A]

No, no, heavens no.

[C]

Yes. I felt like that some of the inward thoughts of people like, please stop, stop.

[B]

Right, so you know, she'll be in. Right. She'll be in the middle of attacking nihilism. And you're like, right on. And then she does her twist where she's like, actually, you self righteous person, you're worse than the nihilist. Your soul is in greater danger because you're suffering from self righteousness. You're like, wait, wait, how did I. She just led me right in there.

[C]

Yeah, she just traps you.

[B]

She does. And you're just nodding right along like, yes, I am so much better than the bad people in the story.

[A]

And then you're like, Then you've been ambushed by your own book, something you paid money for.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

It's a rare author who can do that.

[B]

Right, right. She was quite used to people having sort of a violent, violent response there. Anyway, so that was my quote to the heart of hearing you shout.

[C]

Wow, very good.

[B]

All right, so here we are, an episode of our favorite poems. And when I had the idea for this, I was just excited to listen to Cindy and Thomas talk poetry. I hadn't actually thought as far as, oh, no, I'm gonna have to say something too. This is my, you know, my forte is definitely story. And I mean, I do know some poetry and I can teach poetry But I do feel like I'm here bowing to the masters. So, Cindy, let's start with you. Did you always love poetry? Or was there a moment like, did you just always read poetry? What's your story there?

[C]

Well, my mother did read nursery rhymes to me, and I always had nursery rhymes in my head for some reason. I don't know how much she read, but I was the oldest child, so maybe she read them also to my younger brother and sister. But then I was at my grandmother's house, and I think she had an old poetry book from the. Like, it was, like, 1928 that she had gotten in almost 1928. And she gave it to me. And it was leather cover and had a ribbon, and it was just all yellowed pages. And it was. It's called 101 Famous Poems, and it's edited by Roy Cook. And some of the poetry is definitely mawkish and bad, bad poetry. But there are enough really good poems in this book for you to get a feel. And my kids really liked it, but. So it was a great introduction to poetry for someone who is just walking in the door. And so I read that. I started writing poetry. But then also, I really tuned into what was happening with poetry when I read the Taming of the Shrew. And I think I was 16 or 15, and I'm reading it about halfway through when I. All of a sudden I realize that Shakespeare has written it in a meter, a lot of it. And I just got so excited, and I was just like, well, why doesn't everybody read this all the time? This is so wonderful. So I fell in love with that iambic pentameter. I fell in love with Shakespeare. And I just. I don't know. I never have known whether I just naturally love poetry or I just got a very good beginning Life and cadence. What about you guys?

[B]

All right, Thomas, let's hear. Did your mother read poetry to you as.

[A]

Yes, she did. I remember. I remember when I was about six or seven, her reading William Blake's the Tiger to Us and then us, she gave us a. It wasn't really a poetry assignment. She had us draw Blake's Tiger, you know, burning Bright in the forest.

[B]

How'd you draw a narration?

[A]

Yeah, kind of. Yeah. I mean, this is.

[B]

That's a Charlotte Mason thing.

[A]

That is. Yeah. I mean, we weren't. It wasn't a Charlotte Mason curriculum that we followed, but, yeah, it was. That was that poem. I remember some lines of it sticking in my head for a while afterward. And Blake still is I think one of those poets who. Maybe the first great poet to introduce a fairly young child to. Yeah, I think Blake. Yeah. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. He can speak to a six year old as much as he can speak to an adult.

[C]

Yeah, I had my like 6 year old reading Little Lamb who Made the.

[A]

Yes, yeah, yeah, that's another one. That's. Yeah, it's. Yeah. Very simple vocabulary and. And let me see, other than that, I remember we had the Book of Virtues and there's a fair bit of good poetry in that and a fair bit of nonsense poetry also. So the Edward Lear, you know, Gilbert and Sullivan, Hilaire Belloc sort of stuff. I mean, we read Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales. Jim who ran away from his nurse and was devoured by a lion, and.

[B]

Matilda who told lies, was burned to death.

[A]

Yes, and that's a really good one. And let me see, the Jumblies by Edward Lear, I think is in the Book of Virtues. I pulled that one up here. They went to sea in a sieve, they did in a sieve they went to sea in spite of all their friends could say On a winter's morn, on stormy day, in a sieve they went to sea. And when the sieve turned round and round and everyone cried, you'll all be drowned. They called aloud, our sieve ain't big, but we don't care a button, we don't care a fig and a sieve we'll go to sea. Far and few, far and few are the lands where the Jumblies live. Their heads are green and their hands are blue and they went to sea in a sieve.

[C]

Is that. Who is that? That's Lear.

[A]

That's Lear. Yeah.

[B]

So what did you like about that when you were a kid? You liked the way the words felt in your mouth, I think.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's. It's. Yeah. Brilliant lyricism. It almost sings itself when you. When you read it. Read it aloud and it's. Yeah, just kind of the. I guess it has kind of a gratuitous heroism in it too. I mean, it's. I don't know. I mean, I was thinking about it today. It's an almost sort of pointless heroism which is somehow admirable. And I like that. I like that in the poem. And it's one of those. Yeah, it's a poem for children that, you know, at, you know, 34 years old, I still feel that whoever the Jumblies were kind of my moral superiors, in a way.

[C]

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Some poems like that can really help you raise your kids. I know we did the whole goops. You know, the goops, they lick their fingers. The goops, they lick their knives. They leave their. They spill their froth on the tablecloth. Oh, they lead disgusting lives.

[A]

Oh, that's. Wow. That's just from memory.

[C]

Yes. Yes. I have a lot of really mixed up poems in my head. Believe me. I have fountains of poetry in my head, none of it in its right order.

[A]

Yeah, same here. Yeah.

[B]

Well, listening to the two of you, I'm once again struck by my impoverished childhood. If anybody's listening to this episode and saying, wow, that's amazing. I feel so bad. No one read poetry in my house, then I'm your gal, because no one read poetry in my house either, growing up. I'm a parent.

[C]

So your parents were quite intelligent.

[B]

Yes, and they read a ton. But I don't ever recall seeing anybody read poetry or quote poetry. And we had a lot of books in our house. We did not have books of poetry. I mean, narrative poems, you know, the Iliad and the Odyssey, stuff like that. But no, no, no poetry. In fact, my father did this thing one time where he tried to encourage us to read. And he went and put a price tag on every book in the house. And if you read it, you got that price.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

Which is not a terrible idea. The bad part was he did this. I know you're gonna gasp when I tell you this, because I'm gasping now. He put nonfiction books worth twice as much as fiction.

[C]

Bless his heart.

[B]

I know. Bless his little heart. So anyway, you can see how that man would not have read poetry, so he put a much higher price on books of information. There you go, Cindy, to go back to your quote, books of information was what was valued. So I just read twice as much fiction, and then I got plenty of money. But, no, there was no poetry. So I have no cute memories of poetry as a kid. I mean, I suppose I must have known some Mother Goose. I don't recall. And I'm also assuming there must have been poetry in some of my school books, but again, no memory of that at all. I'm not surprised. I don't remember about high school. I barely remember any of the literature selections in high school.

[C]

Did you ever watch Captain Kangaroo? Because now that I'm thinking about it, that's where I got, like, all my Winnie the Pooh stuff came from.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Watched Captain Kangaroo.

[C]

Well, they did a lot of poetry. They did a lot of poetry.

[B]

Did they really? Oh, okay, so I guess I did get some poetry. I just don't remember it.

[C]

Yeah, they're changing guard at Buckingham Palace.

[B]

Okay. No memory of that.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

Okay, so maybe some. Maybe some filtered in there. But there was no deliberate effort on anybody's part in my childhood to introduce me to poetry. So I did not come to a love of poetry, really, until college and honestly, grad school. It was honestly grad school, I think, where I. The first time I experienced sort of falling in love with poems.

[C]

Did you have a poem that grabbed you or so.

[B]

Yes. Well, as is so often the case with me, I'm always fascinated, Cindy, how you and I are sort of like mirror images of one another in almost a way like you. You have come to your love of literature and poetry in this sort of pure way where you just read these things and connected to them and then went and studied to learn more about them. I, of course, come to things exactly the opposite. Where I don't fall in love with them until I study it. And I'm sure it has something to do with my enneagram number, but I feel like I have to know it to love it. Where I feel like you love it and then want to know it. So it doesn't surprise me, looking back, that I took classes in college where for the first time, I felt like I understood what a poem was trying to do. And then that made me love it. So I think poetry for me, and maybe a lot of our listeners feel this way, too. I just didn't get. Seemed esoteric. I wasn't really sure what they were trying to do. There wasn't a clear story for me to get invited into. So I was just confused about poetry. One of the things I've learned in my study of the history of literature and movements and rise and fall of different forms is that poetry. The form of poetry, of course, has changed. It was originally narrative, and then it changed to non narrative.

[C]

Yeah, it really almost always was a ballad early on.

[B]

Right, right. So there used to be a story.

[C]

Right. And I think that's still a great way. As much as we might turn up our nose at, you know, the highwaymen or something. Boy, that's a pretty exciting point home to introduce to your kids.

[B]

Right. A story is going to pull you in like a story Will. One of the things Wendell Berry says is that poetry now has. It's been so divorced from story that it's now become almost a specialized language where poets write for other poets.

[C]

Yes, I believe that's true.

[B]

And so I think we as readers, we feel very cut off from that. And I know that was my experience. I did not think poetry was something I could enter into.

[C]

Well, not to be a brown noser, but that is one thing I've been surprised about Thomas as a modern poet. That his, his poems always track a thought that you can hold on to, a narrative.

[B]

Oh, I'm so glad you said that because I was gonna say it and then I thought, well, that's really not gonna sound very good coming from me.

[C]

But yes, nobody asked me to say that. Or but I love that. I love that. That it's not just like, oh, if I just really knew what these five words meant in his life at this particular time, I would get this poem.

[B]

No, no, if you know anything about Thomas Banks, he's not going to vomit up his heartfelt passion and emotion in 14 lines. That's not going to be his puppetry.

[A]

No, my private life wouldn't be very interesting.

[B]

So you're married to me. It's fascinating. What are you talking about?

[C]

That's so true. Then you're doing what we're talked about, that it's outside of you, not inside of you. And I think maybe that's what turns a lot of people off. They think of poetry this angsty kind of.

[B]

Okay, so. Exactly. Right, right. And if it's just somebody sort of vomiting their emotions on a page, I wasn't sure why that was something I was getting invited to share in.

[A]

Yeah, I guess I, Yeah, in my case it's. I'm at a disadvantage there. I mean, my parents weren't mean to me or anything like that. I had actually, you know, good parents and I don't have any angsty childhood stories to relate. So yeah.

[C]

I had a period of angst. Thankfully my mother read my poems and I burnt them. But boy, they would have been some emotional angsty poems if 13 year old self.

[B]

Were you wearing a turtleneck and a black beret while you're scribbling your poetry?

[A]

I love this about you smoking cigarettes and you know, sort of French nudes, wave films kind of thing.

[C]

Yeah, no, that was not me. I was sitting under a tree by the pond thinking thoughts. I didn't even know what they were. I didn't know what thoughts were.

[B]

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. You're out under a tree that. Okay, this I can picture. This I can picture. So it wasn't until I took a class with a really good professor and he was a specialist in Renaissance literature, so this will surprise no one that I fell in love with Renaissance poetry before I fell in love with any modern poetry. And he to me, how Renaissance poetry worked. And all of a sudden all of these poems opened up to me and it wasn't, you know, I wasn't cut off from these poets and their private emotion anymore. There was something happening, there was a story being told, there was an argument being made, and I was just fascinated. So the first group of poets I fell in love with were the metaphysical poets. And the first poet in that group was John Donne. I was just mad for John Donne for years and years and years. And I love that I felt like I was given the secret key to understand them. That a metaphysical poet writes a poem based on a metaphysical conceit. Meaning each poem is going to be hinging on one central metaphor where something physical is going to be compared to something spiritual. And they're going to use a very shocking image because they want to shock you in what they're saying. They also wrote a lot of religious poetry, but that same sort of shocking metaphors. And so then to me, reading this poetry was like a game. You know, I could, oh, I'm gonna find the central metaphor and then I'm gonna see, right then I'm gonna see how the whole thing is just an expanded version of further and further comparing something from the physical realm to something with the spiritual realm. And I loved that. I also loved that. Okay, so you. One thing that might surprise our listeners is that because I know I always seem very like right brained and you know, allegory and mystical and all, and all that's true, but I also am hyper logical. I have made A's in every logic class I ever took in college. I scored a perfect score in logic on the gre. I'm very, actually shockingly left brained. And so when my professor explained to me that metaphysical poems were based on a logical syllogism, that blew my mind. And they are. They're based on the if then but therefore syllogism. So it's always like, if this, but this, therefore this, and each one follows that pattern. And that just blew my mind. I teach a lesson on this about metaphysical love poetry, and I call it seduction by syllogism. And Thomas is nodding his head because it's always, if this, but this, therefore we should be in love.

[A]

You know, if I, a sinful man, am a city under siege, and the army that is besieging me is God, then I, the besieged city will never be well until God storms the city.

[B]

Oh, and you Just broke down the argument of batter my heart through person God, for me, pretty much, which is my favorite of his Holy Sonnets. So that was the moment for me where I thought, wait a minute, I can understand poetry. And this is not. This is not a secret language that I can't enter into that there is a method to this form. And I became very obsessed with form. I still don't like freestyle poetry, like sonnets, like metaphysical poems, like things that make sense and that I can get in there and understand.

[C]

No, I'm not a fan of freeform poetry. I did write a lot of it in seventh grade, but that was because that's what I was hearing was poetry in seventh grade. But I do love very measured poetry. I just enjoy, like Tom said about the jumblies. You know, you just. Anything that gets you that, like, gets you going like that, it's fun, right?

[B]

And of course, I came to see that within the form there could be intense passion. So, you know, John Donne's Holy Sonnets are. There are his very passionate poems to God, but they're not just, like, all over the place. He's expressing that through some very concrete images and very interesting metaphors, like saying his heart is a besieged town and God's got to come be the. You know, the army that captures him and liberates him from the usurper on the throne, Satan. So I'll tell this little story. My love of John Donne was and is so intense that I visited. So he became the dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London, and he is buried there in the cathedral. And so I went to St. Paul's Cathedral and I tried to excitedly chat up the tour guide and very quickly, quickly realized she was saying things that were not correct about my boy. And I just bit my tongue and moved on. And then I went to his tomb, and at his feet I recited Holy Sonnets. I recited Batter My Heart, Three Person God for thee to John Donne's body as a thank you to him. That is the height of my fangirlness there. So that was a highlight for me that I got to tell John Donne how. How much his poetry meant to me.

[A]

Okay, this is the seed of a short story right here. I mean, we talked about, on the Literary Life page about what I guess it was a year ago, the celestial omnibus. But now we could have the. I don't know, the diabolical tour guide or something like that. And John Donne has for centuries now had to put up with people giving the tour in St. Paul's Cathedral who didn't actually know about his life's work. And finally someone comes along who can appreciate him and he rises up out of his tomb to say thank you. That would be kind of a cool story anyway.

[B]

That would be amazing. Someone should write that. I love that. So my favorite little bit of. My favorite little bit of John Donne poetry. This is the one that always just gets me in all the feels. He married a woman named Ann and he wrote this three line poem, John Donne and Dunn Undone. So there you go, that's me.

[C]

John, what's your favorite poem?

[B]

I don't know if it's my favorite. I mean, I like a lot of John Dunn.

[C]

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And that's a three way pun because I mean, obviously undone, but it's also undone. So one done.

[B]

Oh, nice.

[C]

There's our German.

[B]

Yeah, there you go. My favorite poem by him is probably a Valediction Forbidding Mourn.

[C]

That.

[B]

That's. It's a poem he wrote to his wife about how he has to leave her. They were very, very deeply in love and very strongly connected.

[C]

Anyway, so that kind of poetry in that time period of people having to leave their loved one or lover, if you will, it seems like that's a huge theme. But I guess in a time of lots of wars that was sometimes didn't.

[B]

Come back from their journey, so.

[C]

Right, right. Not with the Black Plague out there and all that stuff.

[B]

So I didn't get introduced to children's poetry till I had kids. And so I did, as part of their life, read a lot of poetry to them. And so I kind of came to children's poetry as an adult and really enjoyed those, though. And I was a huge fan of Hildaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children when I discovered them have a nice copy of that. And I used to creepily read all of those to my kids and we just cackle because we just all loved the dark humor in it.

[C]

Yes, yes, my kids love those too.

[B]

All right, well, tell me some more, Cindy, about you and poetry. Because, you know, that's me and I have a few poets here and there I like, but that was kind of my journey. I'm like the academic version of you, so I had to study it before I could love it.

[C]

Well, I have a ton of things, so I've written a little book, the Handbook of Morning Time, which is available at this time, but eventually it will be available again. I've written that and that has a lot of the stuff I memorized with my kids. So all of that stuff has been, like, for 30 years. Some of those poems have been constantly reviewed in my head. But I had a really neat experience this week. So I went to see my new grandchild in the Seattle area. And no, his name is not Chaz. He is named Tristan. But I. So he's two months old, and he is just adorable. But he loves to be held, and he doesn't really like to go to sleep unless he's being held. And so, being four grown adults, we all decided, well, whatever he wants, we'll just do. So I pretty much held him the whole time that I could, whenever his mom was at peace feeding him. But one day he went through a particularly grumpy time, and I turned him over and put him on my lap, like, laid him across my knees. I used to do that in restaurants with the babies. And I started moving my knees up and down, and I just went through every nursery rhyme and nursery song that I could think of for as long as I could. And the minute I started, his little legs started kicking and he started cooing, and he was. He had been screaming and. And he just turned it off and listened to me for as long as I wanted to do it, which was a long time until he finally went to sleep. But I just love that so much. That's just, like, what I want to do with my life. If I could get up in the morning and, like, shake little babies and sing nursery rhymes to them, then I would be a very happy person. It brought back all the joy of my own children and all the joy of the, you know, my own childhood. And it just. It just seemed like such a culmination of life for me to do that. So I was a. I loved AA Mill. I love all the poems in his. He has just the right tone of poetry that I get a kick out of. Even to this day, I never get bored reading, you know, James, James Morrison, Morrison. Whether it be George, Jeff took great care of his mother, though he was only three. We had had a son named James, and I kept saying that poem when he was an infant. I would go, james James Morrison, Morrison, Weather Be George Dupree. So as you know how things happen in a family, we started leaving it off the James, and we call him James. We just call him Wetherby. So my was in very, very much danger of being nicknamed Weatherby. And we got a puppy at that time, and I thought, the only way we can save our son is to name the puppy Weatherby.

[A]

And we did that's a good decision right there. Yeah.

[C]

And then for years on years, whenever people say, what's your dog's name? The kids would all whirl around and look at me and say, she named it Weatherby so they didn't see my great sacrifice that I did for my son. But I wish I had known this story.

[B]

When I met James, I could have called him Weatherby.

[C]

Oh, yeah. He probably would have realized what you were doing too. Yeah, he probably our dog Weatherby. We all kind of freak out when we remember him, so he probably would have grown ash white. He died one day when we weren't home and it left us all just a little scarred. Sorry. Now that's really sad.

[B]

Talk to John.

[C]

That's a good story.

[B]

Thomas, what do you think is going on with that particular rhythm, that kind of sing song rhythm? Is it sort of hypnotic to us? Why do we find that so pleasing?

[C]

I think babies find it hypnotic. Obviously. It definitely. There's something to it.

[A]

I think it's one of the most, in some ways it's one of the most basic rhythms. I mean, we know people when they're, I mean, the Greeks, for instance, I mean, they have that epic meter. Is that kind of rollicking horse hoof on the ground at a full charge meter. I mean, dactyla cake semeter is the meter of the Iliad. And I don't know, it's a very. It's one of the meters of nature, I guess is all I could say.

[C]

It must be. And I know the iambs, the, the, you know, the heart beats like that. So they say that we're, you know, it goes well with our heart. But not all poems are written like that, but.

[A]

Right. Yeah, but yeah, it does. Something in us naturally responds to it. It's not a meter we have to trick ourselves into feeling.

[C]

No, not at all. And you know. So yeah, so I have it great. I loved all of that. I read those over and over to my kids. I read. If any kid is even close to being old enough to hear the Milne poems, I, you know, I don't say, oh, you're too old, you're nine years old. I just read them anyway and they love them because as long as nobody else is around saying, you're too old. They don't. They're not too old because I'm not too old. And I'm pretty old. So. But then, you know, and then the thing that we. I would like to cover this a little bit. The thing that breaks my heart. And we covered it a little Bit is so many people. When I would talk about poetry, I would talk about how it is vital. As a matter of fact, sometimes I say, after reading aloud and after teaching your children to read and narration, the next most important thing we can do for our children is to read them poetry. That's how important I think poetry is. A lot of people come back and say, I don't like poetry. I just don't get it. I don't see why I should be doing this. It's just a fluff side subject, and I'm not very good at articulating it. But the thing about poetry is, like you said, if then logic. There's your logic. That is teaching logic. It is. And it also is teaching how to compare unlike things. So you have kids growing up with this idea that, you know, this girl is like this violet, and that's a bridge. There's a bridge between these two unlike things. And this poem expertly found that bridge. And if you can do that, you can find a bridge between anything. So even now, in the midst of all this chaos in our country, I can't help but think that it's. Part of the problem is that people don't have metaphor in their heart. And the easiest way to get metaphor is not to have a long lesson on metaphors and tell your kids to plug them in. Plug them in, plug them in, but to read poetry, because then it's assimilated organically. And you have this idea that two unlike things can have a bridge between them.

[B]

Yes. Oh, and I think learning how to compare things is so essential. I mean, I think it's very essential to learning how to read literature and just learning how to function. It's funny that you brought that up, though, about your feeling about poetry as kind of a centerpiece in education, because the way that I virtually introduced you to was exactly like that. So, Cindy, I gave you one of Thomas's poems, and then you instantly liked him. And to Thomas, I said, oh, you're gonna like Cindy.

[C]

She.

[B]

She's the single biggest proponent for poetry in homeschooling, so. Oh, it was poetry that I brought y' all together.

[A]

We're all in your debt.

[C]

Thank you, Angelina.

[B]

Oh, I talked to you. I knew that was his love language. I talked you up. I talked you up good.

[C]

All because I said that your relationship.

[B]

Would move very quickly. That's right, Cindy. You gave us permission to get married fast.

[C]

I'm so proud of myself.

[B]

You were. Man, you had your. You see, that time you were not Cassandra. I heard you. It Came to you and I believed you.

[C]

Hey, that's right. That is right.

[A]

One poem I wanted to bring up tonight that it was important to me. It was one I encountered first in high school. My 12th grade English teacher taught it to us is one actually by Charles Wesley, the great hymn writer. And it was important to me because I hadn't really thought up to that point in my life that the language of hymns could be great poetry. But this one, I think, really qualifies. This is called Wrestling Jacob, and I won't read the whole thing, but it's a set of hymn lyrics Based on the 32nd chapter of the book of Genesis, where Jacob wrestles with the. The angel of God at the brook and demands to know his name. So Wrestling Jacob. Come, O thou traveler unknown Whom still I hold but cannot see My company before is gone and I am left alone with thee with thee all night I mean to stay and wrestle till the break of day I need not tell thee who I am, My misery or sin Declare thyself hast called me by my name look on thy hand and read it there but who, I ask thee, who art thou? Tell me thy name and tell me now in vain thou strugglest to get free I never will unloose my hold Art thou the man that died for me? The secret of thy love unfold Wrestling I will not let thee go Till I thy name, thy nature know. And it's several more stanzas. And given the time restraints we have, I won't read all of it. But that's even without music. Those are hymn lyrics that make poetry of, I think, a very high rank themselves.

[C]

Did you say that's Charles Wesley? Was that Charles Wesley?

[A]

Yeah, Charles Wesley. Yeah. John Wesley's brother.

[C]

Some of those old hymns, I mean, some are really bad poetry, but some are. Are, like you said, quite satisfying intellectually and emotionally.

[A]

Yeah, I guess in that same era, same generation, William Cooper, who was.

[B]

That's who I was gonna mention. Go ahead.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So, yeah, William Cooper, who wrote, I guess, kind of a. Kind of a pre. Romantic, but yeah, very devout man. Interesting life. He was an evangelical. He. His entire life he thought he really wasn't a Christian. He was. I guess we had kind of a. I don't know, some dark spiritual afflictions and thought he was just doomed to damnation. But yeah, depression.

[B]

Really bad.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he. But, yeah, he was a very gifted lyric poet.

[C]

And his name is spelled C O W P E R C O, W, P. Cooper, right.

[A]

Yeah. One of Jane Austen's Favorite writers, actually, even though he was a much more, I guess, religiously ostentatious person than she was. But yeah, he wrote some great poems, the Stricken Deer and some others. And he was also an abolitionist in the 18th century, one of the first English abolitionists. So. Yeah, one of those guys who's life makes an interesting story.

[B]

Yeah, I studied him in my 18th century poetry class in grad school and then was shocked one Sunday when I opened the hymnal to see his name as the writer of the hymn we were singing.

[C]

God Moves in Mysterious Ways. It's been redone. It's still updated frequently. It's a beautiful, beautiful poem.

[A]

Yes, it is. I guess it's a testimony to that poem's quality that when we say God moves in mysterious ways, we kind of casually think, oh, yeah, is that like in Proverbs or something like that? That must be in the Bible, right?

[B]

It does sound like it does.

[A]

Yeah, it's one of those things. Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, man, what are some other Alexander Pope. To love is human, to forgive divine.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Again, not actually in the Bible, but people quote it sometimes like it is.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes, people also quote the cleanliness is like.

[C]

I love the line he says, there behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face. And he obviously he saw that frowning providence so much in his light.

[A]

That's true. That is true.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Cindy, what are some of the. You mentioned the kids poems you love. What are some adult poems you love?

[C]

Well, I love all kinds of adult poems. I really. I like a few modern poets and I'm just dipping into a few of those. I love William Wordsworth's Lucy poem. Lucy. She dwelt among the untrodden ways beside the springs of dove. A maid whom. I'm trying to remember the words. A maid whom there were none to praise and very few to love. A violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye fair as a star when only one is shining in the sky. She lived unknown and few could know when Lucy ceased to be, but she is in her grave. And oh, the difference. To me, I just love that poem. It just captures to me the impact that lives make even when they don't know that. And this was not a love of his. This was not a romantic relationship he was talking about here.

[A]

That was a valuable discovery of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Well, in that generation, again, that lives that were not famous, lives that were not celebrated, could still make a valuable subject for poetry and deserve to be commemorated there.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, a very Similar poem, but much, much, much longer. Is Gray's Elegy. Yes, yes, I love this. This is the. I really love Gray's Elegy a lot. And of course, it's quite long, but.

[A]

You want to give us, like, a few stanzas.

[C]

I will. I'll give a few. I'll skip around here, but I'll start with the first stanza. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day the lowing herd winds slowly o' er the leaf the ploughman homeward plods his weary way and leaves the world to darkness and to me and then on up it goes. Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure Nor grandeur and hear with a disdainful smile the short and simple annals of the poor the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power and all that beauty, all that wealth e' er gave Awaits alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. And then I'll end with this. Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bare Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air. And then. It's just a really great poem.

[B]

Oh, that is a good one.

[A]

Also a favorite of Jane Austen.

[C]

Oh, really?

[A]

Yeah. She quotes it in, I'm gonna say, at least two of her novels, actually, sometimes. Even though she really loved it to comic effect because, okay, in Emma, the horrible wife, Mrs. Elton. So Mrs. Elton, who thinks that, you know, she is humble, retiring, sort of, you know, sort of wallflower, would really. That's not at all what she is. She applies the line a full many a flower is born to blush on sin.

[C]

Oh, yes, I can see.

[A]

That's so me. I just, you know, I have all these gifts. My friends say that I know all about this, but, you know, I'm just so shy and self effacing.

[C]

Yes. Oh, hilarious. And I can see how that could be easily become a joke. Really?

[A]

Yeah. No, that's. But that's one of the perfect poems of the 18th century. And it's kind of odd that it came out when it did because it almost seems like it's more of a romantic poem than an unenlightenment one.

[C]

Right. Right. It is. And it did have quite a place in the society at large.

[A]

So.

[C]

I know there's a story of Wolf. He was on a battleship. I think it was Wolf he was fighting, and he got shot on the battleship, and he was dying on the ship. And He. They said, oh, sir, we've won the battle. And he said, I would rather be the man who wrote Gray's Elegy than the man who won this battle. Something like that.

[A]

That's a good lesson to. Derived from. Yeah, from that moment, I guess. No, that's really good.

[C]

What about you guys? What about you, Thomas? Do you have, like, a favorite poem?

[A]

If I had to choose one. Okay. If I had to choose a short poem, I guess it would probably be the Song of Wandering Angus by William Butler Yeats. That was one. I don't think I actually read that one till I was in college. But there was. That was one of the first Yeat poems I really fell in love with. And it's a first person poem. It kind of has. It's sort of an Irish ballad poem. I went out to the hazel wood because a fire was in my head, and cut and peeled a hazel wand and hooked a berry to a thread. And when white moths were on the wing and moth like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream and caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor, I went to blow the fire of flame, but something rustled on the floor and something called me by my name. It had become a glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair who called me by my name and ran and faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands, I shall find out where shadows she is gone, and kiss her lips and take her hands and walk among long dappled grass, and pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.

[C]

Oh, wow, that's.

[B]

I just have to say that he recited that.

[C]

That is. That is so Irish.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It's more Irish if it tried.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's a. It's a longing kind of both a joyful and a sad poem kind of at the same time.

[B]

I also really like Yeats. I love Adam's Curse, especially that one line where he says, and I strove to love you in the old ways.

[C]

Yes. Yeats is so good at that line right there. Just over and over his striving to love and his somewhat failure to do so.

[B]

And it's the same thing. The poem is him saying it's a failure. But just that line struck me so hard. My whole life is striving to love things in the old ways.

[C]

Yeah, He's. I love. I love. And it's probably a cliche, but I really love the lake I live in. It's free. But the reason I love it is because he says, and I shall have some peace there. Because peace comes dropping slow. And I can't tell you how many times I'm in my house walking through with my kids screaming at my feet and everybody all chaos, and I'm like.

[B]

Someday I could have some peace.

[C]

Peace does come dropping slow. Sometimes I have a little more peace than I really knew I was ever going to have now. But I didn't always.

[B]

Well, one of the things that happened to me, like, I liked Yeats, and, you know, I've explored. I like some of the Romantics, but I didn't know a whole lot about more modern poetry. But one of the things that happened when I got involved with Mr. Banks is I got exposed to a lot more poetry. Not just the old classic stuff, but more newer stuff, and also minor poets that I had never heard of before, but who I very quickly fell in love with. Two of them are Edwin Muir, who's a Scottish poet who I have really come to. Like, when was he alive?

[A]

He did most of his writing in the 30s and 40s.

[B]

Okay. And the other is a good friend of W.H. auden, Louis McNeese.

[C]

Yes, I like McNeese. Yes.

[B]

And it was this poem. So I. So he sent me this poem, actually, before we met. And I just fell in love with this poem. And if you'll remember, Cindy, I gave you. I handed you. We were in Colorado together, and I was telling you about this guy I was going to be meeting, and I gave you. I said, he sent me this poem, and I gave it to you. And you started off really, like, defensive in your body language. And then you got to the end, and you turned to me and you said, I really liked that. And I thought I was going to hate it, but it was really.

[C]

It was really good.

[B]

And it's a short poem, so I'm going to read it, because it's a poem that tells a story, and to me, it reads like a fairy tale. And so I just fell in love with this poem. So this is Louis McNeese. A poem called the Truisms. His father gave him a box of truisms shaped like a coffin. Then his father died. The truisms remained on the mantelpiece, as wooden as the playboy they had been packed in, or that his father skulked inside. Then he left home, left the truisms behind him, still on the mantelpiece. Met love, met war, sorter disappointment, defeat, betrayal, till through disbeliefs he arrived at a house he could not remember seeing before, and he walked straight in. It was where he had come from and something told him the way to behave. He raised his hand and blessed his home and a tall tree sprouted from his father's grave. I just feel like that poem is everything. We wander and then we end up back home.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

A tale of someone's life in 12 lines.

[B]

It really is. It's such a fairy tale. It's such a fairy tale.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It's better than the Giving Tree.

[B]

I mean, in Cinderella, a tree sprouts out from the mother's grave. This is flower. So I'm still drawn to stories, to poems that tell a story. Although I can be, like, deeply affected by a line that I feel like really sort of sums up. Yeah.

[C]

Sometimes it just takes a line to, like, a poem. I actually have a similar poem here to that. And this is not my usual rousing, you know, metered poem, but I really like this poem, and it's a modern poet, Robert Haydn.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Oh. Oh, yes. I like him.

[C]

Yeah. And this is called. This Always Gets. This poem gets me every time. It's called those Winter Sundays. Oh, yeah.

[B]

This is a good one. I like this one.

[C]

Sundays, too. My father got up early and put his clothes on in the blue black cold. Then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banks, fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, Fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know? What did I know of loves austere and lonely offices?

[B]

Read that poem before I had children, and I loved it. But it's a lot more meaningful to me now.

[C]

I like that poem. For one thing, his family was not a perfect place. Obviously, he was afraid of the angers of the house. And yet at the end, when he's older, he can look back and say, what did I know? What did I know?

[A]

Yeah, Just all those things that we don't say thank you for or that, you know, people don't say thank you for to us. But it loves austere and lonely offices. And it's kind of funny, actually, the word offices. I mean. I'm sorry, Cindy. Maybe I'm ruining the poem now that you've read it. So good. So offices. Office comes from Latin officium, which means duty. So the things that love owes to, you know, other people and things.

[C]

Oh yeah.

[A]

But yeah, I really like that poem. That's another one. I think I only read that for the first time, like maybe five years ago. It's a much anthologized poem, but I just never known it. And it's a really beautiful one.

[C]

Yeah, I only heard it recently and it just hit me and I heard it also. Billy Collins also has a kind of funny poem. And I won't read it because it's longer. But he talks in his poem about making a lanyard for his mother at camp. And he goes on and on about it. But he said that I was sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even. And I just thought that that captured also that same idea.

[B]

Yes, yes it does. And you know, both of them strike me as in one sense being deeply anti romantic. Because of course that's not, you know, just talk about love's austere duties or a lanyard. These are not romantic things. And yet I think that both of those are, to me, deeply romantic. Just, you know, that we do these hard things for each other out of love is perhaps the deeper romance.

[C]

Yes, I think they very are romantic if, you know, making you tear up is romantic. I mean, to me as a mother at this end of life, you know, hearing those things, thinking, you know, I tell people all the time it's our job as parents to absorb the pain around us and not, you know, make it. But that isn't always possible. But, you know, that's part of it is to kind of be like a sin eater in a way. To take the pain in our families and not make it keep going like, stop. Let it stop with me.

[B]

Yes, yes, I feel that intensely.

[A]

I'm glad you brought that one to us. That's. That's a beautiful one. I. My next poem. I chose this one because. Well, it's Walter Delamere. Walter de la Mare is a. He's another poet. He's almost. Almost like Blake. I mean, he's not a religious mystic like Blake. I don't even know that Walter de la Mare was a religious man, but he was a poet who wrote equally well for children, adults. And there isn't necessarily a clear dividing line between those two categories in his body of work. But always whether he's writing for a kid or for a grown up, he has a way of making creation strange, strange, beautiful and sometimes a little bit threatening too. And.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. So this poem Is called Arabia. This is Walter de la Mare. I think this is written in 1912. Far are the shades of Arabia where the princes ride at noon Mid the verdurous veils and thickets under the ghost of the moon and so dark is that vaulted purple flowers in the forest rise and toss into to blossom gainst the phantom stars pale in the noonday skies. Sweet is the music of Arabia in my heart when out of dreams I still in the thin clear murk of dawn Decry her gliding streams. Hear her strange lutes on the green banks Ring loud with the grief and delight of the dim silk Dark haired musicians in the brooding silence of night they haunt me. Her lutes and her forests no beauty on earth I see, but shadowed with that dream Recalls her loveliness to me. Still eyes look coldly upon me. Cold voices whisper and say he is crazed with the spell of far Arabia. They have stolen his wits away.

[B]

Okay, well, I feel like I'd be remiss in an episode about our favorite poems. Not to mention my favorite poet, Thomas Banks. He's already turning red and giving me this look like, what are you doing? That doesn't count. That's not real poetry. Yes, it is.

[C]

His poems are very good.

[B]

His poems are very good. It was really hard for me to pick one, but I'm gonna pick one that he sent to me before we met. And obviously, this is one way to get a girl's attention. And I think this is the poem, Cindy, I gave you to look at. And you said, oh, oh, he's good. I said, what did you think, Cindy? I was going to give you some guidance.

[C]

Yes. I mean, I have Dorothy Thayer's fear of being handed something to read. I know.

[B]

He said, well, I know you really liked him. I said, I do like him, but that doesn't mean I know bad poetry. So this is a poem called Adam in Exile. I will not look back anymore to where our life held root before that paradise of fruit and flower. No more shall bless our every hour Ours only now to break the soil and to be broken in our toil to spend ourselves and our strength give that in this desert we may live Here we shall know the curse's pains. But my first blessing yet remains beside me and my soul revives Where Eve is, Eden still survives.

[C]

Man, that every time you read it, I'll tell you a little secret. Our summer class, we're going through the history of poetry, and I wanted a modern poet, and I was going to do Wendell Berry. And I started reading through all of Wendell Berry's poems. And of course, I know this. The Wild Things thing, the piece of the Wild things. I just. I didn't. I felt like Barry. And I'm going to say this and everything, you guys can all hate me. This will just be the controversial thing. But I just felt like Barry was just channeling Yeats badly, and I was searching and searching for a modern poet that I really liked. And then I thought, I like all of Thomas's poems. I'll see if I can find a couple of them. So I took Wendell Berry out of our course, and our last poem of the year with a modern poet will be this summer. Will be Thomas Banks.

[A]

Well, thank you. I really don't know what to say. That's really sweet.

[C]

Sincere complimented. That was exactly what happened.

[B]

I love that. He says it's really sweet, like you're just doing this favor to him.

[C]

Yeah, well, it's really putting him on the spot, awkwardly for his.

[B]

It is. But look, Mr. Banks, you know Cindy and I take poetry way too seriously to flatter you. If you were a bad poet, I wouldn't have married you. That's just. This is that simple.

[C]

I wouldn't let her. I would say, wouldn't have left. That's right. And you need to run.

[B]

She'd be like, oh, man, this was a very awkward phrase. Hit the road, Angelina.

[C]

I'm reading Middlemarch. So I would have recognized that this was a bad romance.

[A]

If she had married Casabon.

[B]

God forbid. God forbid. All right, Cindy, you have another one.

[C]

Okay, I'll read a quick one. Jenny Kissed Me by Leigh Hunt. I just like this for his life.

[B]

Oh, Lee Hunt. Oh, I just been reading about him.

[C]

And Jenny is one of their wives that. She was just. She's like the girl in all the Pre Raphaelite pictures. So this is Jenny. Okay. Jenny kissed me when we met. Jumping from the chair she sat in time. You thief, who loved to get sweets into your list. Put that in. Say I'm weary, say I'm sad. Say that health and wealth have missed it. Me, say I'm growing old, but add, ginny kissed me. Aw.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So Ginny is Ginny. What's her name? Jenny. Redhead.

[A]

Okay. So actually, I had to look this up just now, but the Jenny in that poem was actually Jane Carlisle, who was the wife.

[C]

Thomas Carlisle.

[A]

Okay, so, yeah, Mrs. Carlisle, who was the intellectual who sacrificed her life sort of for her husband's career.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, she kept house for Thomas Carlyle even though she was. You know, she read Greek and German and all these had all these talents, but, yeah, that ended up being her life. But I guess, yeah, Leigh Hunt was quite, quite taken with her.

[C]

Yeah. I think everybody really admired her in a nice way. You know, they all thought she was very intelligent and interesting.

[A]

Yeah. In their circle of credit, she isn't.

[C]

The redhead from the Pre Raphaelite girl.

[A]

But I can never remember the Pre Raphaelite models, even though there's only, like two or three of them. One is William Morris's wife, Jane Morris.

[C]

Oh, yes. Maybe I got her mixed up with Jane.

[B]

Yeah, I think you probably confused Jane.

[C]

Carla.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

She was Rossetti's. Dante Rossetti's model, was it?

[A]

Yeah. So Dante Rossetti's model and. Yeah, I think also.

[B]

No, not that one. Yeah. Sorry, I wasn't prepared.

[A]

The Pre Raphaelites. Okay, so the Pre Raphaelites, that group of poets and artists, like the Romantic relationships. You kind of need a Venn diagram.

[B]

Ruskin's wife, who left him for one of the painters, always get. See, we're all getting him.

[C]

We need to just edit Carlisle Ruskin. We're just name dropping here.

[B]

I'm getting them all mixed up. I wasn't prepared to talk about the Pre Raphaelites.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

That must have been a very complicated domestic sort of domestic arrangement. It wouldn't have been helped by the fact that since we're going down this rabbit trail, Dante Rossetti, he had some unconventional household pets, including Australian women wombats.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And Byron with the traveling zoo. These people and their pets.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know. Like, I just wonder, like, maybe there should be a. Okay, so there's Nobel Prizes for Literature. There should be a Nobel Prize for literary housekeepers. So, like, whoever Byron's housekeeper was, who had to keep, you know, clean up after his collection of exotic caves.

[C]

Holmes is housekeeper who I'm Pretty sure, yes.

[A]

Mrs.

[C]

Hudson, is it? Mrs. Hudson?

[A]

Mrs. Hudson. Yes, of course.

[B]

Because he keeps rooms. That's right. All right, we better end this on a poem. Mr. Banks. You got a poem for us?

[A]

I have a poem, yes. So this is actually a, well, relatively modern poem. This is Richard Wilbur.

[B]

Who?

[A]

Richard Wilbert. Yeah. I like him a lot. He just died, actually, a couple years ago. But this is a, I guess, kind of autobiographical poem. He wrote it about a vacation that he and his wife took together when they were young. It's called Galveston 1961.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Much more romantic than the title would suggest, but. Galveston 1961. So we're in Texas. You, who in crazy lensed clear water fled your shape by choppy waters flansed and shaken Like a cape who gently butted down through weeds and were unmade piecemeal Stirring your brown legs into stirred shade and rose and with pastel coronas of your skin stained swell on glassy swell, letting them bear you in. Now you have come to shore One woman and no other Sleek panoply no more but the vague sea, Our mother, shake out your spattering hair and sprawl beside me here Sharing what we can share now that we are so near. Small talk and speechless love mine being all but dumb that knows so little of what goddess you become and still half seem to be Though close and clear you lie whom droplets of the sea emboss and magnify. Woo.

[B]

That's good. Probably just blew everybody out on the speaker. Sorry about that. I got excited from this poem.

[C]

Sorry.

[B]

That was awesome.

[C]

Very nice.

[B]

I guess poets aren't so stuffy after all.

[C]

No, there's a lot of unstuffy poetry. I didn't bring any of it here.

[B]

Well, you know, women in love, the great object of poetry.

[C]

Yes. And there's. There's a. You know, we didn't even talk about the history of, like, some of the ballads, like the idylls. Tennysons. Idylls. I always say idylls, but idylls of the king and some of the great Arthurian poetry. There's some. The Vision of Sir Launfal is one of my favorite. I'm doing that with my summer class. So that's a great story poem that kids can even understand.

[B]

Oh, yeah, you're right. So there are more modern ones. And Alfred or Tennyson, I think, has quite a few that we would consider ballads. I mean, the Charge of the Light Brigade really is kind of a narrative.

[C]

Oh, absolutely. The arrow and the song. Well, that's not a ballad, but it's a great poem. And then the Village blacksmith. That's a great boy poem. There's something about that. That's Longfellow, but that's a great.

[B]

Yeah, I guess Longfellow likes to write a lot of narratives, so he wrote Evangeline. Yes, about my people.

[A]

The Louisiana poem.

[B]

The Louisiana poem. Everything in Louisiana is named Evangeline because of this. We have the Evangeline Tree, Evangeline made bread, Evangeline Parish. Everything's Evangeline because of that poem. Ah.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's the story of the Acadian exile.

[C]

They end up in Canada, right?

[B]

Well, they were. They started off in Canada.

[C]

Oh, they started in Canada and ended up in Louisiana.

[B]

Right. With the French and Indian War. Because of a treaty. They got. They got bumped out. Long story short, it was actually. It's not a short story at all. It's a sad story. It was basically an attempted genocide and.

[C]

Right, right.

[B]

Evangeline's a tragic poem about my people being kicked out and the two lovers get separated. Anyway. Yes. And of course, Hiawatha, another narrative from Long Cell, and that's a great one.

[C]

For just the rousing meter and that, even if you haven't. It's also. It's kind of almost a nonsense poem to us, like. Almost like Lewis Carroll.

[A]

The meter was famous enough in its. When the poem came out that it's one of the most mocked poems.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

In the language, which isn't, I mean, necessarily a bad thing. It just means that he had a distinctive style and that everyone recognized it. So when it was being travestied, you know, they could laugh along.

[C]

Right. I guess that's the highest form of.

[A]

Flattery, is that by the shores of.

[C]

Gitchigumi, by the shining big sea water.

[A]

Something, something, something, something, lived the maiden Hiawatha.

[C]

Yeah, no, he's the son of the girl.

[A]

Okay. I really should have it in front of me for this moment.

[C]

Nicomis, DAUGHTER of Nicomisc. Anyway.

[B]

Well, I mean, the point of this episode wasn't really to guide people into poetry as much as just talk about our own poetic love.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But if we were to. So somebody's want. Okay. Wanting to tip their toe in. So we've talked about nonsense poems for children and nursery rhymes, and we've talked about poems that tell stories as a way to pull you in. Any. Any other advice for somebody that's wanting to get started?

[C]

Sonnets are a great way to get started because they are so regular and you can figure out what's going on so easily. So I like the, you know, the 14 lines.

[B]

The sonnet appealed to me as well. Again, really learning the forms, I think is probably the thing that helped me to love poetry. So, you know, with a sonnet, you've got two different kinds of sonnet. You have the Spencerian sonnet, some sometimes misnamed Shakespearean sonnet, but not on my watch. The Spencerian sonnet and the Petrarchan sonnet. So it's laughing at me.

[C]

English and Italian.

[B]

That's right. So the Italian sonnet, All sonnets are 14 lines, and the Italian sonnet has eight lines where it introduces the problem, then it turns and the last six offers the solution. So that's. That's a real easy way to approach the. The poem. Right. What is the problem and then what is the solution? And in the Spencerian or the English sonnet, it's 12 lines of a problem, then the turn and then there's a little couplet at the end. That's the solution.

[C]

I love that couplet at the end. I don't know, it's just so satisfying.

[B]

I love it, too. And so, you know, so he introduces that little heroic couplet that the two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter. And then of course, the guys that come after him in the 18th century, the neoclassical poets, they master the couplet, the heroic couplet. So Alexander Pope and John Dryden and all those guys, they are so good at those little punchy things. Like, you know, my all time favorite line of poetry is a little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep or taste not the Pierian springs. Alexander Pope's Essay on Man. So, you know, those little, those little punchy two lines. Love that with a heroic couplet. So, sonnets, that's a great idea. How about you, Mr. Banks? What advice do you have?

[A]

I would say if you want to pursue your poetic education, maybe just pick up an anthology, the Oxford Book of English Verse or something like that, or Oscar Williams classic Poetry, and make a point to read from poetry of every century, as far back as you can, from, you know, from Chaucer to our own day, and get a sense of, you know, what every generation has contributed to the, you know, the classic body of English verse. And yeah, I think that's a good way to begin, just to know, Just kind of to know what is out there. I think that's. I think that's a valuable thing.

[C]

And honestly. Yeah, you can just play with listening to poems and find out, you know.

[B]

Absolutely. And of course, hearing it read well makes a big difference.

[C]

Yes, yes.

[B]

Part of our confusion with poetry is that we don't know how to read it. So my advice for anybody wanting to jump into poetry is a shameless, shameless plug for my husband's webinar, how to Love Poetry, and that's available on the House of Humane Letters for just a few dollars. And he. It's like two and a half hours long. And he just went at it with everything about form and the historical movements and rhyme and meter and how to make sense of it. So if you're looking for a little more hand holding, I would suggest that. And I think it would be really fun if you guys started a thread on the Literary Life page of your favorite poems. I'd love to know what our listeners Favorite poems are. I know we've got some pretty intense listeners with their poetry. So if you've ever curled up with a book of poetry, we'd love to know what it is.

[C]

And you know, we be remiss. Not to mention Sally Thomas. She's been on here on Literary Life podcast and she has a brand new book and brand new poetry book. I just got mine in the mail finally. I was starting to panic. Didn't I order it? Didn't I order it? I did order it, and it's called Motherland and it's Sally Thomas poems. And I'm just getting started, so I haven't even. I just got it in the mail, so I'm ready to open that up and read it.

[A]

And Sally is a very, very accomplished poet. She's been published in what First Things, Abel Mewes Image Journal, and I don't know what other publications, but she's one of the best games in town as far as American poetry today goes. So Sally Thomas is definitely someone to read.

[B]

Oh, that is high praise.

[C]

I guess the last thing I would like to say is that I would challenge everyone to try to read one poem a day. Even if you're just reading a nursery rhyme to your baby, that counts. And you don't have to start with a long poem. It can take you less than one or two minutes to do that. And if you. Once you get a lot of poetry under your belt, you start to. All this kind of happens intuitively and read it out loud when possible.

[B]

Yes, yes. Poetry is meant to be heard. Well, this has been fun, guys. And I've learned, yes, I've learned once again how superior both of your childhoods were to mine. But I see I exist to give hope to those others who did not grow up in the fruitful bounty of poetry. I don't actually remember anybody reading anything out loud to me as a kid. So it's a good thing I learned to read at 4. Maybe that's why. Maybe it was an unexpected blessing. So, any final thoughts?

[A]

Just keep reading, I guess.

[B]

All right. Well, this has been a lot of fun, guys. I really. I've enjoyed this episode and I've learned some things about you guys and your journey with poetry. Cindy, I just love this image of you out under a tree, your Farrah Fawcett hair blowing in the wind, furiously writing all of your teenage angst into a notebook. I love this. I love this about you. I did not do that as a child. So of the three of us, I'm the only non poet. Although I guess I. Well, I have written some poems, but I would not call myself a poet. I did write a lot of short stories when I was a kid, though. I also illustrated them and bound them. I published them, copyrighted them with a fake copyright that I was just a kid. I just wrote copyright at the end and then passed it out to people. So that's the kind of weirdo.

[C]

Poets are fragile in a way. And I, you know, I know that I'm not a good poet, so I tend to not write poetry, but when I do, it's very satisfying. But even, even Wordsworth's friend, what's his name that wrote they wrote together the Lyrical Ballads, Cooleridge. Wordsworth hurt his feelings and he didn't write any more poetry after that, so he didn't include some of his poems in the book. And so you could also give a hand at trying poetry and not worry too much about it. Just even if it's bad, like anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

[A]

And don't collaborate, especially if you your collaborator is a genius. So that's always a bad idea. There'll be a clash of egos somewhere along the way.

[B]

It's good that I'm so besotted with you, Mr. Banks. Your poetry is safe with me. And as always, show notes, poems, all that good stuff. Kiel will have that available for you at theliterary Life as well. So thank you to everybody who has subscribed and left a rating and a review. We really appreciate that. And thanks always especially to our Patreon friends and fellows who keep this podcast going. And if you'd like to find out how you too can sponsor this podcast or how you can get the awesome bonus content and events we've got going on, you can go to patreon.com theliterarylife to find out more about that. So until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with [e-mail] Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[A]

Reading in Wartime by Edwin Muir. Boswell by my bed Tolstoy on my table thought the world has bled for four and a half years, and wives and mothers, tears collected, would be able to water a little field untouched by anger and blood, A penitential yield somewhere in the world, though in each latitude armies like forests fall, the iniquitous and the good head over heels hurled, and confusion over all Boswell's turbulent friend and his deafening verbal strife, Ivan Ilyich's death Tell me more about life, the meaning and the end of our familiar breath, both being personal than all the carnage can retrieve. The shape of man, lost and anonymous. Tell me, wherever I look, that not one soul can die of this or any clan who is not one of us and has a personal tie, perhaps to someone now searching an ancient book, folk tale or country song in many and many a tongue to find the original face, the individual soul, the eye, the lip, the brow, forever gone from their place, and gather an image whole.