The secret life of the poem
Saturday 8 January 2005 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Ian McMillan introduces a new series for The Verb in which the Tom Paulin explores the Secret Life of the Poem. Over the next four weeks he will be looking behind the stanzas of seemingly familiar poetry and revealing the hidden histories and meanings behind them, beginning today with He Fumbles At Your Soul by Emily Dickinson. Ian will also be marking the 40th anniversary of the death of T S Eliot with a reassessment of his reputation as a dramatist.
Programme Details
Ian McMillan and all the Verb team welcome you to the first Verb of 2005!
TOM PAULIN launches a series of master classes on close reading with a painstaking examination of Emily Dickinson's poem "He Fumbles at Your Soul"
Paulin, an acclaimed poet, scholar, author and broadcaster demonstrates that reading between the lines is no substitute for carefully examining them. With references to Henry James, classical mythology and William Blake, Paulin peels back the poem's layers of allusion and traces its web of sound and sense to reveal Dickinson's subject, "the consuming force of Evangelical Protestantism in American culture'.
In the week of the fortieth anniversary of the death of T.S. Eliot, the renowned theatre critic
MICHAEL BILLINGTON argues that Eliot's plays are in many ways as rewarding and provoking as his poetry. 'Murder in the Cathedral' is perhaps Eliot's best-known play, but Billington makes passionate cases for 'Family Reunion', 'Sweeney Agonistes' and his favourite, 'The Confidential Clerk'.
There is new performance from EBELE AJOGBE, whose rich and funny poems draw on her Nigerian heritage, as well as her London life. Ebele began writing when she received a message offering a trip to the United States in return for some verses. By the time Ebele established that the offer was a hoax she had launched herself into poetry: as Ian McMillan puts it, "God Bless that scam."
And as the epic blockbuster "Alexander" opens in cinemas, classicist MARIA WYKE and Greek and Latin translator SHOMIT DUTTA discuss cinema's attempts to echo the speech of the ancient Romans and Greeks: will the likes of Brad Pitt and Colin Farrell stoke or dampen interest in the source texts of all modern literature?
