He says he doesn’t care. He says he makes a point of not caring. He says he prefers faithlessness for himself and his “love.”

Methinks he doth protest too much. He may think so, too. Anyone who advocates apathy risks oxymoronitude.

Here’s Donne’s “The Indifferent.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.4MB)

Scripting News is usually a set of one- or two-liners with links, but every now and then Dave Winer lets loose with something a little longer. Here’s one that takes the cake: “It Worked!”, a report on an incident during Monday’s debut of KYOU, the new “all podcast” radio station in San Francisco. Sure it’s a bit of a rant. Those numbers that don’t mean anything to Dave probably do mean something to the administrators of the public radio station he’s punching, which may be one of the reasons they’re administrators. That said, Dave gets a bunch of things right in this essay. One is that podcasting really is a dream come true for old radio guys and gals: “Of course the really good [radio people] are excited, because podcasting is the realization of the reason so many of them got into broadcasting in the first place.” Another is that public radio is too often a snooze-fest. A third is that people are creative in ways that not only surprise and refresh us, but also stimulate us to reimagine aspects of our daily lives and make something golden out of what appears to be mere dross. Deeply inspiring stuff.

That’s another truth about radio: those invisible voices coming out of nearby objects (call ’em “radios” if you want) simulate a kind of telepathy, or at least an internal conversation. Radio is an intriguing way to virtualize and share consciousness. “The theatre of the mind” is anything but a cliche. And now with podcasting, radio extends its reach and, potentially, its intimacy, while at the same time it allows all of us to share our surprising moments of revelation with each other. Case in point: the other day I was listening to one of Adam Curry’s “Daily Source Code” podcasts, and as Adam walked around his Guildford “cottage” grounds I had a very vivid sense of walking alongside him. Partly that was because of the live you-are-there nature of Adam’s podcasts, and partly it was because Adam is a very skilled radio guy who understands how to let that moment-by-moment narration breathe and convey the experience to the listener. At one point, Adam took us down into a bomb shelter the previous owners had constructed during the Nazi bombing raids of World War II. Adam cleared the brush away, stepped down into the shelter, and suddenly the echo of the room and the sharp change in Adam’s voice gave me goose-bumps all over. I was there in that room with him, feeling the cold and clammy air, and thinking with him about the people who had once huddled in that small space to save their lives.

Just a podcast. Just a moment of revelation that has stayed with me for days and would have been lost otherwise. Just a chance to connect, once again, and very powerfully, with a moment of shared humanity.

At this rate, perhaps I should call the series A Donne Every So Often, or maybe A Donne A Day Most Days.

Here’s one of Donne’s most famous lyrics, “The Sun Rising.” It’s a different twist on the “aubade,” or lover’s song of mournful parting at the break of day. In this poem, Donne has no intention of leaving. Instead, he abuses the sun for a couple of stanzas, then opens into a celebration of love that’s still so intense and intimate it can take your breath away, four centuries later. It certainly leaves me breathless, just as it did the first time I read it almost three decades ago.

As you’ll hear in my commentary, there is a possible dark side to all this apotheosis. Even though Donne and his lover and the sun are all warm, cozy, and basking in the afterglow (both physical and metaphysical), the very completeness of the love raises a small anxiety on the horizon, a cloud no bigger than a man’s fist. I’d say I’m reading too much into the small phrase “nothing else is,” except that Donne knows full well the cost of true love: he married for love but without asking the father’s permission. Since the father was his patron, by the standards of the time Donne had committed a particularly grievous kind of treachery. Donne will later on find the cost of true love to be even dearer than he had imagined in his disgrace. But that’s another blog entry.

For now, cuddle up with your sweetie. All is well. Here’s “The Sun Rising,” by John Donne.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.4MB)

This one’s a little hard to follow and may take a couple of listens before it begins to sink in. My commentary follows the poem and may make it easier, or harder, to understand. You tell me, dear listener.

The poem makes a case for the poet as an exemplary lover, indeed a philosopher of love, one who understands both the essence of love and the best means of publicizing that love–or not. (The poet often argues that his love is elite and would only be degraded if the riff-raff learned of it.) As you’ll hear, the poet speaks directly to the reader, and in some respects turns the reader into a version of himself, almost the way a master would do to an apprentice. By the way, there are nine Worthies, those exemplary men whom the poet boasts he has outdone.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.3MB)

The UMW Faculty Academy on Instructional Technology was a wild and wonderful ride. I’m not recovered; in fact, I may never recover, and I don’t think I’ll mind. More on that exhilarating event soon.

For now, however, A Donne A Day resumes with one of Donne’s more entertainingly sarcastic poems, one that manages to be quite a backhanded compliment as well as an assertion of the poet’s superior faithlessness. If that last adjective-noun combination sounds odd, even oxymoronic, you’re on the right track to encounter a neat, disturbing, and darkly funny little poem.

I’ve heard from a couple of listeners who’d like comment, but at the end of the poem–a good idea, since it will allow anyone who wants the poem as a self-contained unit to stop the playback when the poem is over.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.0MB)

A Donne A Day will be on brief hiatus as I help host the University of Mary Washington’s tenth annual Faculty Academy on Instructional Technology. Yesterday I picked up Bryan Alexander at the airport and had a splendid car ride down followed by an intense and rewarding dinner conversation … details to follow. Today we’re joined by Brian Lamb and Diana Oblinger, with more fine presentations and conversation to ensue.

Time to push the snowball downhill and watch it “gather to a greatness.” If all goes well, we may even generate a few podcasts out of the event. Stay tuned.

A colleague at the UMW graduation ceremonies today asked me if I would be offering helpful commentary in my Donne podcasts for all those folks who have trouble with poetry, especially older verse. I’m mulling over the request and would be grateful for any opinions my readers/listeners might have. Commentary can be very helpful. On the other hand, including commentary on the podcast would mean you’d have to fast-forward through my remarks every time you wanted to go straight to the poem. Perhaps I could include commentary on the blog and not on the podcast, but that puts listeners at a disadvantage. Interesting quandary.

Tonight I’ll simply read the poem. It’s one of Donne’s most famous lyrics, and one of his more bitter railings against women. Donne’s love of paradox and puzzle leads him to use various impossibilities to illustrate a cynical mood about life and love. The poem is dramatic, addressing its reader forcefully and directly, as Donne usually does. It’s also meant to be set to music, but that’s for another time.

It’s hard to know how seriously Donne means the reader to take the poem. Is he really as bitter as the poem sounds? Is it a moment’s mood or a settled opinion? Should we laugh or boo? Hard to know. One little point of interest: I think T. S. Eliot’s “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each” from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” owes something to this poem.

Here is “Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star,” by John Donne.

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Tim O’Donnell gave me the good news that Gardner Writes actually made Adam Curry’s “new podcast” list back in April. Thanks, Tim and Adam. Those iPodder listings do show some, um, range; yes they do. Very interesting company. Salute!

Here’s my summer podcast series: A Donne A Day. Each day I’ll read a poem by the English Renaissance poet John Donne. The idea is to share this extraordinary poetry with you, to read it in such a way that it’s more intelligible than it would be if you simply read it silently off the page yourself, and to create a little archive of recordings that can serve as a resource for my students when I teach my Donne seminar in the fall.

Yes, I know: grades were due yesterday at noon. I have no teaching responsibilities until August. And here I go, creating teaching materials.

None of my fellow teachers will be surprised.

I hope you enjoy the podcasts. Not all of them will have commentary or reminiscences. Actually, most of them will not. But today I wanted to make a special dedication to a former teacher who changed my life for the better, Dr. Michael Roman.

Thanks, Dr. Roman. This one’s going out to you: “The Good Morrow,” by John Donne.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.2MB)

I feel like a 16 7/8 rpm transcription record playing at 78 rpm. (There’s some obsolete technology for you.) Actually, I feel as if I’m riding on a 78 rpm slab of shellac, and the pace promises to pick up over the next few days. But lest I forget….

1. The University of Mary Washington’s graduation ceremonies are tomorrow. The reception for senior English majors was this afternoon. I saw many of my favorite students and flashed back to many amazing, transformative moments in the classroom: that is, moments when they amazed and transformed me. I hope one day they understand how important they are to me. Maybe they already do.

We also bid a reluctant farewell to Dr. William Kemp, a Shakespeare scholar and dear friend with whom I have spent many happy hours watching movies, listening to music, cooking up teaching schemes, debating hermeneutics, and generally making sublime nuisances of ourselves. I’ll miss him terribly, but I won’t say goodbye, because now I can bug him even more regularly and with complete impunity.

2. Adam Curry is creating what he hopes will be (in current parlance) a non-evil podcasting network, the Amazon.com of podcasting, in which rich and famous podcasters subsidize small, grassroots podcasters and help to drive traffic to their sites by locating their Big Podcasts in the same directory space (www.podshow.com) as the little guys. The strategy show I heard last Saturday was very interesting along these lines, though it could have used some judicious post-production. (I didn’t need to hear all the hey-pal-come-in off-mike stuff, and I’m usually very tolerant of loose moments like that.) And Adam’s been talking about his plans all week this week on the Daily Source Code. Latest news: a podcast promo channel on Sirius. That’s pRomo, not pomo. Jerry’s not sure the podshow.com concept will have ramifications for teaching and learning (private conversation–write him and ask him to blog his side of the argument). I’m thinking the line between “educational” materials and the rest of the multimedia world will get finer and finer, and may eventually disappear. Never mind the mainstream media: textbook publishers must be ashen with fear.

3. The tenth annual University of Mary Washington Faculty Academy on Instructional Technology is coming up next week: May 10-11 in Combs Hall on the Fredericksburg campus. We’ve got what I think is a very strong lineup of speakers and presentations, poster sessions, workshops, and seminars. Here’s the program. If you’re within the sphere of this blog and you can make it on down, you’ll be very welcome.

I’ll even take you to Carl’s, home of the best soft ice cream on the planet.

5. A new podcast series is on the horizon: A Donne A Day. Watch this space.