Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles w Emily Dickinson Bryant and Jerry Longfellow
Speaker 1: Roll and me. Uh, like I said, I'm just Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: I'm not a poet. And if I am, I don't
Speaker 1: know it. Why don't you come over and help me
Speaker 1: straighten up? My longfellow? Oh? Yeah, the great Rodney Dangerfield
Speaker 1: was it? And back to school? Yeah? But I think
Speaker 1: we should start off by saying that, you know, Jerry
Speaker 1: likes to deliver confidence builders right before we hit record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she goes, she said, Hey, something I've noticed when you
Speaker 1: guys record too, if there's one that you think stinks,
Speaker 1: record that one first, this one recording first. I like
Speaker 1: this one though, I do too. Jerry apparently is not
Speaker 1: down with poetry though she's like it's stupid. She's base
Speaker 1: hate poetry like regular sentences. Uh right, she's a fan
Speaker 1: of prose. Yeah. What this episode did for me was
Speaker 1: reminded me that I like poetry. Yeah. Yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: now as an English major really getting into it for
Speaker 1: a little while. I'll bet you had to read a
Speaker 1: lot of poetry. For that I did, and some of
Speaker 1: it I didn't like it at all, But a lot
Speaker 1: of it I really really liked. And I just realized
Speaker 1: I don't read a lot of poetry anymore, and I
Speaker 1: really kind of dug it. There's plenty of good poetry
Speaker 1: out there, for sure. I've never been wanting to be like, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to sit here and read poetry all day. Well,
Speaker 1: it does carry a certain like thing. Although I have
Speaker 1: smoked pipe before, some of my uh, longsleeve shirts have
Speaker 1: swayed patses on the elbows. But I guess I'm just
Speaker 1: a poser because I don't sit around reading poetry. But
Speaker 1: I do appreciate a good poem. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: was That's my deal? Is uh, Like, a really good
Speaker 1: poem just impresses me to no end? Sure? Yeah, oh man,
Speaker 1: try try writing a poem yourself. I did once. Uh,
Speaker 1: I post college wrote a poem that I liked so
Speaker 1: much I sent it to the New Yorker. Oh you
Speaker 1: like it that much? Huh? I liked it enough to
Speaker 1: you know, realize rejection. Did it turn out that Ziggy
Speaker 1: had already done the same poem? No? You know the reference? Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a Signfeld where Elaine sent in a comic to
Speaker 1: the New Yorker, but it turns out she had ripped
Speaker 1: off a ziggy. I don't remember that it's good anyway.
Speaker 1: I have a copy of this somewhere, a hard copy, only,
Speaker 1: I think some in some box. You didn't bring it today.
Speaker 1: Well no, I mean it's got to be my addict,
Speaker 1: but I need to get it. And because I remember
Speaker 1: thinking like it's pretty good. Well, yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you sent it to the New Yorker, I would guess
Speaker 1: you thought very highly of it. But I was also
Speaker 1: twenty three, and you know I thought, you know, I
Speaker 1: wrote my first poem. I'm gonna send it to the
Speaker 1: New Yorker. Yeah, so it was your first first and
Speaker 1: only first. You're like, it's going to the New York
Speaker 1: or first first shot. Yeah, that's funny. That's like a
Speaker 1: kin to like just writing your first script and being like,
Speaker 1: I should get this in Scorsese's hands. This, I might
Speaker 1: as well prepare my Oscar speech. Anyway, I did get
Speaker 1: a rejection letter, but it was nice to, you know,
Speaker 1: get that even. Yeah, you should have it framed next
Speaker 1: to your poem. Yeah, I'd like to see this poem
Speaker 1: or hear it. Uh, it was sort of longish and
Speaker 1: it was about a kid jumping in a pile of
Speaker 1: leaves in the fall. But as you'll we will see,
Speaker 1: it had you know, symbolism and uh and metaphor. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't, you know, I never said leaves or pile
Speaker 1: of leaves or you never anything like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it was all like very I thought, skillfully sort of crafted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you just put me on my head, Like I
Speaker 1: thought that the poem was about jumping into leaves and
Speaker 1: the leaves are metaphor for something else, but it's about
Speaker 1: doing something else that's a metaphor for jumping in a
Speaker 1: pile of leaves. No, it was about a kid jumping
Speaker 1: in a pile of leaves. I just never explicitly said that.
Speaker 1: I see. You know, he like became a locomotive like
Speaker 1: a steam train. Oh, I got you that kind of thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: but that was good. I thought it was pretty good.
Speaker 1: I think everyone wants to hear this poem. Now you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to post it. Well, if I dig it up,
Speaker 1: I will definitely read it in a very special stuff
Speaker 1: you should know episode. It's a deal called how to
Speaker 1: Get our listeners to jump into a ravine. So uh.
Speaker 1: One of the things, chuck that when I was researching this,
Speaker 1: I went, I looked all over for you know, learning
Speaker 1: to appreciate poetry or you know what it takes, just
Speaker 1: for some advice, because it's always been a tough nut
Speaker 1: to crack for me, which I think makes me like
Speaker 1: just about everybody. And I came across this, uh, this
Speaker 1: essay um poets dot org um, and it's called how
Speaker 1: to Read a Poem, and it is it's that's exactly
Speaker 1: what it's about. It's written in prose form, thankfully, so
Speaker 1: you can understand it like right off the bat, and
Speaker 1: um the author may this uh this point, he said
Speaker 1: that readers make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar
Speaker 1: poem right. The first is that they assumed they should
Speaker 1: understand the poem right out of the gate first time
Speaker 1: they read it, and that if they don't, there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with them, or probably less frequently, there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with the poem. This poem doesn't work, get it. The
Speaker 1: second is that they they that there's in any given
Speaker 1: poem there's a code, and that if you can crack
Speaker 1: the code, you get the whole poem. Poems only about
Speaker 1: one certain thing, and it's all encoded in one way,
Speaker 1: and that's that like you just crack it, bam, you're done,
Speaker 1: poem has been read. And then the third one is
Speaker 1: assuming that the poem can mean anything the reader wanted
Speaker 1: to mean. That's not true. The poem means what the
Speaker 1: author intended it to mean. It's open to interpretation, certainly,
Speaker 1: but the poems still from what I'm gathering here, there's
Speaker 1: no poet whoever wrote something it was like, I have
Speaker 1: no idea what that means. Yeah, but I have heard
Speaker 1: poets and songwriters say like, you know, I meant it
Speaker 1: to be this way, but it's whatever you take it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot of meaning imbuted, and
Speaker 1: not just poetry, but any kind of writing, any kind
Speaker 1: of art, um by the viewer, by the listener, by
Speaker 1: the here by whoever right um. But the point is
Speaker 1: a poem is so meticulously crafted that you can bet
Speaker 1: every word, every literally every syllable in every single line
Speaker 1: was hand picked and almost sculpted. And it all comes
Speaker 1: together to point out that the best way to approach
Speaker 1: poetry is as a a typewritten object of art. Agreed,
Speaker 1: and that that once you come at it like that
Speaker 1: and that it's gonna be hard, it's gonna give you trouble,
Speaker 1: But the more trouble it gives you, the more rewarding
Speaker 1: it's going to be when you understand it. If you
Speaker 1: come at a poem like that and that you're not
Speaker 1: going to get it the first time out, that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to spend some time and effort on it, you
Speaker 1: can start to appreciate poems. Yeah, that's what I got
Speaker 1: from this in prose. I wonder if one of your
Speaker 1: issues with poetry is uh, has something to do with
Speaker 1: how concise poetry is and you're you as a writer, Like,
Speaker 1: why you haven't written a two thousand page novel is
Speaker 1: surprising to me still, you know infinite just the sequel,
Speaker 1: like I always imagine your book would be like uh
Speaker 1: in Wonder Boys, you know that scene where he gets
Speaker 1: to sit down and he types out like I can't
Speaker 1: remember the first three digits, but you think, oh, it's
Speaker 1: three hundred words, and then he types like in a
Speaker 1: four at the end it's like three thousand pages long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Katie Holmes is like, yeah, once you started getting
Speaker 1: into the different lineages of the horses that were you
Speaker 1: stop you stopped making choices? Such a good movie. Um,
Speaker 1: you what do you think? Do you think that's accurate?
Speaker 1: What like why you might, oh that it's too concise. No,
Speaker 1: I can appreciate things that are different. I think for me,
Speaker 1: it's I I ran into the same thing that this
Speaker 1: the author of How to Read a Poem Um kind
Speaker 1: of called out, which is, Um, you expect to get
Speaker 1: it the first time and if you don't, you just
Speaker 1: get kind of frustrated and you give up. I'm a quitter.
Speaker 1: I'm a quitter reader. That's not true. Oh, I take
Speaker 1: it back. Then, should we talk about history? Well, one
Speaker 1: thing I thought was kind of really neat is that
Speaker 1: poetry predates literacy by hundreds of years, if not thousands. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I think when you know when kind of every site
Speaker 1: that I looked at talking about the history of poetry
Speaker 1: all pointed to Epic of Gilgamesh. Such a good story. Um,
Speaker 1: and just you know the kind of the earliest poetry
Speaker 1: period where these epic poems. And a lot of people
Speaker 1: think that one reason they turned to poetry was so
Speaker 1: they could memorize stories. Right, Yeah, because if you were
Speaker 1: a storyteller in your group. You were in a story
Speaker 1: and that was your role. Yeah, and you needed to
Speaker 1: remember actual like facts, events, that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: it was a way to help record and memorize history
Speaker 1: in a way, right, Which is kind of a revealing
Speaker 1: thing about poetry, because a lot of people think of
Speaker 1: poetry is written or typed, when really poetry is actually
Speaker 1: usually intended to be read aloud. Yeah, and once you
Speaker 1: start reading poems aloud, then I think you'll you'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I see, I hate my voice. I don't go to
Speaker 1: poetry readings. But um, there is a dude in fact,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read one of his poems later. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a modern poet named Derek Brown. Derek. I thought
Speaker 1: you might have met him somehow. He he tours. He's
Speaker 1: a touring poet and opens up a lot of times
Speaker 1: for music bands and like comedians. He opened for Eugene Merman.
Speaker 1: So how I met him once and um, I got
Speaker 1: to know him a little bit and he's just great.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool, Like his poems are awesome. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure if you're a touring poet, yeah, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna suck. But he's trying to sort of and they're
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of It's not like he's the
Speaker 1: only person out they're writing poetry. But you know, you
Speaker 1: see articles about poetry being dead every now and then,
Speaker 1: and it's just not the case. Yeah, the article either
Speaker 1: says poetry is dead or poetry is alive and well,
Speaker 1: but everybody calls it rap and then somebody else writes
Speaker 1: another Yeah, and there's this huge i'mgoing debate over whether
Speaker 1: rap qualifies his poetry and it's just all written by
Speaker 1: like middle aged white men pretty much. Ye oh goodness. Um. So,
Speaker 1: speaking of epics, the Greeks and the Romans, historically, between
Speaker 1: and a d was when they were really cranking stuff out,
Speaker 1: and everyone always points to the two big eas. Uh.
Speaker 1: Homer wrote the Iliad or I'm sorry, Iliad, not the
Speaker 1: Iliad and Odyssey. He didn't write the Iliot. I don't
Speaker 1: think the official title is the Illiot is Illiot and Odyssey. Um.
Speaker 1: I was surprised that he see it was called out
Speaker 1: instead of like Virgil. I would I guess Virgil would
Speaker 1: have been name checked sooner than he see it right
Speaker 1: as number two behind Homer, Homer number one for sure.
Speaker 1: Ancient Greek epic poets. Yeah, I think so, but he
Speaker 1: see it. Come on, I don't know. Works in days
Speaker 1: not bad as far as epic poems go, which I'm
Speaker 1: not into. I struggled with with both Illiot and Odyssey.
Speaker 1: Oh you read them both? Oh yeah? In English class.
Speaker 1: I mean I can't. I can't absolutely look back and
Speaker 1: say I read them both all the way through for class.
Speaker 1: I might have been a little lazy about it, but
Speaker 1: we studied them in great detail. I I read enough
Speaker 1: of I guess the Odyssey that I started to confuse
Speaker 1: it with the Odyssey. Harry Hamlin, Um Clash of the Titan,
Speaker 1: class of the Titans, yep together. Um, he started to
Speaker 1: confuse it with Making Love his eighties movie. I never
Speaker 1: saw that one. Yeah, it was a movie about like
Speaker 1: a gay man that was married and had like a
Speaker 1: secret affair. Harry Hamlin was him? Well, no, I think
Speaker 1: the husband was Michael and Keene remember that guy. And
Speaker 1: I think he had the affair with Harry Hamlin because
Speaker 1: who wouldn't. Well, yeah, you know I mean that guy
Speaker 1: speaking of I want to say something and it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with anything he just reminded me with
Speaker 1: eighties movie. Um, I've been watching a lot of riff
Speaker 1: tracks lately, and they kill it. I want to specifically recommend,
Speaker 1: and if you have an Amazon Prime membership, it's streaming
Speaker 1: on Prime. A lot of riff tracks is um nightmare
Speaker 1: at noon, I think is what it's called. So had
Speaker 1: you not watched a lot of riff tracks, I'd seen
Speaker 1: a few, but I just kind of caught the bug,
Speaker 1: and I've been like like crying, laughing at some parts
Speaker 1: or like I'm just wiping my eyes like I don't
Speaker 1: listen to me, man, I don't laugh like that, and
Speaker 1: it's making me laugh like that. Yeah, Kevin and John,
Speaker 1: uh listen to stuff you should know. Supposedly, Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard that. At least they were nice enough to say
Speaker 1: that to my face. I don't know either that or
Speaker 1: they're just super nice guys. I didn't want to make
Speaker 1: me feel bad. I can kind of see that They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I listen to stuff, it knows. Uh. So moving on
Speaker 1: to medieval times, um, things started to get a little
Speaker 1: more well, not creative, but they started to expand the
Speaker 1: poetic horizons a bit um with the language they used
Speaker 1: and the subject matter they wrote about. Chaucer In particularly
Speaker 1: started doing something really unusual was writing in the common
Speaker 1: everyday language, which kind of didn't happen a lot before him. No,
Speaker 1: had been Latin up till in. Yeah, and he's like
Speaker 1: talking about you know, common people in the common language.
Speaker 1: You're all common for then, But Chaucer is tough, impenetrable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For me, it's like, what's this guy talking about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need a good teacher for that stuff, like a
Speaker 1: really good English teacher that can walk you through that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: supposedly Canterbury Tales are really interesting and like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of wit and humor to him. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: it's it's just really difficult language. Yeah, I had to
Speaker 1: get somebody who knows it. I had a good teacher
Speaker 1: in college, and I had an idea to make Canterbury
Speaker 1: Tales into a modern movie but but on a Greyhound butts,
Speaker 1: And uh I thought that was great. I thought all
Speaker 1: my ideas were good when I was like twenty one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a bad idea. Sorry, it's no Sharknado.
Speaker 1: You need royalties for that one. Uh So, moving on
Speaker 1: to the Renaissance period, thing's gotta the more creative. And
Speaker 1: this is when we saw new forms of meter young
Speaker 1: man named William Shakespeare Thomas Marlowe. They started the verse
Speaker 1: drama movement, right, and so initially you've got poetry is um,
Speaker 1: it's just oral history basically, and then the Greeks come along,
Speaker 1: and then the Romans um and codify it and and
Speaker 1: make formal structures out of it, and then everybody starts
Speaker 1: to undo those, and it's getting further and further away
Speaker 1: from the Greeks and the Romans until we hit the
Speaker 1: Enlightenment period from about the mid seventeenth century until almost
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, almost the nineteenth century, I should say, um,
Speaker 1: and they went back and basically venerated the Greek and
Speaker 1: Roman traditions, which seems weird to me because some somebody,
Speaker 1: somebody was struck and said, these guys knew what they
Speaker 1: were doing. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised to would have
Speaker 1: thought the Enlightenment would have taken things in an even
Speaker 1: further like a way from that, But I guess not.
Speaker 1: I guess not. I think the Romantics did, though, uh
Speaker 1: seventeen yeah, about eighteen thirty, Um, that's when they kind
Speaker 1: of poopooed and poopoo But they'd straight a bit from
Speaker 1: what the Enlightenment was doing well. Rebelled for sure. It
Speaker 1: seems like there were like periods of strict structure and
Speaker 1: then rebellion away from that over the decades, in centuries
Speaker 1: in the history of poetry, which is literally what we're
Speaker 1: talking about right now, and probably a cultural movement as well.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was kind of all tied together, right, uh,
Speaker 1: certainly with the Transcendentalist movement in the United States. And
Speaker 1: I used to be all about those cats. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: loved them, And then I started really learning about Thorow
Speaker 1: and I was kind of like it was a bit
Speaker 1: of a weirdo, you know, like in real life odd dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not like in all great ways. You know, I
Speaker 1: could just go off and like poop in the corner
Speaker 1: at a party. He just go off and lived deliberately
Speaker 1: like opirto uh, poop in the corner party. All right, Um,
Speaker 1: but they did, you know, the transcendentness in the Romantics
Speaker 1: did focus a lot on create a nature and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Certainly, throw it was all about it. I
Speaker 1: liked let me, I'm just saying I liked Emerson more
Speaker 1: than the Row. As I got older, I used to
Speaker 1: think the Row was great then I came to like
Speaker 1: Emerson more well throws that's a young man's game. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how people are just like one of these
Speaker 1: guys talking about welcome to our new subscribers, Victorian period
Speaker 1: nine one, and this is further breaking away from the establishment.
Speaker 1: And this is when you get like the great granddaddy
Speaker 1: of them all, Mr Whitman. Yeah, he's like structure meter
Speaker 1: for them. You can take it and shove it. I
Speaker 1: say nuts to that and things kind of like that
Speaker 1: was it from kind of then on, like you had
Speaker 1: your traditionalists still and even today you still do. But um,
Speaker 1: that's when basically all the rules were out the window
Speaker 1: and you could do whatever you wanted yea, and call
Speaker 1: it poetry thanks to Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass Baby,
Speaker 1: I think that was the original title. Yeah, a couple
Speaker 1: of wise on the end. Um, should we move into
Speaker 1: the twentieth century to Well, you kind of have to,
Speaker 1: because it's not like poetry just ended with Whitman. The
Speaker 1: twentieth century definitely saw its share of movements. Um. Apparently
Speaker 1: in the very early twentieth century there was a modernist
Speaker 1: movement that sought to go even further away from the norms,
Speaker 1: and they even rebelled against poor Walt Whitman, who may
Speaker 1: or may not have still been alive to see this.
Speaker 1: But they said, you know what, we're sick of your
Speaker 1: flowery language and your fancy calligraphy and all that. We
Speaker 1: are gonna make short, concise, interesting poems. And that was
Speaker 1: the Modernist movement. This is where it really started to
Speaker 1: get interesting for me. The Modernists. Yeah, like I was,
Speaker 1: I was way into e. Cummings and Yates and Gertrude
Speaker 1: Stein and Sylvia Plath. What about Robert Frost. Yeah he
Speaker 1: was good. I mean, listen to me. He was good.
Speaker 1: He was all right, No, he was amazing. Aden, which
Speaker 1: one was the one who like made pitthy rhyming short rhymes?
Speaker 1: Like there was a this is so sad. I got
Speaker 1: my poetry from King of the Hill. But there was
Speaker 1: this one King of the Hill where Peggy Hill is
Speaker 1: um reciting a poem. She said, the cow is of
Speaker 1: the bovine ilk one and gives mu the other milk.
Speaker 1: Who was that? It wasn't Ezra Pound? Was that Ezra
Speaker 1: Pound would have written something like that. It sounds like
Speaker 1: something like Oscar Wild would have done. It was a Texan,
Speaker 1: I believe because they were observing the guy's house no
Speaker 1: idea definitely was an Oscar wild then. Um. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: when I really they got into poetry, like it was
Speaker 1: way more accessible to me, and like I could read E.
Speaker 1: Cummings and and sort of get it. I think part
Speaker 1: of it also, though, Chuck, is your experience was a
Speaker 1: lot closer in resemblance to the experience of people in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century than it was to a Puritan
Speaker 1: writing in New England, And like the seventeenth century, you
Speaker 1: know about how much I love God and my neighbors.
Speaker 1: You know, like your experience is different, so of course
Speaker 1: you can identify with it. So of course the poetry
Speaker 1: that's created from that experience is going to speak to you,
Speaker 1: or at least be more accessible to you. I think
Speaker 1: that's why a lot of people get turned off from
Speaker 1: poetry to Here's another reason is because you're indoctrinated into
Speaker 1: this history of poetry and it should go backwards. Did
Speaker 1: you go counter chronologically? Like you should be inculcated in
Speaker 1: poetry roughly in at least the same century, within the
Speaker 1: last act, And then once you start to get that,
Speaker 1: you can take on older and older stuff. But it's like,
Speaker 1: not only do you have to get the poem, you
Speaker 1: have to get the poem and also understand like a
Speaker 1: completely different social outlook from somebody who lived a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred years ago. Yeah, it's like, what are they
Speaker 1: even talking about? Well, I was about to give advice
Speaker 1: to English teachers, but then I realized we just did
Speaker 1: the same thing. It's like, if you start your class
Speaker 1: with all right, let's talk about the epic of Gilgamesh,
Speaker 1: it's like, that's how you can lose a student. But
Speaker 1: we just did the same thing. Jerry, can you publish
Speaker 1: this thing backwards? Uh, there's a way. Well, I have
Speaker 1: to admit to my dead poets society had, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty big impact on me too. I never saw it.
Speaker 1: Shut up, I never saw it. You're kidding, I've never
Speaker 1: seen it. Just so I could say this moment, have
Speaker 1: you really? Yeah, I've never seen it. We should start
Speaker 1: a movie podcast where we each just our like, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: called you've never seen it? Right? So um, I was
Speaker 1: inculcated into the work of Robin Williams in the wrong
Speaker 1: way and much that. No. No, Patch Adams, Oh, once
Speaker 1: I saw Patch Adams I was like, I can't see
Speaker 1: any more Robin Williams movies. You should see that? Posts
Speaker 1: I'm sure I should. It was really good. I think
Speaker 1: I've got another ten fifteen years of Patch Adams to
Speaker 1: wear off. First, is that the only Robin Wayams movie
Speaker 1: you've ever That's the last one I saw that? Really? Man? No,
Speaker 1: that's not true. Father of the Year I saw. Have
Speaker 1: you seen it? You're picking the wrong movies, have you
Speaker 1: seen it? No? That was good in a weird indie way.
Speaker 1: It's a weird little movie he did. He did good.
Speaker 1: I think that might be his last one. I think
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of something else. Yeah, this is a little
Speaker 1: weird into movie. Yeah, I'm thinking something different. I think
Speaker 1: Bob Goldwaet directed it. Oh well, then it's good. Um,
Speaker 1: and then we move on. We're getting into the nineteen No,
Speaker 1: we're getting into the mid forties. And I got into
Speaker 1: this stuff to the beat poets. Um. I think every
Speaker 1: every college student probably went through a little phase where
Speaker 1: they listen or well and listen to Gainsburg, but red
Speaker 1: Ginsburg and Carouac and you know those those that generation
Speaker 1: definitely uh sort of embraced to do what you want
Speaker 1: with the style and bongo. Yeah, I liked it. I
Speaker 1: thought it was cool. Oh the beats were awesome. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Carouac in particular. I never got into any
Speaker 1: of the other guys, but I liked him a lot.
Speaker 1: Everyone should read Howl by Ginsburg. Yeah yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's his most famous poem. And and I'm sure Ginsburg
Speaker 1: big Ginsburg fans will say, of course you can recommend
Speaker 1: how yeah, but Troit you should be how sure and
Speaker 1: we should take a break. Yes. Oh so, Chuck, we
Speaker 1: are back and we are done talking about the history
Speaker 1: of poetry. Let's talk about poetry itself. Okay, okay. So
Speaker 1: a poem has uh four lines and they all rhyme yep,
Speaker 1: they all rhyme a a A, they're all in iambic pentameter,
Speaker 1: which will describe later. And um, they're each made up
Speaker 1: of four stanzas. That's a poem. Anything else is just
Speaker 1: COMI propaganda, right, Yeah, boy, we're silly today. Uh. I
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about the genres um. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is one of those topics where we're gonna do
Speaker 1: fifty minutes on poetry when there are we could do
Speaker 1: fifteen podcasts about poetry. So forgive the the overviewness of this.
Speaker 1: That's what we do. Uh. You have narrative poetry, which
Speaker 1: is a poem that tells a story. Yeah, which doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be an epic poem. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be you know, book link that can it can be
Speaker 1: a very short poem that tells the story. But it's
Speaker 1: got like basically a plot in action and characters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: car Chase right at least one. Um. But epic poetry
Speaker 1: does fall under that banner though. You have dramatic poetry,
Speaker 1: which we talked about with Shakespeare. A lot of people
Speaker 1: maybe don't even realize that Shakespeare was writing poetry for
Speaker 1: the stage. Yeah, you know, I guess maybe they don't
Speaker 1: think about it that way. I thought everybody thought that's
Speaker 1: what it was, was poetry. We talk about dense and
Speaker 1: impenetrable too. Yeah, it's tough, can be again, need a
Speaker 1: good teacher, good teacher, su um. I wish I could
Speaker 1: remember my teacher's names to shout them out. My college
Speaker 1: teachers that really like, we're so great at that. But
Speaker 1: I think I've talked about him before. I had a
Speaker 1: great Shakespeare teacher. He would just we just read it
Speaker 1: out loud. In class, and he would say, well, this
Speaker 1: is what's going on after after each like you know,
Speaker 1: couple of stanzas, so you do. Yeah, it's like an
Speaker 1: annotated live, annotated virsion of Shakespeare. And his theory was,
Speaker 1: you know, this is what you gotta do to make
Speaker 1: these kids get it. But once they get it, they
Speaker 1: realize that these are modern stories, just you know, told
Speaker 1: in a way that none can understand timeless stories. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Lyric poetry, it's probably if what a lot of people
Speaker 1: think of as a poem, right, you know, it might
Speaker 1: rhyme doesn't have to tell a story, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to have a plot. Um, it's like rhyme and rhythm,
Speaker 1: and it creates just like this. It's it's for effect
Speaker 1: of a feeling. Maybe it uses a lot of imagery,
Speaker 1: usually of different types, um, to get you to visualize
Speaker 1: something or hear something, or imagine what the poet's trying
Speaker 1: to get across. There's lots of different meanings. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like what people think of when they think of poems.
Speaker 1: Lyric poetry, remember that one, uh, and there are many
Speaker 1: other kinds and genres, but um, I think those are
Speaker 1: kind of the main the main ones that a lot
Speaker 1: of people consider the three main genres. Is that fair?
Speaker 1: I think so? All right, So, when you we already
Speaker 1: kind of said it, when you're reading poetry, most of
Speaker 1: the time you're reading it silently to yourself, and that
Speaker 1: is not what you're supposed to do. Most poems are
Speaker 1: written to be read out loud, even if to your
Speaker 1: just to yourself. Yeah, yeah, and um, apparently, what what
Speaker 1: like the first time from this how to Read a
Speaker 1: Poem essay, The first time you go to read a poem,
Speaker 1: just read it out loud, and the author points out
Speaker 1: that you will notice a lot of stuff about the
Speaker 1: poem and you don't have to get the meaning right away,
Speaker 1: but you want to just basically read it out loud
Speaker 1: at least once, and that alone is going to raise
Speaker 1: a lot of different flags and markers about the poem
Speaker 1: to you, because when you read it out loud, the
Speaker 1: sounds that the words make start to really come out.
Speaker 1: And that's really what starts to differentiate poetry from prose,
Speaker 1: the fact that basically sound effects are used in this
Speaker 1: written art, like a laser pu p. Right, that's how
Speaker 1: you read a poem. Uh rhyme Obviously, is the most
Speaker 1: common um, or maybe at least most recognizable sound effect.
Speaker 1: That might be alliteration. Yeah, in fact, I think it is.
Speaker 1: No that's on amonopia amonopia right, snap english major. Um,
Speaker 1: we all know what rhymes are, so we're not gonna
Speaker 1: in saught you with the definition. But there are also
Speaker 1: things like near rhymes or slant rhymes, which are when, uh,
Speaker 1: well kind of when you can't think of a word
Speaker 1: that really rhymes, but you can get one that's close.
Speaker 1: So Emily Dickinson apparently was a master of the slant rhymes. Yes,
Speaker 1: how about bear and far Yeah, I mean it's close.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be like that stupid and like
Speaker 1: swap the book off of your desk. It's not like
Speaker 1: bear and orange. Well, nothing rhymes with orange, right, That's
Speaker 1: why I said it supposedly right, I've never heard anything
Speaker 1: that rhymes with orange. I'm sure there are some emails
Speaker 1: coming on that one. Orange. Uh. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of other things, um, we can talk about, like a
Speaker 1: literation and consonants with an A N C E and
Speaker 1: consonants is a good example. Um, Mommy's mommy was no
Speaker 1: common dummy. Yeah you got that sound. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily at the beginning of the the word. They
Speaker 1: were at the beginning of a bunch of different words
Speaker 1: close together. That would be alliteration, right, but they are
Speaker 1: specifically consonants. H alliteration. You're right, that is, you know,
Speaker 1: the big brown bear bit Benny's but poor Benny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what about assonance. That's one of my favorites. That one's tough.
Speaker 1: That's where, um, it can be tough to pick up on.
Speaker 1: That's where a vowel is repeated, or a vowel sound
Speaker 1: is repeated in a number of words close together. Um,
Speaker 1: somewhere in the word, like the rain in Spain falls
Speaker 1: gently on the plane, I think mainly on the plane whatever.
Speaker 1: Or I like the example of the'se in here. I
Speaker 1: might like to fight nine pirates at a time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. I don't know all this stuff
Speaker 1: I love Like this is poetry is kind of playful
Speaker 1: quality to me. Or when a poet sits down and
Speaker 1: you can put a lot of thought into if you're
Speaker 1: trying to pull off something like that, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: as you're trying to also tell a story. Oh yeah, no.
Speaker 1: Like to be a genuine poet is to be probably
Speaker 1: one of the most creative and technically proficient artists around.
Speaker 1: It's got to be one of the most difficult things
Speaker 1: to to do. Well. I think you know, because think
Speaker 1: about it. You're a great director. Well, you've got a
Speaker 1: camera to assist you and really get your vision across,
Speaker 1: and you've got this technology. You're author of prose. Well,
Speaker 1: how many pages did it take you to get your
Speaker 1: point across? You are a musician, that's great. You gotta violin, bravo,
Speaker 1: a poet, you got a quill and Inkwell some paper,
Speaker 1: better get it right. It's tough. You're wearing your breeches. Yeah, exactly. Uh,
Speaker 1: well what I say earlier literation, But you said it
Speaker 1: was on a monopeia. Yeah, that's that's the one where
Speaker 1: it's the word sounds like the word it describes, like bang, beep, snap, crackle,
Speaker 1: pop buzz snap and crackle crackle, don't forget per and
Speaker 1: pop clash. I like like those words. I would love
Speaker 1: to see this episode animated. Do you remember the dude
Speaker 1: who used to animate They were great? Oh man, they
Speaker 1: were better than the actual episodes, right, and uh, this
Speaker 1: one I think would be virtually impossible to animate. I
Speaker 1: think you're right, um, And these, of course are just
Speaker 1: sort of some of the most common sound effects. Are
Speaker 1: many tools that the poet can pull out of the
Speaker 1: old toolbox and use at their disposal. So um. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I found that when you are forced to work within
Speaker 1: a structure, a very highly structured environment, you're able to
Speaker 1: be more creative than you might be if it's just
Speaker 1: like here go crazy, no rules, because then you have
Speaker 1: to like you're just thinking about the edges, the boundaries,
Speaker 1: and then you have to think about how get creative.
Speaker 1: People need structure, So if the structure is given to you,
Speaker 1: it's it's easy sometimes to kind of play within that
Speaker 1: structure and to really let your wings spread, which I
Speaker 1: think is one reason why poems have certain structures, even
Speaker 1: though really it's a free for all. You can basically
Speaker 1: do whatever you want and call it a poem. Um,
Speaker 1: But there are plenty of structures, and there's certain parts
Speaker 1: of a poems structure that you can find in almost
Speaker 1: any poem. Well. Yeah, and these structures are just things
Speaker 1: that were repeated enough by enough people because someone did
Speaker 1: it first and someone else thought, hey, that's pretty clever,
Speaker 1: and enough people did it to where it became you
Speaker 1: know canon canon all right, canon structure. Yeah. Uh. Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, I said, stands is and pros have paragraphs
Speaker 1: and and poems you have standsass. It's like a poem, yeah,
Speaker 1: and what you know, how you actually type that on
Speaker 1: the page is very much thought out, as in where
Speaker 1: you take the line, breaks to the next line, and
Speaker 1: where you might put that period. Uh, if you if
Speaker 1: you break a sentence up, or you can have one
Speaker 1: sentence that's super long on one line and then three
Speaker 1: words of a sentence on another line, and then one
Speaker 1: word one word, one word on each line, everybody's gonna
Speaker 1: hate your poem. But no, not necessarily could do that.
Speaker 1: Or if you choose to break a sentence in the
Speaker 1: middle of a line, that actually is a name. It's
Speaker 1: called enjambment. And it's all part of like this wacky,
Speaker 1: crazy poetic structure world. But that's the thing. And there
Speaker 1: actually is a type of poetry called concrete poetry, where
Speaker 1: the shape that the poem takes on the page um
Speaker 1: is meant to to visualize something or to be uh
Speaker 1: depiction of like a picture. Basically I'm not into that.
Speaker 1: I'm not either. I think most poets aren't. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the ones that do. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: a poem of a windy river is like typed in
Speaker 1: such a way that if you blow your eyes it
Speaker 1: looks like a windy river. Right. So that's called a
Speaker 1: concrete poem, I believe. I think on the nose is
Speaker 1: another word for it. Right. Yeah, So most poems, most
Speaker 1: poets aren't breaking lines. They're not doing enjambment um to
Speaker 1: make a picture. It's too too. It's meant to have
Speaker 1: to either point out a word, to play with a
Speaker 1: series of words um, or just to um create a
Speaker 1: rhythm that otherwise they wouldn't be able to if they
Speaker 1: just did sentence by sentence on a line. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you know, even when I wrote as a novice that
Speaker 1: poem that I submitted, I found myself doing that just instinctively,
Speaker 1: after studying poetry and stuff like, Oh this word, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna capitalize it, and it's gonna go on a line
Speaker 1: by itself, right exactly. Oh they'll love this and New
Speaker 1: York is gonna go crazy, That's what I thought. So
Speaker 1: I ran across the guy named Robert Creeley, who is
Speaker 1: apparently very well known for his enjamment. Uh so you
Speaker 1: can here seriously. So here's a poem from the language
Speaker 1: You're part of. Some lines from his poem the language
Speaker 1: locate I love you somewhere in teeth and eyes bite it.
Speaker 1: But so if you just read it like that, it's whatever.
Speaker 1: It's a poem. But this is how he has the
Speaker 1: line breaks. And apparently he's well known for reading his
Speaker 1: poems out loud and and like leaving a beat after
Speaker 1: just about every line locid I love you some where
Speaker 1: in teeth and eyes bite it. But right now, can't
Speaker 1: you just see everybody in a cafe going like this.
Speaker 1: That's happen after that? But this guy is like a
Speaker 1: master and Jamin because if you take it and you
Speaker 1: look at it, especially when you look at it, it
Speaker 1: just really changes the meaning of the words. You know,
Speaker 1: I think master of m Jam it should be your
Speaker 1: rap name for sure. Oh apparently you take your um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you take your last the last meal you ate and
Speaker 1: put little in front of it. I'm a little ramen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a little fried chicken and collards. Really that's what
Speaker 1: you had? Where'd you get it? Hopston? Oh downstairs? Good? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had the chicken, I have had the greens. They're perfect.
Speaker 1: They're like not mushy, they're not undercooked, they're just they're great.
Speaker 1: I had the ramen from downstairs, just my most common
Speaker 1: meal here, little ramen. Or I had the don the
Speaker 1: don don Maybe little don don would be better, or
Speaker 1: little don don ramen little don Don is good. I
Speaker 1: was a little nachos for a little while. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I ate something ethan. You had another meal that was
Speaker 1: at nachos for about eight hours, all right. So there's
Speaker 1: something else called the cis sura c a e s
Speaker 1: u r a And that's a pause in the middle
Speaker 1: of a line. And again, and these are all just
Speaker 1: that's usually where there's a period in the middle of
Speaker 1: the line. Well, that's an enjayment. No, and enjayment is
Speaker 1: like a break, oh, break in a sentence. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: say sirah is where there's punctuation, typically a period in
Speaker 1: the middle of a line. Yeah. I had those backwards.
Speaker 1: And these are all just, you know, ways to play
Speaker 1: with the structural effect of your poem. Basically you can
Speaker 1: you know, rhyme scheme is a if you've taken any
Speaker 1: kind of English class, you definitely they would hammer home
Speaker 1: the rhyme scheme of it's a test question, you know,
Speaker 1: like what is the rhyme scheme of this poem? Uh?
Speaker 1: And that's the pattern and the rhyming pattern and in
Speaker 1: the lines basically, and you know it's A B, A
Speaker 1: or a BB depending on what rhymes with what right,
Speaker 1: And the rhyme scheme is always described by like that.
Speaker 1: So you depending on how many lines, let's say you
Speaker 1: have four lines, you've got A B, C and D
Speaker 1: well the ryan the lines that rhyme say, your first
Speaker 1: and third and second fourth rhyme, they're going to share
Speaker 1: the same letter. So A B, A B is how
Speaker 1: your rhyme scheme would be written out. And anybody who
Speaker 1: knows poetry would be able to look at that and
Speaker 1: understand what what lines of the poem rhyme. It's pretty simple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I just made it way harder than it
Speaker 1: actually is. No, I don't think so. Uh. Meter You've
Speaker 1: probably heard um your teacher talk about meter two, and
Speaker 1: that's the actual rhythmic structure and UM there you're mainly
Speaker 1: talking about the stresses on the syllables. UM. And this,
Speaker 1: to me is one of the really neat things about
Speaker 1: poetry is the sort of uh and the sentence I
Speaker 1: use in here is actually good one. He'd like to
Speaker 1: have some pumpkin pie. You know, the way that that's
Speaker 1: stressed is very just very sing songy and sort of playful.
Speaker 1: You know, it's almost like a dance in your mouth.
Speaker 1: I always dance around when I'm asking for pumpkin pie.
Speaker 1: I'd like to have some pumpkin pie. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: you just a jazz hand um. And again that's just
Speaker 1: how you know you're stressing the words and how you're
Speaker 1: playing with the words, And that's the meter. It creates
Speaker 1: that rhythm. Right, So in a meter, the basic unit
Speaker 1: of a meter is a foot, and it's a a
Speaker 1: foot is it can be any number of stressed and
Speaker 1: unstressed syllables. Usually it's up to four, right, And there's
Speaker 1: different names for different types of feet. So everyone's sort
Speaker 1: of iambic pentameter. Up until yesterday, I had no idea
Speaker 1: what I ambic pentameter really was. Just New Shakespeare rode
Speaker 1: in it a lot, right, Well, and I am is
Speaker 1: actually it's a foot. It's a it's a type of
Speaker 1: stressed and unstressed syllable pairing that is used to create
Speaker 1: the meter of a poem. So when I am is
Speaker 1: a an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, And
Speaker 1: the example of this article gives us the word part
Speaker 1: take right, so par is unstressed. Take has a little
Speaker 1: more of a stress to it, right. And if you
Speaker 1: put five i ams together, so partake, partake, partake, partake,
Speaker 1: part take very creative. One line of a poem, what
Speaker 1: you have there is iambic pentameter penta, meaning five and
Speaker 1: five five i ams on a line making up the
Speaker 1: meter i ambic pentameter. But there's plenty of different kinds
Speaker 1: of meters that a poem can have based on the
Speaker 1: type of stressed and unstressed syllable pairing, and then the
Speaker 1: number of times that type of pairing appears on a
Speaker 1: given line. Yeah. Uh so if you had four i ams,
Speaker 1: it would be iambic tetrameter, and so on and so on. Um,
Speaker 1: there's another one. If like the word banjo is a
Speaker 1: stress syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, that's a trokey, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you could have a trochaic pentameter, and that's five
Speaker 1: trokeys in a line. Yeah, which sounds I mean, all
Speaker 1: this sounds very dense, but it's actually pretty straightforward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: once you kind of know what the words mean behind it.
Speaker 1: What else is there? There's a dactyl, which is a
Speaker 1: stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables like capital capital. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a fan of those. Now what about the antipest
Speaker 1: not bad, that's too unstressed, followed by a stressed um.
Speaker 1: The example they give a seventeen kip Winger was a
Speaker 1: big fan of the antipest uh, And anfa brock is
Speaker 1: an unstressed syllable followed by stress syllable and then another
Speaker 1: unstressed syllable um like archaic. Yeah. And then lastly there's
Speaker 1: the critic. That's my favorite. So it's stressed, unstressed, stressed
Speaker 1: like trampoline. Yes, we're trampoline. I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: the critic. Are you critic for life? But think about
Speaker 1: think about this though, Like this is again when now
Speaker 1: we're starting to kind of like pull back the curtain,
Speaker 1: and this is what poets are dealing with. This is
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff describes a line. A line will
Speaker 1: have different types of these types of meters, these different
Speaker 1: feet that make up these different types of meter. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and my hope with this episode is that if you
Speaker 1: slept through this in English class, you might listen now
Speaker 1: and say, oh, hey, that's actually kind of neat when
Speaker 1: you think about it in those terms. Yeah, at the
Speaker 1: very least, I hope you realize how hard poets are
Speaker 1: working sure to go unappreciated by most people. They're earning
Speaker 1: the lack of money that they don't make. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's take another break, poor one out for the poets.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Stuff. No, so chuck um. There's
Speaker 1: different types of poet poetry to based on you take. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you take all these this structure or these different effects,
Speaker 1: and you will have different types of poem and putting together. Right. So,
Speaker 1: a son it has specific rhyme scheme. It's got to
Speaker 1: be fourteen lines along or else you can just take
Speaker 1: your poem and go home because it's not a sonnet. Um.
Speaker 1: A ballad is one that's um written and stands as
Speaker 1: of four lines. Each has a specific meter of iambic tetrameter,
Speaker 1: which is four four i am per line, and then
Speaker 1: it alternates with iambic trimeter three i am s per line. Um.
Speaker 1: And that one I've always heard also is supposed to Basically,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be a narrative, right, aren't ballads at
Speaker 1: least as far as music goes, a narrative song? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure. It's probably the same thing in poetry,
Speaker 1: right I would think so, I mean definitely know it
Speaker 1: is in a song and like a murder ballad specifically,
Speaker 1: which is uh the fact that I think I wanted
Speaker 1: to put that down as one of our ideas to
Speaker 1: do an entire show on ballots. Yeah, ballot cool rich tradition.
Speaker 1: Is there such a thing? Oh? Yeah, it's like huge,
Speaker 1: huge in Mexico, like singing basically ballads about these outlaws. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a uh, Heisenberg got his own I'm breaking bad. Really,
Speaker 1: it's called bad ombre. I can't remember what it was called. Um.
Speaker 1: Haiku boy, oh boy. In the early days of stuff,
Speaker 1: you should know, we put out a call for high
Speaker 1: kus or haiku haiku and um. Traditionally, hiku is three
Speaker 1: lines along, five syllables in the first line, seven syllables
Speaker 1: in the second, and five and the third, and all
Speaker 1: these years later, occasionally we will still get the random
Speaker 1: hiku from a listener, but we got him a lot
Speaker 1: for a while, and um, until we said stop. Remember
Speaker 1: that guy who got us by sending in a haiku
Speaker 1: and it was a well known T shirt. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we read it on the air. I think that's when
Speaker 1: we said stop us. Yeah, I remember that. Uh sistina
Speaker 1: sc s t I n a um. This one's a
Speaker 1: little different. Instead of a rhyme scheme, it repeats words,
Speaker 1: so as it's broken into standsas, each with six lines
Speaker 1: and the six words to end each line I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: yeah in each line in the first stanza are then
Speaker 1: repeated as in words and every other stanza. And I
Speaker 1: think you have an example here the John Ashbury poem
Speaker 1: farm Implements and rude Vegas and a landscape. Yeah, everybody
Speaker 1: go look up that poem and read it out loud
Speaker 1: to yourself. It's actually really kind of difficult the way
Speaker 1: it's laid out. You should read the first couple of
Speaker 1: stands us maybe okay, Uh, that's kind of long though
Speaker 1: you ready, Yeah, it is a little long. The first
Speaker 1: of the undercoded messages read Popeye sits in thunder unthought of,
Speaker 1: from that shoe box of an apartment, from livid curtains,
Speaker 1: hue A Tan Graham emerges a country Meanwhile, the sea
Speaker 1: hag was relaxing on a green couch. How pleasant see
Speaker 1: if you start reading it like William Shatner, which she
Speaker 1: really comes out to spend one's vacation on lacasa de Popeye,
Speaker 1: she scratched her cleft chins, solitary hair. She remembered spinach,
Speaker 1: And so throughout this poem spinach, thunder, apartment and uh
Speaker 1: well apparently three other um words come through and reused
Speaker 1: throughout the whole um the whole poem, and it gets
Speaker 1: really really dense, and then all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: just zooms out onto Popeye, who finally makes an appearance
Speaker 1: at the end, and it just becomes kinda and it
Speaker 1: it's it's a neat poem. Actually, yeah, it's called um
Speaker 1: what's it called again? Farm Implements and rude Bag? Isn't
Speaker 1: a landscape by John Ashbury? Check it out? Yeah, and again.
Speaker 1: To me, this is like the fun of poetry is
Speaker 1: it's almost like a challenge to a writer to say, like,
Speaker 1: all right, try to write a sistina like this weird structure,
Speaker 1: and and not only do you have to meet the
Speaker 1: needs of that structure, but it has to be good
Speaker 1: and creative and interesting, just really neat to me. I
Speaker 1: love the kind of word play. Um, I might start
Speaker 1: writing poetry. I think you should. A villanelle. One of
Speaker 1: the most famous poems of all time Dylan Thomas is
Speaker 1: do not go Gentle into that good night is a villanelle.
Speaker 1: And it's a nineteen line poem that um it only
Speaker 1: it's made up of only two end rhyme sounds that
Speaker 1: are repeated throughout the poem, which is tough on its own,
Speaker 1: but then to make things even worse, or not worse,
Speaker 1: but more trickier, tricky for the writer worse. The first
Speaker 1: and third lines are repeated in a specific pattern all
Speaker 1: through the poem. And um, I guess I'll read the
Speaker 1: first couple of bits from this one. I won't read
Speaker 1: the whole thing, though, Uh. Rage, Rage against the dying
Speaker 1: of the light. The wise men at their end, no
Speaker 1: dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning.
Speaker 1: They do not go gentle into that good night, good
Speaker 1: men the last wave by crying how bright their frail
Speaker 1: deeds might have danced in a green bay. Rage, Rage
Speaker 1: against the dying of the light. So um, that's probably
Speaker 1: the most famous example of all time of the villainil,
Speaker 1: don't you think, Oh yeah, for sure, it's a good
Speaker 1: it's a good. I think one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: that poem is so famous in universally loved is because
Speaker 1: it's you understand what it means. It's pretty pretty superficial really,
Speaker 1: as far as poems go. I'm sure there's way more
Speaker 1: stuff going on right beneath the surface. You can also
Speaker 1: appreciate it on its face as well, that it's about
Speaker 1: a dying father or something, right, sure, but it's also
Speaker 1: basically called arms to go live, like don't ever just
Speaker 1: give in to death, and you're impending mortality like live live,
Speaker 1: live until live so much that you rage against the
Speaker 1: idea of of dying. Eventually you need to go home
Speaker 1: and watch Deadpoet Society. You're basically just described the plot.
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, uh, an ode something? Um it usually
Speaker 1: celebrates Walton. Ode celebrates a person or not even a
Speaker 1: person that can just can celebrate anything. But it's an
Speaker 1: ode to them. Yeah, um, yeah it is. It's to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you did a great job. Here's a poem for you,
Speaker 1: which is sort of like an elegy, but an elergy
Speaker 1: is about someone who died. Yeah, did you read An
Speaker 1: Allergy for Five Old Ladies by Thomas James Martin that this,
Speaker 1: this article calls out. Yeah, it's it's unusual in that
Speaker 1: it's about a UM, an actual real life event UM
Speaker 1: where apparently at UH an assisted living home, maybe in
Speaker 1: the sixties. I think, um, five older women were in
Speaker 1: a car waiting for the driver, and I think them
Speaker 1: the car the transmission came out of park and it
Speaker 1: rolled into a lake and they all drowned. And Martin,
Speaker 1: I guess read about it in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: It was moved to write a poem about it, um,
Speaker 1: which is the whole It's a bizarre poem all around,
Speaker 1: especially the fact that it was based on a true story.
Speaker 1: I want to check that out. Um. There are epigrams
Speaker 1: that one's good. Did you read that one? You go ahead?
Speaker 1: So an epigram is a poem that's like satirical or funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this one's funny, but it's it's
Speaker 1: maybe satirical. It's existentially satirical, all right. A man said
Speaker 1: to the universe, Sir, I exist. However, replied the universe.
Speaker 1: The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you gotta read it a few times. It
Speaker 1: gets better. Then do you have a really really niche
Speaker 1: type of poem? And obeyed A U B A D E.
Speaker 1: I believe it's how it's pronounced, and it's about the
Speaker 1: arrival of morning. If it's not about the arrival of morning,
Speaker 1: it's not unobeyed. If it is, it's an obeyed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times, um wink wink, arrival of
Speaker 1: morning means hey, I just made some sweet love and
Speaker 1: I'm really bummed that the sun's coming up because last
Speaker 1: night was a gas. Right. I think you just wrote
Speaker 1: and obeyed off the top of your head. I think so. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then an epistle is a poem usually that's addressed
Speaker 1: to someone very close to the poet, And you know
Speaker 1: there's some overlap with these, for sure. Yeah, Like an
Speaker 1: epistle can also be uh, well, it could be an epigram.
Speaker 1: I guess sure this epistle that this article, this article
Speaker 1: on how stuff works, did a really good job. I
Speaker 1: suspect it was written by an English professor. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: poetry expert clearly wrote this. Um, this is not just
Speaker 1: from research. Right. So the author calls out a poem
Speaker 1: called Dear Mr Finelli as an example of an epistle,
Speaker 1: and I went and read it and it is really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's about this guy who notices. So it's basically it's
Speaker 1: like an open letter to Mr Finelli, but Mr Finelli
Speaker 1: invited correspondence because he's the like the manager of a
Speaker 1: subway station, the seventy nine Street subway station, and there's
Speaker 1: a sign that says, notice any need of improvements or
Speaker 1: anything wrong, get in touch with me, the manager and
Speaker 1: Mr Finelli of the seventy ninth Street subway station. And
Speaker 1: so the author's writing to him with suggestions and it
Speaker 1: so he's just kind of devolved into like this existential
Speaker 1: crisis that the guys going through, and he reveals that
Speaker 1: he hasn't been sleeping very well because he's really worried
Speaker 1: about the world, and it just really goes off the rails.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty neat poem, Dear Mr Finelli by Charles Bernstein.
Speaker 1: I have to check that out. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: we talked unspecifically about what a lot of these poems
Speaker 1: are using um literary effects and anything that you use
Speaker 1: in your pros um, you know, symbolism and metaphor, and
Speaker 1: similarly you also can use and in fact oftentimes do
Speaker 1: you use in poems? Um. Similarly, obviously is something where
Speaker 1: you have to use like or as. Um, that hillside
Speaker 1: is is like a uh be a great poet. Hillside
Speaker 1: is like a beer built there you go. I like that, yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: whereas a metaphor or is saying something is something else
Speaker 1: that that hillside is a beer belly. Um. And the
Speaker 1: example they used is the wonderful poem The Road Not Taken.
Speaker 1: When you're talking metaphor, it's, um, you know, maybe more
Speaker 1: about your life choices than the actual road that's written about. Right,
Speaker 1: But they point out that Frost in the Road Not
Speaker 1: Taken doesn't even say and by the way, these roads
Speaker 1: are really a metaphor for your life choices. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just left to the reader to to make that guess
Speaker 1: an assumption, which makes it a far better poem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like, and at the end he's like, and these
Speaker 1: are really your life choices. I was talking about this
Speaker 1: whole time. Yeah. I think, if I remember my poem correctly,
Speaker 1: it wasn't about the pile of leaves, even that I
Speaker 1: didn't reference. It might have been about the the boys
Speaker 1: that the childlike qualities that ultimately fade away with age,
Speaker 1: which I man, I was right in on that when
Speaker 1: I was twenty two years old. It's great. You gotta
Speaker 1: find that poem. Yeah, it's probably not as good as
Speaker 1: I remember. You got a poem to read? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got too. Um and I was talking about um newer poets,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned Derek Brown, who it's a good dude.
Speaker 1: And you should go see Derek if you have a chance.
Speaker 1: He's It's always a fun time because some of his
Speaker 1: poems are very funny. Some of them are just beautiful
Speaker 1: love poems that like, you know, you see the ladies
Speaker 1: in the audience kind of squirming in their seat a
Speaker 1: little bit like swooning. Yeah, they swoon. He does a
Speaker 1: good job with that. But this one's called Ringlets, and um,
Speaker 1: he has quite a few books out. I think one's
Speaker 1: coming out soon. Um. Here we go, young prom ladies
Speaker 1: and loud dresses and ringlets mingle outside the restaurant and
Speaker 1: oversize men, suit jackets, their dates, smile, smoking, shivering, pretending
Speaker 1: not to shiver. The thing you said was dead is
Speaker 1: not dead. No virgin deserves a cigarette. We should head
Speaker 1: to the emergency room and just pop our head in
Speaker 1: and say hello. Tell them we are all right, so
Speaker 1: they don't think we only visit when things are bad.
Speaker 1: We're breathing without tubes today. They don't make pills yet.
Speaker 1: For this feeling, it's like finding fruit in the snow.
Speaker 1: I want to call down cocktails and black tire jacks
Speaker 1: from the heavens. I want to break into something that
Speaker 1: kind of good. Your eyes are the kind we have
Speaker 1: all been waiting for. When I hear a single note
Speaker 1: sustained in a room with bad lighting, I think of us,
Speaker 1: both of our bodies shivering nice good stuff. And that's
Speaker 1: an example of just you know, one of his I mean,
Speaker 1: sort of playful, but some of them are really really funny,
Speaker 1: like he's kind of part comedian up there sometimes, Derek Brown,
Speaker 1: Derrick Brown, good stuff. We didn't even talk about poetry.
Speaker 1: Slams do we need? Yeah, well, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a championship. Talk about poetry like a tournament. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: you got your poetry and you move on. And I'm
Speaker 1: assuming I've never seen one, but I don't think you
Speaker 1: take the same poem for round around around. Hopefully you
Speaker 1: have different poems so people don't have to hear the
Speaker 1: same one like four or five times, and I think
Speaker 1: at the end, if you end up tied, you like Wressell. Sure,
Speaker 1: as is the tradition. Right, you got one? I do. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say f but that's not what Philip
Speaker 1: Larkin writes. Philip Blarkin, he's British. I think he's writing
Speaker 1: in this fifties sixties. Maybe I think um, and he
Speaker 1: is good. You may introduce me to him. This one's
Speaker 1: called this be the verse. They f you up, your
Speaker 1: mom and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.
Speaker 1: They fill you with the faults they had and add
Speaker 1: some extra just for you. But they were left up
Speaker 1: in their turn by fools and old style hats and
Speaker 1: coats who half the time were sappy, stern and half
Speaker 1: at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man,
Speaker 1: it deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early
Speaker 1: as you can, and don't have any kids yourself. Wow.
Speaker 1: I love that guy's I love that poem. Just uh,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna finish with um. Probably my favorite new
Speaker 1: poet and new meaning just around now is David Berman
Speaker 1: of the band Silver Juice, who I got into them
Speaker 1: because he did an now he's he's buddies with uh.
Speaker 1: Steve Malcolmus and Bob Nistanovitch from Pavement, and THO wasn't
Speaker 1: Malcolm us in Silver Juice he was for a couple
Speaker 1: of albums, and so wasn't Astanovitch and uh Burman was
Speaker 1: the songwriter and it was kind of mountainous of side
Speaker 1: project and shout out to Nistanovitch. I kind of know
Speaker 1: now because of this podcast, I'm getting to meet my heroes. Anyway, Burman,
Speaker 1: he's putting on many books of poetry and what I'm
Speaker 1: called Actual Air, which on the cover features the King
Speaker 1: and Queen Building over in Dunwoodie, which is kind of funny. Anyway.
Speaker 1: It's called Imagining Defeat by David Burman. She woke me
Speaker 1: up dawn, her suitcase like a little brown dog at
Speaker 1: her heels. I sat up and looked out the window
Speaker 1: at the snow falling in the stand of black Jack trees,
Speaker 1: a bus ticket in her hand. Then she brought something
Speaker 1: black up to her mouth, a plum, I thought, but
Speaker 1: it was an asthmat in hailer. I love that line.
Speaker 1: I reached under the bed from my men thols, and
Speaker 1: she asked if I ever thought of cancer, Yes, I said,
Speaker 1: but always as a tree way up ahead in the
Speaker 1: distance where it doesn't matter. And I suppose a dead
Speaker 1: soul must look back at that tree so far behind
Speaker 1: his wagon, where it also doesn't matter, except as a
Speaker 1: memory of rest or water. Though to believe any of that,
Speaker 1: I thought you have to accept the premise that she
Speaker 1: woke me up at all. Dave Berman, Wow, that was good,
Speaker 1: good one. That's why I want to like go back
Speaker 1: and read again. You can do that here, Okay, uh man,
Speaker 1: we did poetry, man, Yeah, we didn't mention illustrations. You know,
Speaker 1: you can have illustrations with your poetry. It's not like
Speaker 1: the Great Chill Silverstein article points out Um was very
Speaker 1: famous for using great illustrations to enrich the poetry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you wouldn't really get the poem without the illustration.
Speaker 1: Like Something's Missing is about a man who's sitting there
Speaker 1: like I dressed myself, and he lists off all this
Speaker 1: stuff that he put on, but he still feels like
Speaker 1: something's missing. And then in the illustration is not wearing pants,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't quite get it, you know. Or my
Speaker 1: poem you might have a image of a kid crashing
Speaker 1: in a pile of leaves, right, but you would never
Speaker 1: say that that's what he was doing. It would just
Speaker 1: end and then have an arrow pointing to the picture,
Speaker 1: and underneath the arrow would say get it right. Question. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about poetry, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of places that you could start, like go
Speaker 1: to the Poetry Foundation for example. That'd be a great
Speaker 1: resource for you to just find some poems to start
Speaker 1: reading out loud to yourself in your bedroom at night alone.
Speaker 1: You were starting to sound like Steve Rule. Oh the
Speaker 1: stupid library. Put that in your milk. Uh, since I
Speaker 1: said put that in your milk, it's time for a
Speaker 1: listener mail. Uh, this is about band names. Um, hey guys,
Speaker 1: I've been listening for a while now. I'm loving it. Also,
Speaker 1: really enjoy all of Josh's Simpsons references since I know,
Speaker 1: Hey Matt. By the way, we met Matt Graining once
Speaker 1: in person, and um, he was very kind to us
Speaker 1: and we said that we had a podcast where we
Speaker 1: mentioned the Simpsons quite a bit, and he actually asked
Speaker 1: for the name and wrote it down and then he
Speaker 1: looked at us bed the eye, crumpled the paper and
Speaker 1: threw it away right. Uh. He was very nice. So
Speaker 1: I wonder if he listened. Yeah, we have signed scripts scripts.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was awesome. Yeah, that was bucketless stuff. And
Speaker 1: big thanks to Jesse for the millionth time for that experience. Um, anyway,
Speaker 1: here we go. Since I know you two can appreciate
Speaker 1: solid band names, I want to tell you this worry.
Speaker 1: The other day. My wife was trying to tell me
Speaker 1: about the time she went to see a band. She said,
Speaker 1: I can't remember their name, and like a genius volt
Speaker 1: of lightning out of nowhere, I just blurted out Pig
Speaker 1: Chesterton in the knuckle Ducks. It as if my brain
Speaker 1: in the universe were one solid band name creating machine.
Speaker 1: I was super impressed with the odd combo of words
Speaker 1: my brain created and that split second of time. Also,
Speaker 1: to further the laughs and validity of this is a
Speaker 1: band name, my wife actually said I don't know who
Speaker 1: they are. Still makes me laugh. Anyway, Thanks guys for
Speaker 1: such a fascinating, informative and funny show. And that is
Speaker 1: Matt Burns from Gilroy, California. Nice. Thanks a lot, Matt.
Speaker 1: That was a that was a pretty good email. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just a channel. That band name not bad, He's a
Speaker 1: band name generator. Agreed. Oh, I've got one for you,
Speaker 1: the Benedict Comberbatch name Generator. It just comes up with
Speaker 1: all sorts of random stuff. My favorite is that's a website, yeah, Benman,
Speaker 1: snap comer button? What is it? Just rerange? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good stuff. Man. I love the Internet. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch of this, like Matt did,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark
Speaker 1: and at s Y s K podcast. Charles is at
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook and at facebook dot com.
Speaker 1: Slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com