All Episodes
Displaying 1 - 20 of 106 in total
The Wife of Usher’s Well: It Fell About the Martinmass
Is it dangerous to cling to the departed, when it is time for them to pass into the afterlife? The folk poet of “The Wife of Usher’s Well” seems to think so. Join Erik...
Epithalamion: An Unusual Invocation
If you've completed high school English, it's likely you've heard of the standard "invocation of the muse" invoked by epic poets such as Homer and Virgil. What would h...
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Does absence make the heart grow fonder? John Donne, our poet who believes so strongly in the united souls of lovers, asks himself what happens to this harmony when th...
The Ecstasy: A Dialogue of One
When you love someone, do you love them with your soul, mind, or body? Is love by one of the faculties superior to that of the others? John Donne meditates on this the...
Since She Whom I Lov'd Hath Paid Her Last Debt: A Holy Thirsty Dropsy
Is it possible to have enough love to be content? Can a Christian be content with God's love, being that God is infinite, or will he always crave more of God? And what...
Start Close In: The Ground You Know
Can you know others without knowing yourself? This is the question which David Whyte interrogates in "Start Close In," as he examines what it means to cross over into ...
Pied Beauty: Dappled Things
We tend to think of beauty in terms of purity and proportion, but Hopkins upends those conventional ideas in "Pied Beauty." Instead, he proposes that God "fathers-fort...
The Banquet: Sweet and Sacred Cheer
In today's episode of The Poetry Fix, tune in for further musings from George Herbert on the Eucharist, Christ's sacrifice, and man's orientation towards his Creator. ...
The Agony: Do You Want to Know
“Do you want to know?” That’s the question that undergirds George Herbert’s “The Agony.” Join Erika Kyba to encounter this poem, in which George Herbert explores the m...
Kubla Khan: Beware, Beware!
Do you seek beauty, or do you fear it? In "Kubla Khan," Coleridge places most of humanity on the second side of that equation; tune in to hear Erika Kyba's analysis an...
Kubla Khan: Caverns Measureless to Man
Have you ever enjoyed a time in your life (or lived through a period of history) marked by prosperity, abundance, and opulence—yet felt a certain unease, especially wh...
The Holy Communion: Leaping the Wall
How do you imagine God in relation to yourself? Is He a distant entity, to be admired from without? Or does He seek to be with you, making His way into your inner soul...
The Tables Turned: A Study Break
Perhaps you've encountered YouTube videos appearing on your feed to tell you to get off YouTube. In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to encounter the...
The Grasshopper and the Ant: Not Quite a Morality Tale
In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba for another bilingual episode. She reads La Fontaine's famous "The Grasshopper and the Ant" in French and English...
The Oak and the Reed: Let us See the End
In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba for a bilingual episode. She reads La Fontaine's "The Oak and the Reed" in French and English, exploring a poem-p...
I Taste a Liquour Never Brewed: Inebriate of Air
In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read Emily Dickinson's "I Taste a Liquour Never Brewed." It's a poem about getting drunk on the beauty of the ...
How Many Nights: Who’s Afraid of the Dark?
In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read Galway Kinnell's "How Many Nights," the work of a modern existentialist poet. We all remember our childho...
Nobody Knows This Little Rose: Taken From the Ways
In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read Emily Dickinson's "Nobody Knows This Little Rose." It's a deceptively simple little poem, in which the po...
The Poetry Fix: Comus, Part Seven
In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read the continuation of Comus and the Lady's first encounter. We have already seen that our heroine has a ver...
Comus: Square my Trial to my Proportioned Strength
In today’s episode of The Poetry Fix, join Erika Kyba to read the continuation of Comus and the Lady's first encounter. We have already seen that our heroine has a ver...