Two friends with a passion for 19th and 20th century poetry pick a semi-random poem from that period and have an in-depth, yet off-the-cuff, conversation about it. Contains about 65% serious literary criticism and 35% dumb jokes.Read more »
Two friends with a passion for 19th and 20th century poetry pick a semi-random poem from that period and have an in-depth, yet off-the-cuff, conversation about it. Contains about 65% serious literary criticism and 35% dumb jokes.Read Less
Nursery Rhyme by W.H. Auden
A World Without Cats for Cats Without a World
Have you ever wondered what would happen if we picked a poem about which we could provide very little meaningful analysis? Well, wonder no more!
After a promising preliminary formal analysis (try to keep track of how many times Keir says "Chiasmus" over the course of the episode- spoiler: it's a lot of times) we find ourselves adrift in a sea of strange and vague imagery. We never make it to shore. However, this episode is quite funny (we think), so even though we're not very informative this time around we have a lot of fun. Additionally, even though we didn't find any secret meanings, we both still quite like the poem, so that helps keep things upbeat. (and speaking of "upbeat", I may have recorded an Electronic Dance Music Song about this very poem and put it at the end of the episode!)
Sadly, this poem is still under copyright and hasn't been made legally available online. However, the text of the poem appears in a certain Yahoo Answers question from 2011 which I refer to in the episode (indeed, this appears to be the only place that the text of the poem appears online), so I'll provide that instead:https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110316172400AArsm5n (click "see more" for the text of the poem).
For more detailed show notes, including the diagram I made of this poem's narrative timeline during the episode, please visit www.eephonepoem.com