[Elijah Blumov]

Dear denizens of Eratosphere,

My name is Elijah, I'm a poet and bookseller living in Cleveland. I'm a new addition to the Eratosphere community, but have admired from afar the activities and work of its members for some time now, and have been a staunch devotee and practitioner of formal verse for years. It's gratifying and wonderful to have discovered a group of people so passionate about the craft of verse. You all, I feel, are therefore the ideal audience for a new podcast I've been working on, entitled "Versecraft."

Versecraft is a podcast which attempts to provide a more thorough degree of poetic analysis, both on the level of semantics and technique, than has hitherto been the norm among poetry podcasts (this is no shade at all to Sleerickets-- I adore that podcast, and take a good deal of inspiration from it). My goal is not only to expose listeners to excellent formal verse, but to teach a lay audience, through featured poems, the craft and criticism of poetry.

Naturally, I do not presume to "teach" any of you-- many of you are far more experienced than I. I do however think you would enjoy my analyses, or, if nothing else, the poems themselves. This podcast is above all a celebration of the beauties of traditional verse, and the majority of my featured poems will be modern (occasionally contemporary) examples of its use.

I really do hope you enjoy, and I welcome any criticism you may have as well. My audio quality is not as good as Sleerickets YET, but I'm working on it.

You can find the podcast here on Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...t/id1645823917

as well as on Spotify and many other platforms. Or, you can listen directly on my website:

versecraft.buzzsprout.com

Thank you so much for lending me your ears! If you like what you hear, please subscribe, and even leave a rating or review if you're feeling impassioned/generous.

Yours sincerely,

Elijah

[W T Clark]

Hello.

That's very kind of you to say you are influenced by Sleerickets, I will pass your kind words and your podcast onto Matthew and the other co-hosts.

I wouldn't worry too much about audio quality (though certainly improving it should not be discouraged) as you may know from the show, my audio quality is often underwhelming to say the least, and as Alice says to me, people won't care about your quality (unless its unintelligible) if you are saying interesting things. I will listen to your podcast and private message you if you like with any thoughts -- but just from looking at the titles I appreciate your diverse taste, from Herbert to Stevens (there's certainly a tradition there, but also a variety of voice, image-making and style). What I always advocate for is to recognize that "formal" (I find that term personally a little false, all good poetry is formal, free verse is as much a form as metrical poetry) to recognize that metrical poetry isn't just the conversational, or the manner of the seventeenth-century, its modernist and Victorian and Romantic, its omnipresent. I hope you embrace that variety--and from the episode titles at least, you seem to be doing that.
I'll be back once I've listened to you but I wish you well and very good luck and success for now with the podcast. Certainly there is an appetite for this type of thing, I think.

Excitedly,
Cameron

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Hi Elijah

I listened to the episode on Stanley Kunitz, "Organic Bloom".

My reaction is overall favourable, and the quality of the recording was fair.

I felt you recited the poem better in the course of your analysis than in the initial reading, which I found somewhat hectic and over-intense, certainly with some needless emphasis.

Your analysis is interesting and sensible. A couple of things I'd have liked covered:

1) Why is there no comma after "Momentously" (L3)? You yourself pause in the reading of it. And what is the significance of this word?
2) Why does the couplet begin with an archaic inversion ("Enormous floats...")?

Cheers
Duncan

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

I've now listened to your episode on Roethke's "In a Dark Time".

It leaves a generally favourable impression, but here are a few thoughts:

1) Your metrical analysis of L1 is awry. There is no anapaest. It is iambic with the rhythmical variation of a double iamb in the first two feet (pyrrhic/spondee).
2) I'm surprised you make no direct mention of all the concrete correspondences in the poem, in both the individual stanzas - echo/echoing, purity/pure, natural/unnatural and night/night, I/I and one/One - and across the stanzas - dark (S1) with light (S3) and "Dark, dark, my light and darker" (S4); shadow/shade (S1) and shadow (S2); tearless (S3)/tearing (S4).
3) Surely the wind isn't itself crying but making us cry? You should also mention the pun of "winding" in S2 in view of the final word in the poem "wind". So "tearing wind" is a double pun.
4) The fourth line of S3 "A man goes far to find out what he is—" is especially significant as it is the only line in the poem composed of monosyllabic words. It is also a completely regular iambic line. The central line of the poem perhaps.

Cheers
Duncan

[Elijah Blumov]

Thank you so much, Cameron!

Duncan, thank you for your astute, careful comments, and for listening. You’re quite right about L1 in Roethke— a slip on my part. I will mention the correct reading in the next episode. As for your other observations, I can only say that I agree with them, but that I chose to focus on what most interested me in the poems. I will strive in the future to be as comprehensive as I can without risking boredom on the listener’s part. Thank you again for your sensitivity and care.

Best,
Elijah

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Hello Elijah, and welcome to the Sphere.

I'm afraid that I don't have much time available to listen to podcasts at present (and what time I have would probably be spent on Sleerickets at W.T Clark is an active member here).

However, I did have a look to see if there were any interesting formative points I might offer to support.

My formative points would be to:

1. Consider varying the perspective of your repertoire. At the moment all the poems you discuss were written by dead white males (if you take a look at Able Muse YouTube readings you'll see a great deal of live female and male poets writing in form from varying perspectives, most of whose work, imo, is excellent - and there are equally excellent dead female poets, and dead poets of colour, too, of course, for you to choose from if you want to)

2. Publish a masthead/about me or a bio on the podcast home pages. I always look to these first before listening to readings. Bios are, for me, a crucial aspect to understanding the perspective of the publisher/editor/creator. They offer valuable information and without that information available your credibility is weakened. This also gives you the chance to state your purpose. So, if that is about unearthing dead white male poets then that's fine - you've stated your purpose, and since I know that's what you intend I will accept that is your position and move on to another site.

best

Sarah-Jane

[Elijah Blumov]

Thank you for your thoughtful comments, Sarah-Jane. Let me state for the record that I am unequivocally NOT attempting to advance a dead white male agenda. Many of my favorite poets happen to be DWMs, so they will feature prominently on the podcast, but I am committed to celebrating other voices too. Next episode, for instance, will feature the wonderful poet Janet Lewis, and a Robert Hayden episode is coming up soon as well.

A biography would be a good idea— I’ll look into what I can do regarding the website.

Regards,
Elijah

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Thank you Elijah. Fab. I am old-fashioned, but I am fond of a good clear bio with an artist statement/editors statement.

I hope you consider posting some of your work on the forums if you workshop work (I am aware some people don't), too. It took me years to pluck up the courage to post on here, but my work has benefited no end from the critical advice I've received on site.

And how cool you are a bookseller!

best

Sarah-Jane