
John Donne, painted by Isaac Oliver
Download Link: Released 2020.12.28
If it must be Donne, let it be done well! The panel reads Donne’s selected poetry and prose: a Christmas sermon, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, “The Flea”, and selections from both “La Corona” and “Holy Sonnets”.
Tags: A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Death Be Not Proud, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Holy Sonnets, John Donne, La Corona, Poetry, Prose, The Flea

George Herbert
Download Link: Released 2020.11.16
The panel examines the poetical works of George Herbert, discussing the Christian theological implications found in the language of three of his lyric poems, each of which is composed on a religious topic: “Prayer (2)”, “Divinity”, and “Love (3)”.
Tags: George Herbert, Poetry

James Russell Lowell
Download Link: Released 2020.10.26
The panel examines selected verse of American fire-side poet James Russell Lowell, with a brief survey including some light verse on cigars and seasons, and some more serious writing on nautical themes featuring sirens, seaweed, and ocean-side lyres.
Tags: An Ode of Thanks for Certain Cigars, James Russell Lowell, Poetry, Seaweed, The Finding of the Lyre, The Sirens, Under the Willows

Robert Lowell
Download Link: Released 2020.10.19
The panel reviews the biography of, and some selected works by, the twentieth-century poet Robert Lowell, including his “Falling Asleep over the Aeneid”, “Memories of West Street and Lepke”, and “Four Spanish Sonnets”, with special attention to form.
Tags: Poetry, Robert Lowell

Alexander Pope
Download Link: Released 2020.09.28
The panel reads Book I of Alexander Pope’s translation of The Iliad, discusses Pope’s approach contextually, compares that approach to the modern translations of Fitzgerald and Fagles (amongst others), and considers theoretical commentary on translations.
Tags: Alexander Pope, Homer, Poetry, The Iliad

One speculative source for Camlann: Porth Cadlan, Wales
Download Link: Released 2020.09.21
The panel examines the biography of John Masefield before reading and examining excerpts from his Arthurian cycle, Midsummer Night, with special attention on the unique aspects of Masefield’s recasting of traditional Arthurian mythological elements.
Tags: Arthuriana, John Masefield, Midsummer Night, Poetry

Calliope and Clio
Download Link: Released 2020.09.14
The panel reviews the epilogue-like Mutabilitie Cantos of the Faerie Queene, reviewing scholarly opinion about their place in the whole poem, and considering the interrelations of the Greco-Roman pantheon to Nature, Time, and the Judeo-Christian God.
Tags: Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, Poetry

King Arthur and the Questing Beast, by Aubrey Beardsley
Download Link: Released 2020.09.07
The panel reviews the second half of Spenser’s book of courtesy, with attention given to the scholarly view of C. S. Lewis, Northrop Frye, and others, that Courtesy represents the central portion of the poem and that it is the essential Spenserian virtue.
Tags: Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, Poetry