"Paradiso XIV, 63" by Matthew Buckley Smith

Mea culpa: I forgot to mention that the last line of the poem can also be read in the following sense: desire to LIVE and not merely to EXIST ("be" alone). In this reading, it is the body which allows the soul to actually "live."

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Matthew's podcast, "Sleerickets" -The Dantesque pairing of this and the following episode -A defense of the "embrace materiality" agenda -"Being Human" by C.S. Lewis -Literary power couple Matthew and Joanna -Alice Allan's podcast "Poetry Says" -Dante's Commedia -The heavenly soul's desire for their body at the rapture -Italian (Petrarchan) sonnets -We're enjambin' -If you took a shot every time I mentioned Milton, you'd be mildly buzzed sometimes. -Le mot juste -Quoting Revelations like a Southern Gothic reverend -David Cronenberg's "Videodrome" -Aspiring beyond the cross -Flesh as sartorial joy -Anti-Buddhism -A sniffling desire? -Human touch is next to godliness

Text of poem:

Paradiso XIV, 63

Even in heaven, then, there is desire: for resurrection in the appointed time, when out of blackened earth new flesh will climb beyond the cross of every storm-whipped spire into that harmony kept by the choir assigned each soul, whose naked pantomime clothes itself there in joy, like sense in rhyme, like lyrics in the plucking of a lyre;

for this, but also for the body’s own relentless, unrepentant want—to feel cool water on the brow, to bend and kneel within the house where skin and hair and bone meet in a smoky, sniffling, crassly real desire to live and not to be alone.

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My favorite poetry podcasts for: Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet: Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /) Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u) Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /) Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u) Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u) Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /) Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u) Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)