Folie a Deux: Laura Riding and Robert Graves

Versecraft

Soundtrack to today's episode
Topics discussed in this episode include:
-"On Portents" by Robert Graves

-"The White Goddess" by Robert Graves

-"Life With The Real White Goddess" by Louis Simpson

-Poetry Messiah Witch Cult

-The Fugitives

-Misadventures in polyamory

-"A Survey of Modernist Poetry" by Riding & Graves

-"The Cool Web" by Robert Graves

-The squishiness of children

-The double-edged sword of language

-"Rational Meaning: A New Foundation for the Definition of Words" by Laura Riding

-"Death As Death" by Laura Riding:

To conceive death as death

is difficulty come by easily,

a blankness fallen among

images of understanding,

death like a quick cold hand

on the hot slow head of suicide.

So is it come by easily

for one instant. Then again furnaces

roar in the ears, then again hell revolves,

and the elastic eye holds paradise

at visible length from blindness,

and dazedly the body echoes

‘like this, like this, like nothing else.’

Like nothing—a similarity

without resemblance. The prophetic eye,

closing upon difficulty,

opens upon comparison,

halving the actuality

as a gift too plain, for which

gratitude has no language,

foresight no vision.
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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 (/ /)