🐳 First things first
Happy birthday to Herman Melville, who turns 204 on August 1.
🍇 Discussed in this episode
The poem read aloud on the mountain hike where Herman Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Failed to mention the name of the poem on air. It’s “Monument Mountain,” named after the mountain they were on.)
Melville’s poem “Monody,” written after Hawthorne’s death.
Ada Calhoun’s AMAZING book, Also a Poet, about Frank O’Hara, one of the central figures of the New York School of Poets.
Calhoun’s father, the longtime New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, tried and failed to write a biography of O’Hara in the 1970s—a failure that bedevilled him the rest of his life. In 2018, Calhoun discovers this abandoned project, and sets out to finish the book that her father couldn’t figure out. The results are brilliant.
Regarding the New York School of Poets, the book Frizzelle mentioned is The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets. It’s by David Lehman (not, as Frizzelle says on air, David Leeming—that’s James Baldwin’s biographer).
Vievee Francis’s book Forest Primeval: Poems.
Mary Oliver’s book A Thousand Mornings: Poems.
Also discussed
Frizzelle sees Jake’s cringe comedy favorite I Think You Should Leave (discussed on our last episode) and raises him his cringe comedy favorite, The Comeback starring (and co-created by) Lisa Kudrow.
You know The Comeback is where RuPaul got the line he says on his TV show, right?
In snack news, Frizzelle tries Jake’s favorite snack — the so-called “conventional meat stick” (another reference to last episode).
Which brings us to an important poll:
Please help us settle this debate
Do you agree with Jake that a conventional meat snack is a good snack? Or do you agree with Frizzelle that these are disgusting?
To settle this rift developing between the podcast hosts, we must turn to you—our listeners.
In closing
Who’s your favorite artist of the Renaissance?
Matt, Lisa, David, Matthew, Courtney, or Jennifer?
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