Poetry Koan
97 episodes - English - Latest episode: 30 days ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsA poem in the shape of a person talks to a person in the shape of a poem.
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Episodes
Episode 55: Schubert's Ghost - Essence and Nihility
June 15, 2024 11:43 - 27 minutes - 24.7 MBThis episode is about Schubert's awful and awesome bohemian life/music/death; a Victor Hugo sonnet from "Les Contemplations" ("La mort et la beauté sont deux choses profondes"); K.G. Nishitani on Nihility, sin and redemption; Fernando Pessoa's Fragment 363 (love, possession and illusion, the interplay of beauty and horror), with visuals courtesy of a walk around Rickmansworth Lake with Max listening to Sviatoslav Richter play Schubert's Piano Sonata No. 18 in G Major: https://www.youtube.com...
Episode 56: i thank You God for most this amazing (e.e. cummings)
March 20, 2024 16:17 - 6 minutes - 6.14 MBi thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any--lifted from the no of all nothing--human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (n...
Episode 56: Death Whispers In My Ear
March 20, 2024 10:15 - 6 minutes - 5.94 MBI think this might work better as a video? -- Death whispers In my ear: Live now, for I am coming. -Virgil
Episode 55: Death Whispers In My Ear
March 20, 2024 10:15 - 6 minutes - 5.94 MBI think this might work better as a video? -- Death whispers In my ear: Live now, for I am coming. -Virgil
Episode 54: Poetry Is A Destructive Force (Awimbawe Chop Suey)
March 03, 2024 02:27 - 22 minutes - 30.5 MBBrigit Pegeen Kelly reads for Wallace Stevens' poem "Poetry Is A Destructive Force" and we then discuss. Poetry Is a Destructive Force That's what misery is, Nothing to have at heart. It is to have or nothing. It is a thing to have, A lion, an ox in his breast, To feel it breathing there. Corazón, stout dog, Young ox, bow-legged bear, He tastes its blood, not spit. He is like a man In the body of a violent beast. Its muscles are his own . . . The lion sleeps in the sun. Its nose is on...
Episode 52: Killing Rabbits (Seven Days/Shelter From The Storm)
February 25, 2024 02:16 - 22 minutes - 30.5 MBAre there any connections to be made between Miroslav Valek's poem Killing Rabbits (read here by the American poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly), and Craig David's R&B "banger" Seven Days from the year 2000? Many. Killing Rabbits On Sunday after breakfast, when air is halfway to ice, and thin flutes of mice squeak in the chimney. On Sunday after breakfast to walk on virgin snow to the hutches. For the pink right to remove your gloves. To stick them on the picket fence like freshly severed pal...
Episode 53: Killing Rabbits (Seven Days/Shelter From The Storm)
February 19, 2024 02:47 - 22 minutes - 30.5 MBAre there any connections to be made between Miroslav Valek's poem Killing Rabbits (read here by the American poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly), and Craig David's R&B "banger" Seven Days from the year 2000? Many. Killing Rabbits On Sunday after breakfast, when air is halfway to ice, and thin flutes of mice squeak in the chimney. On Sunday after breakfast to walk on virgin snow to the hutches. For the pink right to remove your gloves. To stick them on the picket fence like freshly severed pal...
Episode 51: The Orchard
February 14, 2024 09:00 - 12 minutes - 12 MBAll we need is love. For something and/or someone. Also poetry.
Episode 52: The Orchard
February 14, 2024 02:46 - 12 minutes - 12 MBAll we need is love. For something and/or someone. Also poetry.
Episode 50: Things I Want Decided
February 10, 2024 23:15 - 24 minutes - 33.5 MBInspired by Nader, Farritor and Schilliger's recent AI-assisted decryption of ancient texts, netting them the $1m Vesuvius Challenge Prize, I attempt to crack the code of a 1000 year old Japanese poem using Google's Gemini chatbot. I pose to Gemini the four cryptic questions in the form of a poem about love's paradoxes by Izumi Shikibu, whose work was celebrated by Kenneth Rexroth with the following words: “Of all the poets of the classical period, she has, to my mind, the deepest and most...
Episode 51: Things I Want Decided
February 10, 2024 02:46 - 24 minutes - 33.5 MBInspired by Nader, Farritor and Schilliger's recent AI-assisted decryption of ancient texts, netting them the $1m Vesuvius Challenge Prize, I attempt to crack the code of a 1000 year old Japanese poem using Google's Gemini chatbot. I pose to Gemini the four cryptic questions in the form of a poem about love's paradoxes by Izumi Shikibu, whose work was celebrated by Kenneth Rexroth with the following words: “Of all the poets of the classical period, she has, to my mind, the deepest and most...
Episode 49: LABATYD
February 07, 2024 14:08 - 42 minutes - 58.9 MBAn episode inspired by Tadeusz Dąbrowski's poem "Sentence", Nick Flynn's "Tattoo" and Jack Gilbert's "The Answer": SENTENCE It's as if you'd woken in a locked cell and found in your pocket a slip of paper, and on it a single sentence in a language you don't know. And you'd be sure this sentence was the key to your life. Also to this cell. And you'd spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you'd understand it. But after a while you'd realize you got it wrong, and th...
Episode 50: LABATYD
February 07, 2024 02:45 - 42 minutes - 58.9 MBAn episode inspired by Tadeusz Dąbrowski's poem "Sentence", Nick Flynn's "Tattoo" and Jack Gilbert's "The Answer": SENTENCE It's as if you'd woken in a locked cell and found in your pocket a slip of paper, and on it a single sentence in a language you don't know. And you'd be sure this sentence was the key to your life. Also to this cell. And you'd spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you'd understand it. But after a while you'd realize you got it wrong, and th...
Episode 48: Variations on the Right to Remain Silent
February 03, 2024 11:29 - 53 minutes - 73.3 MBBeing an Anne Carson megafan (looking forward to her new collection Wrong Norma published this month) I decided to spend an evening with an artefact she created in 2016 called Float comprising 22 chapbooks held together in whatever order you choose to read them in, one of which is an essay that I’m about to read here. This essay, "Variations on the Right to Remain Silent", is also linked to my favourite poem in Float which can be found in the chapbook Candor, written originally for a perfor...
Episode 49: Variations on the Right to Remain Silent
February 02, 2024 02:43 - 53 minutes - 73.3 MBBeing an Anne Carson megafan (looking forward to her new collection Wrong Norma published this month) I decided to spend an evening with an artefact she created in 2016 called Float comprising 22 chapbooks held together in whatever order you choose to read them in, one of which is an essay that I’m about to read here. This essay, "Variations on the Right to Remain Silent", is also linked to my favourite poem in Float which can be found in the chapbook Candor, written originally for a perfor...
Episode 48: You See, I Want A Lot
January 31, 2024 02:43 - 27 minutes - 38.4 MBAn episode inspired by two Dalton Day poems: "Love Poem" and "An Understanding" (from the chapbook Overlay). All poems referenced in the episode (in order of appearance): YOU SEE I WANT A LOT You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything: The darkness that comes with every infinite fall And the shivering blaze of every step up. So many live on and want nothing And are raised to the rank of prince By the slippery ease of their light judgments But what you love to see are faces That...
Episode 47: You See, I Want A Lot
January 27, 2024 13:10 - 27 minutes - 38.4 MBAn episode inspired by two Dalton Day poems: "Love Poem" and "An Understanding" (from the chapbook Overlay). All poems referenced in the episode (in order of appearance): YOU SEE I WANT A LOT You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything: The darkness that comes with every infinite fall And the shivering blaze of every step up. So many live on and want nothing And are raised to the rank of prince By the slippery ease of their light judgments But what you love to see are faces That...
Episode 47: Peaches
January 27, 2024 02:42 - 18 minutes - 25.2 MBAn episode inspired by two Wendell Berry poems: A MEETING In a dream I meet my dead friend. She has, I know, gone long and far, and yet she is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: "How you been?" She grins and looks at me. "I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees." EXCEPT Now that you have gone and I am alone and quiet, my contentment would be complete, if I did not wish you...
Episode 46: Peaches
January 24, 2024 00:14 - 18 minutes - 25.2 MBAn episode inspired by two Wendell Berry poems: A MEETING In a dream I meet my dead friend. She has, I know, gone long and far, and yet she is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: "How you been?" She grins and looks at me. "I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees." EXCEPT Now that you have gone and I am alone and quiet, my contentment would be complete, if I did not wish you...
Episode 46: The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song
January 21, 2024 02:42 - 12 minutes - 17.6 MBAn episode inspired by Noor Hindi's poem 🐳 The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song 🐳 The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song & Other Confessions I won’t make metaphors out of fish. If I have to die, I choose the ocean. If I have to live, I choose you. You: Everyone I’ve ever mourned. I believe less & less of sunlight these days. I won’t die alone. To awaken crying is to awaken displaced. Ghost of your joy in the bathtub. A face in the mirror. Your nephew’s pai...
Episode 45: The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song
January 21, 2024 01:03 - 12 minutes - 17.6 MBAn episode inspired by Noor Hindi's poem 🐳 The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song 🐳 The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song & Other Confessions I won’t make metaphors out of fish. If I have to die, I choose the ocean. If I have to live, I choose you. You: Everyone I’ve ever mourned. I believe less & less of sunlight these days. I won’t die alone. To awaken crying is to awaken displaced. Ghost of your joy in the bathtub. A face in the mirror. Your nephew’s pai...
Episode 44: Breathless
January 14, 2024 10:57 - 30 minutes - 42.6 MBIn this episode, I explore our longing for basic trust, weaving together poetry (Pat Schneider, Rilke), philosophy (the Stoical idea of Logos, Cosmic Indifference, Animism), and psychology (Ego Psychology, Object Relations, and the developmental impact of early relationships) in order to make sense of mistrust and the desire for deeper, authentic connections in our digital and fragmented world. I suggest that this existential trust, foundational to well-being, is often found in the poetics ...
Episode 45: Breathless
January 14, 2024 02:41 - 30 minutes - 42.6 MBIn this episode, I explore our longing for basic trust, weaving together poetry (Pat Schneider, Rilke), philosophy (the Stoical idea of Logos, Cosmic Indifference, Animism), and psychology (Ego Psychology, Object Relations, and the developmental impact of early relationships) in order to make sense of mistrust and the desire for deeper, authentic connections in our digital and fragmented world. I suggest that this existential trust, foundational to well-being, is often found in the poetics ...
Episode 44: Insanity
January 05, 2024 02:40 - 19 minutes - 17.7 MBPrimarily an excuse to play you Tindersticks' gorgeous "Travelling Light", but also an attempt to unravel in 15 minutes the world of referential delusions, where ordinary events assume personal significance in ways that cross the boundary between quirky beliefs and mental disorders. Meet, my ex-client 'Eric' and his unshakable notion that love signals are being played to him, and him alone, from a DJ's playlist who professes to have no romantic interest in him at all. The poem mentioned ...
Episode 43: Insanity
January 04, 2024 23:08 - 19 minutes - 17.7 MBPrimarily an excuse to play you Tindersticks' gorgeous "Travelling Light", but also an attempt to unravel in 15 minutes the world of referential delusions, where ordinary events assume personal significance in ways that cross the boundary between quirky beliefs and mental disorders. Meet, my ex-client 'Eric' and his unshakable notion that love signals are being played to him, and him alone, from a DJ's playlist who professes to have no romantic interest in him at all. The poem mentioned ...
Episode 42: Loving What Is
January 02, 2024 23:22 - 16 minutes - 15.2 MBParallels drawn between Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and Byron Katie’s Loving What Is, with a nod to the Philosopher King’s son, Commodus (“a bit of a shit” - Cassio Dio, History of the Roman Empire). Also, some late Wallace Stevens, doing "The Work”. The Plain Sense of Things After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir. It is difficult even to choose the adjective For this blank ...
Episode 41: Ravenous Want
January 02, 2024 20:34 - 3 minutes - 2.82 MBOur desire for meaningful communication with an inner or outer You in W.S. Graham's What Is The Language Using Us For, and Maureen McClane's Open Sky. OPEN SKY open sky— what you want? what you want I want for you, want whatever you want when you say you want everything under the sky— is that what everyone wants never to die— what you want? what you want I want for you, want what you want when you say you want never to die except when you want nothing— what you want? nothing...
Episode 43: Loving What Is
January 02, 2024 02:39 - 16 minutes - 15.2 MBParallels drawn between Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and Byron Katie’s Loving What Is, with a nod to the Philosopher King’s son, Commodus (“a bit of a shit” - Cassio Dio, History of the Roman Empire). Also, some late Wallace Stevens, doing "The Work”. The Plain Sense of Things After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir. It is difficult even to choose the adjective For this blank ...
Episode 42: Ravenous Want
January 02, 2024 02:38 - 3 minutes - 2.82 MBOur desire for meaningful communication with an inner or outer You in W.S. Graham's What Is The Language Using Us For, and Maureen McClane's Open Sky. OPEN SKY open sky— what you want? what you want I want for you, want whatever you want when you say you want everything under the sky— is that what everyone wants never to die— what you want? what you want I want for you, want what you want when you say you want never to die except when you want nothing— what you want? nothing...
Episode 41: A Song For You
December 30, 2023 03:12 - 59 minutes - 81.6 MBAn exploration of Rilke's poem "Du im Voraus verlorne Geliebte," ("You Who Never Arrived"), alongside Leon Russell's "A Song for You," and Martin Buber's book I and Thou, delving into themes of elusive love, the intricacies of human connection, and the profound nature of both inner and outer I-You-ness. (00:00) "You, In Advance, Lost Beloved” (01:30) Only You (1994 Romantic Comedy - watch on YouTube) (03:39) The "Mission" of Rilke's "Du Im Voraus" & The Duino Elegies (07:52) ...
Episode 40: A Song For You
December 30, 2023 03:12 - 59 minutes - 81.6 MBAn exploration of Rilke's poem "Du im Voraus verlorne Geliebte," ("You Who Never Arrived"), alongside Leon Russell's "A Song for You," and Martin Buber's book I and Thou, delving into themes of elusive love, the intricacies of human connection, and the profound nature of both inner and outer I-You-ness. (00:00) "You, In Advance, Lost Beloved” (01:30) Only You (1994 Romantic Comedy - watch on YouTube) (03:39) The "Mission" of Rilke's "Du Im Voraus" & The Duino Elegies (07:52) ...
50: Episode Sabbath
February 05, 2023 14:21 - 16 minutes - 22.4 MBI love it when a plan comes together, don't you? This is the final episode of my personal Cannabis Koan, giving thanks to three people who were instrumental in helping me redefine and recalibrate my relationship with The Green One. -- Marijuana, Cognition, Psychosis, Addiction: Mind & Matter podcast episode Decoding Cannabis: Aerez Batat's podcast Consciously High: Aerez's online program designed to help people change their relationship with cannabis. Sabbath and the Art of Rest: Ezra...
Episode 49. Addiction
February 03, 2023 20:59 - 16 minutes - 23.2 MBThree dumb clichés about addiction. All personally verified by yours truly.
49. Addiction
February 03, 2023 20:59 - 16 minutes - 23.2 MBThree dumb clichés about addiction. All personally verified by yours truly.
48: Nobody's Fault
January 31, 2023 10:54 - 19 minutes - 27.4 MBDo you want to hear the happiest bass-line ever recorded? Here you go! -- KINDNESS Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare...
Episode 48: Nobody's Fault
January 31, 2023 10:54 - 19 minutes - 27.4 MBDo you want to hear the happiest bass-line ever recorded? Here you go! -- KINDNESS Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare...
Episode 47: Nadia
January 29, 2023 17:06 - 26 minutes - 36.9 MBMy last relationship - rescripted as a Romantic Comedy. -- TODAY If ever there were a spring day so perfect, so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house and unlatch the door to the canary's cage, indeed, rip the little door from its jamb, a day when the cool brick paths and the garden bursting with peonies seemed so etched in sunlight that you felt like taking a hammer to the glass paperweight on the living room en...
CK6: Object Relations
January 19, 2023 21:00 - 46 minutes - 63.3 MBVienna, 1884. A young man, highly intelligent, profoundly ambitious, but also nervy and anxious in character is stressing out about his life and prospects. He is something of a fearful over-thinker, which is to say an Enneagram Six in personality style, prone to panic attacks, depression, phobias, and various forms of paranoia. In this period of his existence, he is experiencing something that modern millennials often call their “quarter-life crisis”. Little does he know at the time, that h...
Episode 46: Object Relations
January 19, 2023 21:00 - 46 minutes - 63.3 MBVienna, 1884. A young man, highly intelligent, profoundly ambitious, but also nervy and anxious in character is stressing out about his life and prospects. He is something of a fearful over-thinker, which is to say an Enneagram Six in personality style, prone to panic attacks, depression, phobias, and various forms of paranoia. In this period of his existence, he is experiencing something that modern millennials often call their “quarter-life crisis”. Little does he know at the time, that h...
Episode 45: The Rookie
January 14, 2023 00:00 - 34 minutes - 47.6 MB"Hey Siri, other than buying weed from scallywags in my local park, what other avenues might you suggest I try in order to purchase this psychoactive dried plant matter?" Enter stage left: Harrow School of Weed. -- ROOKIE You thought you could ride a bicycle but, turns out, those weren’t bikes they were extremely bony horses. And that wasn’t a meal you cooked, that was a microwaved hockey puck. And that wasn’t a book that was a taco stuffed with daisies. What if you thought you cou...
CK5: The Rookie
January 14, 2023 00:00 - 34 minutes - 47.6 MB"Hey Siri, other than buying weed from scallywags in my local park, what other avenues might you suggest I try in order to purchase this psychoactive dried plant matter?" Enter stage left: Harrow School of Weed. -- ROOKIE You thought you could ride a bicycle but, turns out, those weren’t bikes they were extremely bony horses. And that wasn’t a meal you cooked, that was a microwaved hockey puck. And that wasn’t a book that was a taco stuffed with daisies. What if you thought you cou...
Episode 44: The Stairway
January 13, 2023 11:37 - 39 minutes - 54.5 MBSo let’s say you’re a middle-aged man seeking to “get into” cannabis, but not living in a country where it’s available to buy legally, and no friends or acquaintance who use the substance anymore, what strategies for acquiring the drug might you wish to follow? This episode of Cannabis Koan is sponsored by The Life You Can Save whose mission is to inspire more people to give to the most effective ways to tackle global poverty and suffering. THE STAIRWAY The architect wanted to build a sta...
CK4: The Stairway
January 13, 2023 11:37 - 39 minutes - 54.5 MBSo let’s say you’re a middle-aged man seeking to “get into” cannabis, but not living in a country where it’s available to buy legally, and no friends or acquaintance who use the substance anymore, what strategies for acquiring the drug might you wish to follow? This episode of Cannabis Koan is sponsored by The Life You Can Save whose mission is to inspire more people to give to the most effective ways to tackle global poverty and suffering. THE STAIRWAY The architect wanted to build a sta...
CK3: Like Someone In Love
December 27, 2022 11:53 - 25 minutes - 35.3 MBWhy do we habitually use mind-altering substances and strategies in ways that are not always healthy? Here's a very simple explanation which holds in some way (I believe) for all of us. Cannabis, and non-cannabis users alike. -- THE DOOR Go and open the door. Maybe outside there’s a tree, or a wood, a garden, or a magic city. Go and open the door. Maybe a dog’s rummaging. Maybe you’ll see a face, or an eye, or the picture of a picture. Go and open the door. If there’s a fog ...
Episode 43: Like Someone In Love
December 27, 2022 11:53 - 25 minutes - 35.3 MBWhy do we habitually use mind-altering substances and strategies in ways that are not always healthy? Here's a very simple explanation which holds in some way (I believe) for all of us. Cannabis, and non-cannabis users alike. -- THE DOOR Go and open the door. Maybe outside there’s a tree, or a wood, a garden, or a magic city. Go and open the door. Maybe a dog’s rummaging. Maybe you’ll see a face, or an eye, or the picture of a picture. Go and open the door. If there’s a fog ...
40. Rilke's Panther & The Cage of Self: Part III (Longing)
December 25, 2022 02:33 - 29 minutes - 27 MBWhat might the essence of Rilke’s Egoic soul reveal to us, if we tried to put it into words, using all our knowledge of the poems transmitted through an Ich, Rilke’s Ich (aka Ego), over many years, as well as the letters, and notebooks, and biographies we have of him to guide us? This might also include our ability, now a century after Freud, to apply everything we have learnt in the last 100 years about the mechanism, or the Operating System of the Ego, the Self? The word that I find best ...
Episode 42: Teenage Dirtbag
December 24, 2022 17:59 - 44 minutes - 61.5 MBThe highs and lows of teenage dirtbag Arthur Rimbaud. -- SENSATIONS Through blue summer nights I will pass along paths, Pricked by wheat, trampling short grass: Dreaming, I will feel coolness underfoot, Will let breezes bathe my bare head. Not a word, not a thought: Boundless love surging through my soul, And I will wander far away, a vagabond In Nature—as happily as with a woman. -Arthur Rimbaud (1870)
CK2: Teenage Dirtbag
December 24, 2022 17:59 - 44 minutes - 61.5 MBThe highs and lows of teenage dirtbag Arthur Rimbaud. -- SENSATIONS Through blue summer nights I will pass along paths, Pricked by wheat, trampling short grass: Dreaming, I will feel coolness underfoot, Will let breezes bathe my bare head. Not a word, not a thought: Boundless love surging through my soul, And I will wander far away, a vagabond In Nature—as happily as with a woman. -Arthur Rimbaud (1870)
Episode 41: Soul & Body
December 23, 2022 13:13 - 12 minutes - 16.8 MBWe are all addicted to something. -- THE JOURNEY One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around and inside you kept shouting their bad advice – though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late en...
CK1: Soul & Body
December 23, 2022 13:13 - 12 minutes - 16.8 MBWe are all addicted to something. -- THE JOURNEY One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around and inside you kept shouting their bad advice – though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late en...