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00:00:01
Teaser
1.1k Plays2 years ago
Not the first proper episode of the podcast but just me, talking for a few minutes about what I hope the podcast will become. The room a poem makes.
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Transcript
Introduction to Close Readings Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Close Readings podcast. I'm your host, Cameron Javidizadeh, and this won't be the first proper episode of the podcast so much as it'll be a teaser, a chance for me to talk for just a couple minutes about what I hope the podcast will become.
Episode Structure: Guest Critics and Chosen Poems
00:00:18
Speaker
So the idea here is simple. Each episode will feature one guest and one poem. The guest will be a critic or scholar of poetry whose work I love,
00:00:32
Speaker
And the poem will be a poem that that guest has chosen. Really all I've asked them to think about in making their selection beyond the kind of practical matter of it being a poem that's short enough for us to read in its entirety during the episode
00:00:49
Speaker
and linkable so that listeners who want to can call it up on their phone or computer screen or what have you and look at it as they listen. Beyond that, all I've asked my guests to think about is that the poem be a poem that they love.
Exciting Guest Line-up
00:01:09
Speaker
So the poem will be at the center of the episode.
00:01:14
Speaker
And I'm really excited to say that already, even with this harebrained scheme and its infancy, I've managed to line up a really exciting preliminary list of guests. And I can say in advance that the poems we'll be reading here will vary widely.
00:01:35
Speaker
over historical period, national literature, and so on.
Conversations: Poems, Biography, and Literary Theory
00:01:42
Speaker
And of course, I mean, to go along with that, areas of expertise from my guests
00:01:48
Speaker
The poems will be at the center of our conversations, but my hope is that the conversations will have a kind of freedom to them, a kind of air and space to breathe in them. Close reading will be at the center of what we do. I mean, that's why I've called the podcast Close Readings.
00:02:08
Speaker
But I hope that we'll also have the chance to digress where it seems useful, where I think it'll be illuminating, and to talk about things like biography, the poet's life, to talk about the critical tradition that the poem has engendered, to talk where it feels relevant about literary theory,
00:02:29
Speaker
but also to make room in our conversations for talk about our own personal experiences, my guests and mine as readers of poems.
Cultivating Intimacy Through Poetry
00:02:41
Speaker
So out of all of that, my hope is that another sense of the podcast title, Close Readings, will emerge. And what I have in mind here is the experience of closeness, of proximity, of intimacy,
00:02:59
Speaker
that comes when you pay attention to something, perhaps especially when you pay attention to something beautiful, something that you love with someone who is far away. My hope in first thinking of this podcast was that I might get a chance to have that experience with minds that excite me.
Invitation to Subscribe and Engage
00:03:26
Speaker
And now that I've announced the podcast, my hope is that others will want to spend some time in that room too, in the room that a poem makes. Well, thank you for listening. Please subscribe. And I hope that we can talk again soon.