Versecraft

Versecraft

Exploring the art of poetry through the craft of some of the world's best but most underrated poems.

Episodes

July 9, 2025 78 mins

Topics discussed in this episode include:

Wiseblood Books

The University of St. Thomas MFA Program

My episode on James Matthew Wilson

"The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking" by James Matthew Wilson

"The Wayward Thomist" by James Matthew Wilson

The Complete Essays of J.V. Cunningham

Jacques Maritain

"Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky

"La Vita Nuova" by Dante

Matthew 16

"In Ghostlight" ...

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Topics discussed in this episode include:

Matthew Buckley Smith over at SLEERICKETS

Alice Allan over at Poetry Says and In Future Posts

Ethan McGuire over at The Flummoxed

Zina Gomez Liss over at The Beauty of Things

Cameron Clark over at Minor Tiresias

Rationalist, Socialist, Humanist, Bicameral Demo-Oligarchic Utopia?

Ironkraft and Cheesecraft

An incomplete list of people I envy: Kendrick Lamar, Shane McCrae, James Matthew Wilson, Chris ...

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June 10, 2025 39 mins

Poems/Prose Lyrics featured:


"The Eagles" by Jones Very

"The Oracles" by A.E. Housman

"An Equation" by Hyam Plutzik

"Plato and the Serpent" by Catherine Davis

"Crow's Theology" by Ted Hughes

"Changeling" by Rhina Espaillat

"Hardy" by Robert Mezey

"The Master of Metaphor" by Carl Dennis

"Lust" by J.D. McClatchy

"An Incident in the Sublime&...

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Topics discussed in this episode:

-Email me your questions!! 

-Cameron's substack, "Minor Tiresias"

-My poem, "At Woodlawn" in Merion West

-My poem, "Aztec Support" in Light

-My episode on Learning the Secrets of English Verse

-"Missing Measures" and "All the Fun's In How You Say A Thing" by Timothy Steele

-De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum

-"Notes On Metre" by Otto Jespersen

-Th...

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May 14, 2025 22 mins

Soundtrack to this episode

Text of poem here

Send me your AMA questions for Versecraft 100!

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Greatest Generation poets

-"Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry" by Howard Nemerov

-"De Anima" by Aristotle

-On loose iambics

-The ghost of Sapphics

-A transexual volta

-Life engenders the great romance of death

-"Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

-Th...

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Soundtrack to this episode

Text of poem:


Bird Watcher

It returns to the same nest. The watcher lies

beneath spring brushwood to await its coming–

at watch so long he dreams himself becoming

less than himself and more, the landscape’s eyes. 


Though far beyond his eyes, beyond the range

of field-glasses, he knows it breaks no bonds: 

its instinct to his knowledge corresponds,

riding the current of the season’s change. 


What is th...

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April 17, 2025 31 mins

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Go buy Learning the Secrets of English Verse!

-The Monumentalist Manifesto

-My episode, The Idea Of A Poetry Conservatory

-Poetry as skill

-The Fitzgerald system of scansion

-Parallelism, Syllabics, Loose Iambics, Stress-counting, rhyme-driving, sprung rhythm, oh my!

-"All the Fun's In How You Say A Thing" by Timothy Steele

-Sonnets don't cure polio, but they're pretty gr...

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Soundtrack to this episode

Text of poem

Topics discussed include:

-Your host has an identity crisis

-RIP POETRY SAYS!

-Listen to Alice on Milton and with me.

-Moira Egan!

-My Pindar essay

-My Melville essay

-The Iron Lyre!

-Matthew, Alice, and I argue about The Iron Lyre

-THE ERN MALLEY HOAX

-The New York School and the Generation of '68

-Read the entire text of The Darkening Ecliptic here.

-A Primer of English Versification

-Dickinson and ...

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Soundtrack to this episode

Link to translations


Topics discussed:


-Alice tackles Milton on Poetry Says

-Check out my Substack here! 

-My episode on Ryan Wilson

-My episode on Geoffrey Hill

-The long and short of a long fellow

-Longfellow's Dante

-The Monster of Literature

-Romance languages and hendecasyllabics

-Faithful to which fidelity?

-Translational hijinks ensue

-Mosaic rhymes!

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISI...

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February 18, 2025 27 mins

Soundtrack to this episode

Note: My use of the phrase "men without chests" and Matthew's were completely coincidental! 

Text of poem:


Lachrimae Antiquae Novae

Crucified Lord, so naked to the world,

you live unseen within that nakedness,

consigned by proxy to the judas-kiss

of our devotion, bowed beneath the gold,

with re-enactments, penances foretold:

scentings of love across a wilderness

of retrospection, wild and object...

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Soundtrack to this episode


Text of poem:


Nor strange it is, to us who walk in bonds

Of flesh and time, if virtue's self awhile

Gleam dull like sunless ice; whilst graceful guile—

Blood-flecked like hematite or diamonds

With a red inward spark—to reconcile

Beauty and evil seems and corresponds

So well with good that the mind joys to have

Full wider jet and scope nor swings and sleeps

Forever in one cradle wearily:

Like those vas...

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January 10, 2025 40 mins

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Jewelcraft, Housecraft, Guitarcraft

-The utilities of form

-David Gilmour

-The mysticism of scientific discovery

-Technology: What is it good for?

-Cosmic double-consciousness

-Does a cosmic perspective lead to enlightenment or nihilism?

-The functional aesthetics of Nature

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECRAFT SUBSTACK HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! T...

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January 3, 2025 51 mins

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Simple Syrup

-Why poetry?

-Poetry vs. Music

-David vs. Versecraft

-My "What Is Art?" episode

-The Case For Meter and Rhyme Part I

-The Case For Meter and Rhyme Part II

-The Case Against Versecraft by Matt Wall 

-"Cain" by Lord Byron

-"Empedocles On Etna" by Matthew Arnold

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

VISIT THE VERSECR...

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December 17, 2024 20 mins

Soundtrack to this episode 

Text of poem

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-New Critical Rococo

-The Changing Light at Sandover

-The Ingram Merrill Foundation

-Shape poems

-My George Herbert episode

-"Pindarick Odes"

-"Intimations of Immortality" by William Wordsworth

-"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold

-"Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt

-What do Christmas trees and dying men...

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December 3, 2024 37 mins
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November 20, 2024 29 mins

Soundtrack to this episode

Text of poem here

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Sentimentality

-National character

-Philip Larkin, novelist: "Jill," and "A Girl in Winter"

-"The Movement" movement

-The Oxford Book of 20th Century English Verse

-"Church-Going" by Philip Larkin

-The blindness of historical consciousness

-Temporal and generational erosion

-"Minive...

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Soundtrack to this episode

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Listen to my talk on Melville here

-Listen to my poetry reading with Dan Brown here

-Outsider poetry

-The Education of Henry Adams

-Metrical hijinks

-The inherent negations of blindness

-"Durer: Insbrook, 1495" by Ern Malley

-"Lycidas" by John Milton

-Forging a new sensibility in identitarian poetry 

Text of poem:

The Education of the Blind Poet; Or, Ars ...

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October 23, 2024 27 mins

Soundtrack to this episode

Text of poem:

The Last Act

‘Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, 

Now leaves him. 

It is too often only close to death,

or utter failure, when the mind is held

to truth, we see the outlines of the gods,

those whom we loved but never realized. 

Above us in a void burnt-out and cold,

at unfamiliar heights their forms return

like ghosts to move across the final night,

remote and unappeased in our...

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Soundtrack to this episode

Link to poems!

Read the Classical Outlook poetry issue here!

NEW MERCH HERE

To receive a link to the Critical Path Symposium, follow the email link at the bottom right of this page

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Philip Walsh and Rachel Hadas!

-The Classical Outlook!

-Classical Reception Studies

-"44 Pastorals" by Rachel Hadas

-Prosimetra/Haibun

-"Prose of Departure" by James Merrill

...

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