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 collapse.

There is no bitterness in facing them.

The heart that fatally kept them deprived,

and saw them hostile to the living blood,

will pay in blood its error, every vein.

In what is not the gods are reconfirmed,

the candor of their presence briefly seen.

The tragedy leaves nothing else but that.

Then they are gone. The music underground,

the quiet terror of its shifting source,

its echoes vanishing moves in their place.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Come see my Melville lecture tomorrow on Zoom!

-New shirts!!

-The precariousness of literary preservation, and our inestimable losses

-My conversation with Tim Steele

-Wiseblood Books!

-Finlay's Collected Prose here and Collected Poetry here

-"The Wayward Thomist" by James Matthew Wilson (COMING SOON!)

-The gnosticism of Modernity

-"Science, Politics, and Gnosticism" by Eric Voegelin

-"Antony and Cleopatra" by Willy Shakes

-"The God Abandons Antony" by Constantine Cavafy

-The nature of the tragic

-Negative/Apophatic Theology (Via Negativa)

-"That We Should Not Be Considered Happy Until We Are Dead" by Michel de Montaigne

-Juan de la Cruz

-hamartia, hubris, sin

-Ananke and the Music of the Spheres

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

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

-"Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms" ed. by David Lehman

-"Personal Best: Makers On Their Poems That Matter Most"

-In praise of postludes

-Rachel’s Euripides and Dionysiaca

-"Achilles and Odysseus” by Susan McLean

-“Mimesis” by Erich Auerbach

-“Imaginary Conversations” by Walter Savage Landor

-“The Songs of the Kings” by Barry Unsworth

-“Circe” by Madeleine Miller

-“The King Must Die” by Mary Renault

-“Iphigenia” dir. Michael Cacoyannis

-“The Silence of the Girls” by Pat Barker

-The Feminist re-telling of Classical myths trend

-“Liber Tertius Decimus” by Julia Griffin

-“After the Fall” by David Katz

-“The Mazemaker” by Michael Ayrton

-“Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths” by Charlotte Higgins

-“Follow This Thread: A Maze Book to Get Lost In” by Henry Eliot

-“The House of Asterion” by Jorge Luis Borges

-“The Fall of Icarus” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

-“Musee des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden

-D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths

-“Theseus and the Minotaur” by Edwin Muir

-“Megalopolis” dir. Francis Ford Coppola

-The Classical Outlook takes Princeton!

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Als Zarathustra dreissig Jahr alt war, verliess er seine Heimat und den See seiner Heimat und ging in das Gebirge. Hier genoss er seines Geistes und seiner Einsamkeit und wurde dessen zehn Jahr nicht müde. Endlich aber verwandelte sich sein Herz,—und eines Morgens stand er mit der Morgenröthe auf, trat vor die Sonne hin und sprach zu ihr also: „Du grosses Gestirn! Was wäre dein Glück, wenn du nicht Die hättest, welchen du leuchtest! Zehn Jahre kamst du hier herauf zu meiner Höhle: du würdest deines Lichtes und dieses Weges satt geworden sein, ohne mich, meinen Adler und meine Schlange. Aber wir warteten deiner an jedem Morgen, nahmen dir deinen Überfluss ab und segneten dich dafür. Siehe! Ich bin meiner Weisheit überdrüssig, wie die Biene, die des Honigs zu viel gesammelt hat, ich bedarf der Hände, die sich ausstrecken. Ich möchte verschenken und austheilen, bis die Weisen unter den Menschen wieder einmal ihrer Thorheit und die Armen einmal ihres Reichthums froh geworden sind. Dazu muss ich in die Tiefe steigen: wie du des Abends thust, wenn du hinter das Meer gehst und noch der Unterwelt Licht bringst, du überreiches Gestirn! Ich muss, gleich dir, untergehen, wie die Menschen es nennen, zu denen ich hinab will. So segne mich denn, du ruhiges Auge, das ohne Neid auch ein allzugrosses Glück sehen kann! Segne den Becher, welcher überfliessen will, dass das Wasser golden aus ihm fliesse und überallhin den Abglanz deiner Wonne trage! Siehe! Dieser Becher will wieder leer werden, und Zarathustra will wieder Mensch werden.“ —Also begann Zarathustra’s Untergang.

Support the show

BUY VERSECRAFT MERCH HERE.

Please subscribe, rate, and review! Thanks so much for listening.

You can leave me a tip, support the podcast, or request a commission here!

TikTok: @versecraft
Send me a note at: versecraftpodcast@gmail.com

My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)