The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #96: Intimations of Immortality

General Introduction
– We read the poem—and it takes awhile
– Committee meetings
– A lot of listener feedback

Theory and Poetry
– Ordinary language
– Why you need the background
– Avoiding Miltonic inversion
– Enjambment
– Meter and rhyme scheme
– Spontaneous overflow of emotion

Ubi Sunt
– Elegy for what used to be
– The Wanderer
– The Wife’s Lament
– Wordsworth stops himself
– Disenchantment and reenchantment

Pre-Existence of the Soul
– A sleep and a forgetting
– Plato and reincarnation
– And what about Nature?
– The Romantics and Hinduism
– Social disenchantment
– Preexistence, not reincarnation

Wordsworth and Mormons
– Their favorite poem ever
– Wordsworth as oracle
– The poet responds
– Posthumous baptism

Wordsworth and Emerson
– Wordsworth’s direct influence
– The little actor’s comic part
– Disgust with imitation
– Their opposite trajectories
– Bronson Alcott’s reaction

Sermonizing
– Pelagianism and forgetting
– Lewis’s childhood
– Suffering and joy
– How poetry influences your imagination