I've recently listened to episodes on ***three different podcasts*** I'd like to recommend to you.
1) New Letters on the Air host Angela Elam recently interviewed poet Rick Barot. Among the interesting things Barot said was that poets need to balance the principle of order with the principle of disorder in a contained chaos that makes a poem interesting and effective.
He stressed the importance of remembering that ordering some element or elements of a poem can kill the emotional vigor of the piece if not counterweighted with disorder, which can be achieved in an unexplained leaping between ideas, for example. On the flipside, all chaos without any ordering principle makes a piece disparate and risks excessive interiority or obscurity. It's the tension between the two that Rick Barot counsels poets to strive to find in every poem, not neglecting one principle in favor of the other.
Good advice, no matter which principle you naturally lean toward. Enjoy the whole episode.
2) Skylight Books Reading Series recently featured visual artist Danielle Krysa (the popular blogger of The Jealous Curator) talking about her new book Creative Block: Advice and Projects from 50 Successful Artists. Krysa discusses her own creative block and how she attempted to solve it by beginning her blog, thus discovering that studying others' art simultaneously inspired and discouraged her. So she contacted artists and asked them about their experiences with creative block, and it turns out at just about all of them have had periods of self-doubt and inability to work. So she put together this book, which is instructive for any creative type, visual or otherwise.
Krysa is charming; enjoy both the podcast episode and her blog, a place where I have lost countless hours.
3) NPR's Ask Me Another quiz show this week featured erudite musical group They Might Be Giants, singing (Don't Hate the Villain) Hate the Villanelle. The whole quiz show is, as usual, highly amusing and worth listening to, but if you just want the song, you can watch it on YouTube or on Vimeo. (The Vimeo sound is a bit better. Or listen on iTunes to the entire episode, for the best recording.) Enjoy!
Showing posts with label Angela Elam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Angela Elam. Show all posts
Friday, June 27, 2014
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Podcast Quote-a-Thon
I've been listening to a lot of podcasts recently, and here are a few excerpts:
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From Tieferet Talk, Tieferet Journal's radio show, an interview of Molly Peacock by host Melissa Studdard, about Peacock's book The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delaney Begins Her Life's Work at 72, which includes the following:
“You can't be jaded if you really attend to detail. Jaded means life is predictable. But life is not predictable in its exhilarating specificity…When you don’t understand the world and when you’re overwhelmed, one thing you can do is simply to describe it. If you describe it to yourself, it allows you at least to recognize it. You may not be able to comprehend it, but it’s there in front of you, in a palpable way that you are saying back to yourself.” Molly Peacock
“She didn’t meet the goal but she met her vision.” Molly Peacock
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From the New Letters on the Air podcast, the podcast of New Letters Magazine, a posthumous re-airing of an interview of John Ciardi by host Angela Elam, including the following:
“I realized the photographer is photographing himself…..” John Ciardi
“…submit one’s self to it in the knowledge that the language is more wise more able than the practitioner…” John Ciardi
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From the podcast New Books in Poetry, an interview of James Longenbach with host John Ebersole about Longenbach's recent book The Virtues of Poetry, including the following:
"The idea that we are most likely going to be forgotten should liberate the artist and not constrain him or her." John Ebersole
"...the poet whose deepest inclination is to associate risk with submission...." James Longenbach, as quoted by John Ebersole, reading from Longenbach's book
“You can’t write poems all the time. You’ve got to read a hundred of them in order to write one that’s half -decent.” James Longenbach
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From Tieferet Talk, Tieferet Journal's radio show, an interview of Molly Peacock by host Melissa Studdard, about Peacock's book The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delaney Begins Her Life's Work at 72, which includes the following:
“You can't be jaded if you really attend to detail. Jaded means life is predictable. But life is not predictable in its exhilarating specificity…When you don’t understand the world and when you’re overwhelmed, one thing you can do is simply to describe it. If you describe it to yourself, it allows you at least to recognize it. You may not be able to comprehend it, but it’s there in front of you, in a palpable way that you are saying back to yourself.” Molly Peacock
“She didn’t meet the goal but she met her vision.” Molly Peacock
**********
From the New Letters on the Air podcast, the podcast of New Letters Magazine, a posthumous re-airing of an interview of John Ciardi by host Angela Elam, including the following:
“I realized the photographer is photographing himself…..” John Ciardi
“…submit one’s self to it in the knowledge that the language is more wise more able than the practitioner…” John Ciardi
**********
From the podcast New Books in Poetry, an interview of James Longenbach with host John Ebersole about Longenbach's recent book The Virtues of Poetry, including the following:
"The idea that we are most likely going to be forgotten should liberate the artist and not constrain him or her." John Ebersole
"...the poet whose deepest inclination is to associate risk with submission...." James Longenbach, as quoted by John Ebersole, reading from Longenbach's book
“You can’t write poems all the time. You’ve got to read a hundred of them in order to write one that’s half -decent.” James Longenbach
**********
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