The Canon Ball

And we come to the conclusion of our read of the first version of Lyrical Ballads.  Want to know what Claude has been on about for the past few years with the term ontological/epistemological crisis? Here’s your answer with a close exploration of Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” the poem that closes the volume. 

The Canon Ball is part of the Agora podcast network. If you’re online check us out at thecanonballpodcast.wordp...

In this episode, Claude and Dan continue their journey into Lyrical Ballads and cover the varied sallies of William Wordsworth. Excerpts from uncompleted plays, touching ghost story poems, further streetside harangues from beaten down people, there’s something for everyone and always a lot more going on than it seems at first blush! Claude explores Wordsworth’s place among the Romantics and Dan is moved to wax poetic about the publ...

We’re one poem in to Lyrical Ballads and by god is it a wild one! We’re reading through and contemplating Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” (1798 spelling), one of the weirder gothic poems in the English language and one hell of a way to start a poetic project. Why would a mariner shoot an albatross with a crossbow? Why would a mariner even have a crossbow? We try to get to the bottom of these mysteries as we begin dipping...

It’s an Intelligent Speech miracle! Not only will Daniel and Claude discuss Borges, Claude will also appear on a panel with Ray Belli of Words for Granted, Kevin Stroud of History of English, and Dan Morris of Tracing the Path on Lost Connections in Language and Literature. Claude’s part of the panel will entail a short consideration of the possible personal relationship between John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and John Dryden. So toni...

It’s that time of year again. The Intelligent Speech Conference is just around the corner! The theme this year is “Escape,” and out of sheer perversion Daniel and Claude are going to discuss the works of Jorge Luis Borges, a writer mostly known for writing tales involving inescapable intellectual mazes. Can Borges find a way out? Can Claude and Daniel? Come see us at Intelligent Speech and find out!

Intelligent Speech is Saturda...

Dear Listeners: will you be our valentine? In this special romantic bonus episode, Claude and Dan take a look at the romantic poetry of John Donne. There is even more hidden meaning and beauty than just the superficial double entendres and suggestive verse. The Canon Ball mingles the erotic and the divine once again! Seems like a theme in the canon...

The Canon Ball is a member of the Agora podcast network. If you’re online chec...

Claude takes Dan back to school for a crash course in poetics. We take a dive into the structure and rhythm of poetry, how people who study poetry talk about it, and what the seasoned poetry reader should keep an ear out for. Learn to tell your iambs from your dactyls!

The Canon Ball is a member of the Agora podcast network. If you’re online check us out at thecanonballpodcast.wordpress.com, find us on Facebook @TheCanonBallPodc...

We did it! Out of the Faustian Aristocratic Age fire and into pure, straight up, uncut romanticism by way of Lyrical Ballads, the joint production of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Did Lyrical Ballads break new ground? … no. Did it shatter the poetic norms of British poetry all at once, brushing stuffy aristocratic heroic couplet satires into the dustbin of history? … no. Did it incite a literary revolution, breaki...

This is it! The final two acts of Faust Part II! It’s the surprisingly straight-forward, if somewhat fragmented, acts IV and V of Goethe’s life’s work. Will Faust be saved? Yes! Will we applaud that fact? No! Will we get sidetracked with a disgusted and frustrated meditation on Faust’s proto-fascist designs and how those designs can be seen at work in the contemporary American culture of this the year of our lord 202...

Boo! Did we scare you? Well, ‘tis the season. We’re back with an extra special bonus episode for Halloween on Poe, Freud, and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The Canon Ball is a member of the Agora Podcast Network, and as part of our embrace of all things creepy in the month of October, the network has pooled much of its talent to produce a set of spooky episodes under the heading of Agoraphobia.

Here’s a link to the first episode which...

And here we are with Faust Part 2, Act 3, in which Daniel and Claude make much of a little. The act may be short, but there’s a lot to say with a long digression on Byron. 

The Canon Ball is a member of the Agora Podcast Network, and as part of our embrace of all things creepy in the month of October, the network has pooled much of its talent to produce a set of spooky episodes under the heading of Agoraphobia. 

The first e...

Ok, major sexual content warning on this one. And if that’s not going to get you to listen, we don’t know what will. We’re discussing the metaphysical ramifications of a floating, glowing, sentient jar of semen which must mean that we’ve made it to Act 2 of Goethe’s Faust Part 2. Come for the university humor (literally: Mephistopholes takes a whole scene out just to prank on a grad student), stay for the attempts (on the part of G...

We interrupt our Faust-a-palooza to bring you a sneak preview of our presentation for the upcoming Intelligent Speech Conference, a day-long virtual conference on June 27, featuring education and historical podcasters presenting on their fields of expertise. For all the details on how to attend, head over to https://www.intelligentspeechconference.com/ 

Ever get baffled by a high school English teacher who convinces you tha...

Note: Due to technical difficulties, there's some interference and muffled audio on Daniel's side of the conversation but it shouldn't disrupt things too much. We'll make sure it's sorted out by the next episode.

Some days you just want to pass out in a pleasant field and have all your major misdeeds wiped from existence. Welcome to the first act of Faust Part 2 in which the whole of Faust Part 1 is either negated or ignore...

Listener, have you ever been violently ambivalent about a work? So overwhelmed by your lack of ability to come up with a sensible reading that you doubt your own ability even to take a side? Well, we have… So here’s Faust Part 1 part 2! Ummm… maybe put the kids to bed for this one. We get a little rowdy and very raunchy. But it’s not us, we swear! It’s Goethe making us contemplate the metaphysics of blueballing! In any case, if you...

Well, we’ll be damned, it’s the first part of our dive into Goethe’s Faust. Technically this is part one of Faust Part 1. We cover everything from the three introductions to the beginning of the Gretchen plot. Essentially, this is the episode where we get bogged down in Goethe’s ontological/epistemological outlook, theological reconfiguration, and existential meditations. The pervy stuff comes next episode

when we tackle the Gretche...

This is it! The beginning of our Faustathon! This is big and it’s gonna take a few months, so we figured we’d start with some background information on Goethe, the man behind Faust. Like with Cervantes, the more you know about the context, the deeper and richer the content. Fortunately, Claude has an in with a professor of German literature. In this introductory episode interviews his friend Rachel about Goethe, the Sturm und Drang...