Showing posts with label audio files. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audio files. Show all posts
Friday, November 12, 2010
Finally, a Podcast!
After kind of a long break, we're back! Check out our lastest podcast. It is mostly based on a post I wrote on The Nature of Children, one of my favorite posts ever. We hope to be back on a good schedule and producing podcasts every week.
Monday, September 27, 2010
"Funeral Blues" by W. H. Auden
If you've ever seen Four Weddings and a Funeral, you've heard this poem. I encountered it for the first time in that movie and loved it ever since for its passion and its use of detail to make us feel the grief of the speaker. Read the poem here.
I like "Funeral Blues" because of its selfish portrayal of love and grief. The love that the speaker felt for the lost lover was world-changing. The lover became the speaker's cardinal directions, the way the speaker oriented himself in the world. And the grief is just as self-centered. The whole world, people, animals, inanimate objects, are all changed by the loss. This view is of a person wholly consumed by emotion and seeing the world, because he sees himself and his lover as the center of it, as wholly consumed.
Click below to listen to my reading of the poem.
I like "Funeral Blues" because of its selfish portrayal of love and grief. The love that the speaker felt for the lost lover was world-changing. The lover became the speaker's cardinal directions, the way the speaker oriented himself in the world. And the grief is just as self-centered. The whole world, people, animals, inanimate objects, are all changed by the loss. This view is of a person wholly consumed by emotion and seeing the world, because he sees himself and his lover as the center of it, as wholly consumed.
Click below to listen to my reading of the poem.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
This is another post in which I share some of my Mini-Con poetry appreciation course. Today, for those of you who want to enjoy poetry more, I give you this piece of advice: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I think Objectivists are particularly prone to this error because we want so much to have clean, wholesome lives, full of rational values that bring us joy. But in our desire to judge and to exclude valueless things from our lives, we sometimes mistake something that isn't perfect for something that is valueless.
In that way, out goes an old tennis partner who is religious. Out goes contact with a mixed family members. And, equally as tragic (at least to me), out goes really quality art that has themes in conflict with our values.
It's important to remember that the idea of God has been inspiring people to write poems and music for thousands of years. The Greeks did it, but it's easy to overlook their Gods because no one believes in them anymore. It can be harder for us to overlook religious art that promotes and supports the religions that are still around. But I hope you will do it, and here's why.
So much of the great art of Western Civilization has religious themes. If you chucked out things dealing with God, you'd have to chuck out Milton, Handel, Bach, John Donne, Michelangelo, Arthurian legends, and Sacred Harp hymn singing. And you'd miss a lot of real value.
It would also be easy to chuck out things that have altruism, destiny, or "negative emotions," but I hope you will take my advice and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. By just letting the religion or destiny be in the poem without obsessing about it, you can find all the other values and the real human experience lying within the poem.
I am posting my reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty" to illustrate this advice. The poem references God and is ostensibly about the wonder of God's creation, but underneath the religion is a joyous appreciation of the real world.
I think Objectivists are particularly prone to this error because we want so much to have clean, wholesome lives, full of rational values that bring us joy. But in our desire to judge and to exclude valueless things from our lives, we sometimes mistake something that isn't perfect for something that is valueless.
In that way, out goes an old tennis partner who is religious. Out goes contact with a mixed family members. And, equally as tragic (at least to me), out goes really quality art that has themes in conflict with our values.
It's important to remember that the idea of God has been inspiring people to write poems and music for thousands of years. The Greeks did it, but it's easy to overlook their Gods because no one believes in them anymore. It can be harder for us to overlook religious art that promotes and supports the religions that are still around. But I hope you will do it, and here's why.
So much of the great art of Western Civilization has religious themes. If you chucked out things dealing with God, you'd have to chuck out Milton, Handel, Bach, John Donne, Michelangelo, Arthurian legends, and Sacred Harp hymn singing. And you'd miss a lot of real value.
It would also be easy to chuck out things that have altruism, destiny, or "negative emotions," but I hope you will take my advice and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. By just letting the religion or destiny be in the poem without obsessing about it, you can find all the other values and the real human experience lying within the poem.
I am posting my reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty" to illustrate this advice. The poem references God and is ostensibly about the wonder of God's creation, but underneath the religion is a joyous appreciation of the real world.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
In honor of Rory, who loves this poem very much, I will give you my recording of "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell.
In my Mini-Con poetry appreciation course, I told the audience that for the uninitiated, older English vocabulary and phrasing can be kind of daunting. I suggested that, when reading poems with language that might be a barrier to understanding, knowing in advance what the poem is about can help make the experience more enjoyable.
Andrew Marvell's poetry, written in the mid 1600s, is certainly old enough and different enough from modern language to give a newbie fits, as is the poetry of Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Robert Herrick, and about a million other poets that are really good. To make these pre-1800 poets accessible, I suggest googling for summaries and background. I think Marvell is actually pretty accessible as pre-1800 poets go, but I've read it so many hundreds of times that it is hard for me to judge just how accessible it might really be.
It's not cheating! You are not using these sources to lie to your high school English teacher about whether you read the poem. And you aren't cheating yourself, either. The joy of poetry (for the layman, not the obsessed devotee) is in the appreciation of its beautiful sound and its powerful meaning. If going to a summary first helps you grasp the meaning and be able to enjoy the sound (instead of worrying over your lack of understanding), do it!
Anyway, to illustrate this point, I gave my explanation of Marvell's poem first, and then I'll read it.
Basically, this poem is proof that men have always been men. Back then, in the mid 1600s, just as now, guys will use whatever means they have to get into a woman's pants. Rich ones use presents. Athletic ones use prowess. Good looking ones use their physical beauty. Smart ones use their brains. Apparently, poetic ones in the 1600s used the common literary motif of "carpe diem."
In this poem, the speaker tries to get his girlfriend to give it up by warning her that death is coming. He would woo her properly if only he could, but time is against them! They better do it right now, cause really, do you want to die a virgin?
Now, if he had just come right about and told her these things, no way was he gonna get laid. But Marvell's speaker has the talent of a 17th century metaphysical poet in his pocket, and he weilds it well. I have no doubt that he got what he wanted. I can't resist his pleas now, and it's 2010. Marvell has been dead for more than 300 years, and he is seducing me from the grave.
So, while I find the poem both hilarious (I mean really, the guy mentions worms invading her dead vagina as an inducement for sex) and compelling (He's so poetical that I would actually fall for that worm/vagina thing), I also find its carpe diem message inspiring. He's right, even if manipulative, that life is too short to pass up joy and pleasure and love and living in the moment.
And it would really suck to die a virgin.
Here's my reading of the poem:
In my Mini-Con poetry appreciation course, I told the audience that for the uninitiated, older English vocabulary and phrasing can be kind of daunting. I suggested that, when reading poems with language that might be a barrier to understanding, knowing in advance what the poem is about can help make the experience more enjoyable.
Andrew Marvell's poetry, written in the mid 1600s, is certainly old enough and different enough from modern language to give a newbie fits, as is the poetry of Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Robert Herrick, and about a million other poets that are really good. To make these pre-1800 poets accessible, I suggest googling for summaries and background. I think Marvell is actually pretty accessible as pre-1800 poets go, but I've read it so many hundreds of times that it is hard for me to judge just how accessible it might really be.
It's not cheating! You are not using these sources to lie to your high school English teacher about whether you read the poem. And you aren't cheating yourself, either. The joy of poetry (for the layman, not the obsessed devotee) is in the appreciation of its beautiful sound and its powerful meaning. If going to a summary first helps you grasp the meaning and be able to enjoy the sound (instead of worrying over your lack of understanding), do it!
Anyway, to illustrate this point, I gave my explanation of Marvell's poem first, and then I'll read it.
Basically, this poem is proof that men have always been men. Back then, in the mid 1600s, just as now, guys will use whatever means they have to get into a woman's pants. Rich ones use presents. Athletic ones use prowess. Good looking ones use their physical beauty. Smart ones use their brains. Apparently, poetic ones in the 1600s used the common literary motif of "carpe diem."
In this poem, the speaker tries to get his girlfriend to give it up by warning her that death is coming. He would woo her properly if only he could, but time is against them! They better do it right now, cause really, do you want to die a virgin?
Now, if he had just come right about and told her these things, no way was he gonna get laid. But Marvell's speaker has the talent of a 17th century metaphysical poet in his pocket, and he weilds it well. I have no doubt that he got what he wanted. I can't resist his pleas now, and it's 2010. Marvell has been dead for more than 300 years, and he is seducing me from the grave.
So, while I find the poem both hilarious (I mean really, the guy mentions worms invading her dead vagina as an inducement for sex) and compelling (He's so poetical that I would actually fall for that worm/vagina thing), I also find its carpe diem message inspiring. He's right, even if manipulative, that life is too short to pass up joy and pleasure and love and living in the moment.
And it would really suck to die a virgin.
Here's my reading of the poem:
Friday, August 13, 2010
Tennyson's "Ulysses"
Now that I have mastered the art of putting audio on my blog (and you would be ashamed of me if you had any idea how long it took me), I thought I would give you my reading of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses," my second favorite poem in the world. Again, this recording came from my Mini-Con poetry appreciation course.
During the course, I used different poems to illustrate some tips that I thought might help the layman appreciate poetry more. I enjoy poems much more when I have some context, including understanding the circumstances in which the poem was written, knowing something about the poet, and having the general understanding of the subject matter that the poet might have expected his audience to have. I used "Ulysses" to illustrate the enjoyment that can be gained by understanding the subject matter of the poem, especially if the author probably expected the readers in his time to know about it.
"Ulysses" was written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (who was, in my opinion, a god among men) in Victorian England. Ulysses is the Latin name for the Greek hero Odysseus. Odysseus, a character in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, was a sly, crafty, intelligent man who thought up the Trojan Horse trick and then had about 14 million adventures on his way home for the Trojan War. Most of you probably know those stories, and if you don't, oh my god, go read them now. In the Odyssey, a prophet foretells that Ulysses will make it home to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus (remember that name) but will leave again on an adventure.
But Tennyson's Ulysses isn't completely like the ancient Ulysses. Tennyson's has a thirst for knowledge and a desire to explore new places that isn't there in the Iliad or the Odyssey. And even stranger, our Victorian Ulysses seems to have a dislike for governing and politics. That's a big departure from the Greek presentation of him. But, what you may not know (that Tennyson's Victorian audience certain did) is that Ulysses appears again in another epic poem - Dante's Inferno.
Except now, instead of being lauded as a hero, Ulysses is being punished in the eighth circle of hell. The medieval Christian church didn't value trickery and slyness like the Greeks. In fact, Dante finds Ulysses in the hell reserved for "Counselors of Fraud," all for his wartime sneaky strategies. Because Dante didn't have access to Homer (only to other writers riffing off of Homer's stories), he gives Ulysses's earthly story a different ending. Since Tennyson stuck with Homer's ending, I won't tell you about that. (Go read the Inferno! You'll love it!)
The important thing that Tennyson got from Dante was a new portrayal of Ulysses's character. Dante portrays Ulysses as a man who lusts after adventure and knowledge to the detriment of his duty; he neglects his (god-given) family and civic responsibilities to go and explore the world. Tennyson latches on to that trait, but without condemning him for it (cause Tennyson rocks!). Our Ulysses, as Tennyson writes him, thirsts for adventure and knowledge, but is heroic because of that thirst and because he will act on it.
Now, with all that context in mind, here is Tennyson's "Ulysses":
During the course, I used different poems to illustrate some tips that I thought might help the layman appreciate poetry more. I enjoy poems much more when I have some context, including understanding the circumstances in which the poem was written, knowing something about the poet, and having the general understanding of the subject matter that the poet might have expected his audience to have. I used "Ulysses" to illustrate the enjoyment that can be gained by understanding the subject matter of the poem, especially if the author probably expected the readers in his time to know about it.
"Ulysses" was written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (who was, in my opinion, a god among men) in Victorian England. Ulysses is the Latin name for the Greek hero Odysseus. Odysseus, a character in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, was a sly, crafty, intelligent man who thought up the Trojan Horse trick and then had about 14 million adventures on his way home for the Trojan War. Most of you probably know those stories, and if you don't, oh my god, go read them now. In the Odyssey, a prophet foretells that Ulysses will make it home to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus (remember that name) but will leave again on an adventure.
But Tennyson's Ulysses isn't completely like the ancient Ulysses. Tennyson's has a thirst for knowledge and a desire to explore new places that isn't there in the Iliad or the Odyssey. And even stranger, our Victorian Ulysses seems to have a dislike for governing and politics. That's a big departure from the Greek presentation of him. But, what you may not know (that Tennyson's Victorian audience certain did) is that Ulysses appears again in another epic poem - Dante's Inferno.
Except now, instead of being lauded as a hero, Ulysses is being punished in the eighth circle of hell. The medieval Christian church didn't value trickery and slyness like the Greeks. In fact, Dante finds Ulysses in the hell reserved for "Counselors of Fraud," all for his wartime sneaky strategies. Because Dante didn't have access to Homer (only to other writers riffing off of Homer's stories), he gives Ulysses's earthly story a different ending. Since Tennyson stuck with Homer's ending, I won't tell you about that. (Go read the Inferno! You'll love it!)
The important thing that Tennyson got from Dante was a new portrayal of Ulysses's character. Dante portrays Ulysses as a man who lusts after adventure and knowledge to the detriment of his duty; he neglects his (god-given) family and civic responsibilities to go and explore the world. Tennyson latches on to that trait, but without condemning him for it (cause Tennyson rocks!). Our Ulysses, as Tennyson writes him, thirsts for adventure and knowledge, but is heroic because of that thirst and because he will act on it.
Now, with all that context in mind, here is Tennyson's "Ulysses":
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Here's a recording of me reading one of the poems from my Mini-Con poetry appreciation class. I want to share lots of the content with the readers of my blog, but you guys will have to forgive me my many flaws, including sound quality, as this was recorded with a camera and not anything super special.
But still, my motto is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. So here's my reading of Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."
I read this poem after explaining that knowing something about the circumstances of a poem's composition could increase the reader's enjoyment. Thomas wrote this poem near the end of his father's life, as his dad was going blind. Thomas hated seeing his father give up and stop living; he wanted his dad to exert himself to action, to go out with a bang instead of a whimper. I like this poem so much because it is such a rousing a call to value pursuit and because it's forward driving rhythm and its repetition really do sound like a person trying to argue and cajole another into action.
But still, my motto is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. So here's my reading of Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."
I read this poem after explaining that knowing something about the circumstances of a poem's composition could increase the reader's enjoyment. Thomas wrote this poem near the end of his father's life, as his dad was going blind. Thomas hated seeing his father give up and stop living; he wanted his dad to exert himself to action, to go out with a bang instead of a whimper. I like this poem so much because it is such a rousing a call to value pursuit and because it's forward driving rhythm and its repetition really do sound like a person trying to argue and cajole another into action.
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