Episodit
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Season 1, Episode 6
Transcript
Yusef Komunyakaaâs war poem, âLatitudes,â begins with a curious sentence: âIf I am not Ulysses, I am/ his dear, ruthless half brother.â Chi and Chad discuss what this poem has to say about the aftermath of wars ancient and modern and the power of the subjunctive.
Sources and references:
Yusef Komunyakaa, Warhorses
Yusef Komunyakaa, Emperor of Water Clocks
âLatitudesâ
the episode with the sirens appears in Book XII of Homerâs Odyssey
Penelopeâs test of Odysseus appears in Book XXIII of the Odyssey
Stephen Dobyns, Next Word, Better Word: The Craft of Writing Poetry, chapter eight, "Closureâ
Stacey DâErasmo, The Art of Intimacy
Kirkland C. Jones, âFolk Idiom in the Literary Expression of Two African American Authors: Rita Dove and Yusef Komunyakaa,â in Language and Literature in the African American Imagination, edited by Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay
Allen Tate, âOde to the Confederate Deadâ
Poetry of Hugh Martin
Further reading:
a short biography of Yusef Komunyakaa at the Poety Foundation
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Season 1, Episode 5
Transcript
Chi and Chad close read Robert Haydenâs âA Plague of Starlings,â a tiny poem about a walk across campus that opens out onto the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Platoâs Phaedo, Aesopâs Fables, and the afterlife.
Sources and references:
Fritz Oehlschlaeger, âRobert Haydenâs Meditation on Art: The Final Sequence of Words in the Mourning Timeâ
Mary Oliver, âStarlings in Winterâ
Plato, Phaedo
Haydenâs parting speech for the Library of Congress
Plato, Republic, Book X
Aesopâs âThe Farmer, His Boy, and the Rooksâ
Robert Hayden reading âZeus over Redeyeâ
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
Peter Campion, Radical as Reality: Form and Freedom in American Poetry
Audre Lorde, âThe Brown Menace or Poem to the Survival of Roachesâ
Amber Flora Thomas, âConfessions of a Pseudo-Nature Writer,â p. 779
Further reading:
Robert Haydenâs Collected Poems
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Puuttuva jakso?
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Season 1, Episode 4
Transcript
Chi attempts to fix a problem sheâs been having while teaching W. E. B. Du Boisâs The Souls of Black Folk. Shakespeare, a time-traveling dog, and dislike of overalls are all involved. So are the reparative potential of reading the classics and a one-hundred-year-old pedagogical controversy.
Sources and references:
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Book VI âOf the Training of Black Menâ
for more on the Penn School, see the Penn Centerâs website
Rossa Cooley, School Acres, pp. 12 and 22
The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century
Mount Pisgah is mentioned in Deuteronomy 34:1
Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Book XIV, âThe Sorrow Songsâ
Sonia Sanchez, âListen to Big Black at s, f, Stateâ
Desmond Jagmohan, âMaking Bricks Without Straw: Booker T. Washington and the Politics of the Disenfranchised,â pp. 8-9
For the taxonomy of classical references in The Souls of Black Folk, see Carrie Cowherd, âThe Wings of Atlanta: Classical References in The Souls of Black Folkâ in The Souls of Black Folk: One Hundred Years Later, edited by Dolan Hubbard
David Withun, Coworkers in the Kingdom of Culture: Classics and Cosmopolitanism in the Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois
Keith Byerman, Seizing the Word: History, Art, and Self in the Work of W. E. B. Du Bois
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Season 1, Episode 3
Transcript
Chi and Chad discuss the classical allusions in Wheatleyâs poem, âTo Maecenas.â Who was Maecenas? Why did Wheatley write a poem to him? And how should we interpret allusions?
Sources and references:
M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, âAllusionâ
âTo Maecenasâ
âNiobe in Distress for Her Children, Slain by Apolloâ
âOn Being Brought from Africa to Americaâ
âOn the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefieldâ
Horace, âTo Maecenasâ
Alexander Pope, The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace
Homer, Iliad, Book XVI
Mather Byles, âWritten in Paradise Lostâ
William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 3
Paula Bennett, âPhillis Wheatley's Vocation and the Paradox of the âAfric Museââ
William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, âThe Intentional Fallacy,â p. 477
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism
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Transcript
In this sidebar episode, Chad tells Chi about his close reading of Jupiter Hammonâs first published poem, âAn Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ Aloneâ and what it has to do with the name of a gate in the second Jewish Temple.
Sources and references:
The Collected Works of Jupiter Hammon, ed. Cedric May
Acts Chapter 3
Acts Chapter 4
Strongâs definition of áœĄÏαáżÎżÏ
2 Corinthians 6:2
âWork out your own salvation with fear and tremblingâ is from Philippians 2:12
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Season 1, Episode 2
Transcript
Chad takes a tour through the Joseph Lloyd Manor where Jupiter Hammon, the first published African American poet, was enslaved for much of his life and where he wrote his first poem. The guides, Lauren Brincat and Andrew Tharler of Long Island Preservation, discuss Hammonâs life, poetry, and education.
The title for this episode borrows from Paul Laurence Dunbarâs persona poem, âAn Ante-Bellum Sermon.â The poemâs speaker is an enslaved preacher who uses Bible stories to talk about the promise of emancipation but keeps reminding his enslaved parishioners in this utterly tongue-in-cheek way not to think that these stories have anything to do with their contemporary situation. He explains, with a wink, that heâs talking about freedom âin a Bibleistic way.â In Hammonâs life and poetry the Bible and preaching come together in similarly artful ways.
Sources and references:
Jonathan Edwards, âSinners in the Hands of an Angry Godâ
Jupiter Hammon, âAn Essay on Slaveryâ (with an introduction by Prof. Cedric May and Julie McCown, who discovered the poem)
Jupiter Hammon Project at Long Island Preservation
The Collected Works of Jupiter Hammon, edited by Cedric May
For Oscar Wegelinâs remarks about the repetitiveness of Hammonâs poetry, see p. 29 of the "Biographical Sketch," in America's First Negro Poet: The Complete Works of Jupiter Hammon of Long Island. (Elsewhere Wegelin also writes about the effectiveness of repetition in Jupiter Hammonâs poetry; see his comments on âAn Evening Thoughtâ on page 38.) For Wegelinâs remarks on the religious nature of Hammonâs poetry, see p. 30.
The injunction for slaves to obey their masters appears twice in the New Testament: Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22.
Jupiter Hammon, âAn Address to Negroes of the State of New Yorkâ
Jupiter Hammon, âThe Kind Master and Dutiful Servantâ
Jupiter Hammon, âAn Address to Miss Phillis Wheatleyâ
Jupiter Hammonâs âAn Essay on Slaveryâ interpreted by Malik Work
Jupiter Hammon, âAn Evening Thoughtâ
James Weldon Johnson, âO Black and Unknown Bardsâ
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Season 1, Episode 1
Transcript
Phillis Wheatley was both the first African American woman to publish poetry and a poet deeply engaged with the classical works of antiquity. Chi and Chad discuss how writers and readers have dealt with that complex legacy through Robert Haydenâs 1976 poem, âA Letter from Phillis Wheatley, London 1773.â
Sources and references:
Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
âOn Being Brought from Africa to Americaâ
âNiobe in Distress for Her Children, Slain by Apolloâ
âOde to Neptuneâ
âOn Recollectionâ
Robert Hayden, âA Letter from Phillis Wheatley, London 1773â
Robert Haydenâs reading of the poem in the Library of Congress
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Age of Phillis
Phillis Wheatley Hall, UMass Boston
SS Phyllis Wheatley
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV
Tara Bynum, âChasing Phillis Wheatleyâ
Further Reading:
David Waldstreicher, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley
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Chi and Chad introduce you to the Old-School podcast.
Transcript