Podcast
Verseful
Hosted by Maniza Pritila · EN
Verseful is a podcast about the verses in our lives and how we feel them.
Meaning, it is a podcast about poetry. It is a rather informal and inept endeavor by me and my friend, Meghan, to have fun talking about poems and how we relate to them. This podcast is for those of us who do not necessarily feel well-versed in poetry but who like to feel the poetry of life nonetheless. Perhaps it would be fun for you to eavesdrop on our feelings. (Taking a shot for every time I wrote "feelings"? There is more of where that came from ;).
11episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
15. Lake Gatun
Feb 21, 202200:12:04Tap to summarizeLake Gatun (Verseful 15) -Shyanne Figueroa Bennett Glimmering membrane of water split when she enters. Sinks to clay floor. Sand. Shell. sedimenting to form a woman dark as lake floor. Dark as they created. In debris of dynamic heads. Silver men glisten unsewn and woven into her being broken, hollowed to carry remnants of souls strewn in man-made waters. What can be made from nothing? The question hooks to her neck. Her curl hair gills for breath. Iridescent scales shed from slender sinewy form as her intricate jawbones mechanize for an open -- unprecedented speech for she who was carved out of isthmus intended for silence.
Transcribe →Happy New Year
Jan 21, 202200:03:20Tap to summarizeNothing much. Just wishing that you have a happy new year :).
Transcribe →14. A New Dress
Dec 25, 202100:22:38Tap to summarizeA New Dress by Ruth Dallas I don’t want a new dress, I said. My mother plucked from her mouth ninety-nine pins. I suppose there are plenty, she said, girls of ten Who would be glad to have a new dress. Snip-snip. Snip-snip. The cold scissors Ate quickly as white rabbit round my arm. She won’t speak to me if I have a new dress! My feet rattled on the kitchen floor. How can I fit you if you won’t stand still? My tears made a map of Australia On the sofa cushion; from the hot center My friend’s eyes flashed, fierce as embers. She would not speak to me, perhaps never again. She would paralyze me with one piercing look. I’d rather have my friend than a new dress! My mother wouldn’t understand, my grownup mother Whose grasshopper thimble winked at the sun And whose laughter was made by small waves Rearranging seashells on Australia’s shore.
Transcribe →13. A Night in a World
Nov 20, 202100:09:56Tap to summarizeA Night in a World Heather McHugh I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t stay home where the big dipper rises from, time and again: one mountain ash. And I wouldn’t have thought without traveling out how huge that dipper was, how small that tree.
Transcribe →12. Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem
Oct 15, 202100:26:41Tap to summarizeMountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem Mathew Olzmann Here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage might work: Because you wear pink but write poems about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell at your keys when you lose them, and laugh, loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol, gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming. You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents of what you packed were written inside the boxes. Because you think swans are overrated. Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence. Because you underline everything you read, and circle the things you think are important, and put stars next to the things you think I should think are important, and write notes in the margins about all the people you’re mad at and my name almost never appears there. Because you make that pork recipe you found in the Frida Kahlo Cookbook. Because when you read that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed over the windows, you still believe someone outside can see you. And one day five summers ago, when you couldn’t put gas in your car, when your fridge was so empty—not even leftovers or condiments— there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew, which you paid for with your last damn dime because you once overheard me say that I liked it.
Transcribe →11. Love After Love
Sep 26, 202100:21:09Tap to summarizeLove After Love by Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
Transcribe →Break
Sep 5, 202100:02:41Tap to summarizeWe will have to slow down the pace of this project. So, a few announcements regarding that and some food for thought.
Transcribe →10. I Died for Beauty
Aug 29, 202100:29:15Tap to summarizeI Died for Beauty Emily Dickinson I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth,--the two are one; We brethren are," he said. And so, as kinsmen met a night, We talked between the rooms. Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.
Transcribe →9. When Death Comes
Aug 22, 202100:24:48Tap to summarizeWhen Death Comes Mary Oliver When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world
Transcribe →8. Life
Aug 15, 202100:21:07Tap to summarizeLife Charlotte Bronte LIFE, believe, is not a dream So dark as sages say; Oft a little morning rain Foretells a pleasant day. Sometimes there are clouds of gloom, But these are transient all; If the shower will make the roses bloom, O why lament its fall? Rapidly, merrily, Life’s sunny hours flit by, Gratefully, cheerily, Enjoy them as they fly! What though Death at times steps in And calls our best away? What though sorrow seems to win, O’er hope, a heavy sway? Yet, hope again elastic springs, Unconquered, though she fell; Still buoyant are her golden wings, Still strong to bear us well. Manfully, fearlessly, The day of trial bear, For gloriously, victoriously, Can courage quell despair!
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