Episodes

What do we do with--how do we read--can we make us of--a classic and famous metaphysical poem which is also misogynistic?

31 January 2025 5.01 Not My Text! Irony and Ducking Accountability https://waywordsstudio.com An application or two of that dramatic irony we talked about. Along the way, we consider who is accountable for the text: author, character, or reader, and how writers build a narrative distance in texts to allow irony and meaning to operate (and shirking a bit of accountability). Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44688/to-his-coy-mistress Chapters 0...

24 January 2025 An Introduction and Irony https://waywordsstudio.com What is Literary Nomads, anyway? And what does that have to do with Radiohead, Godzilla, professorial assault, and irony? Here is the “reboot” of the main podcast from Waywords Studio. I talk about what it’s all about, but via Johannes Brahms, Godzilla, Clair de Lune, Steve Hackman, Matthew Arnold, irony, and a few other odds and ends. We’re setting up the first main reading for the podcast, Matthew Arnold’s “To His Coy Mist...

The final of three full interviews from the book launch of my poetry book Unwoven. Here, poet Kelly Porter and I discuss how consciously writers might think about structure.

The second of three full interviews from the book launch of my poetry book Unwoven. Here, teacher Sarah Rusinowski considers classroom applications for the book.

The first of three full interviews from the book launch of my poetry book Unwoven. Here, Dr. Jessica Manuel digs at some of the themes and motivations for the book.

The Waywords Podcast is reborn as Literary Nomads: Wider explorations, broader embraces of reading, and (im)practical thinking!

A Winter Solstice story of 1907, when four women begin to tell stories around the fire. . . .

A Winter Solstice tale by an old Irish storyteller, maybe even believable . . .

A Winter Solstice tale of a peculiar kind of terror, this story was recently discovered (2011) among a collection of du Maurier's works completed around the age of 21. This story has mature themes.

Carol Pearson's work following Carl Jung offers us a way to transform our understanding of our own lives, and also how we read the narratives we have so long been taught. I review her strategies for using the archetypes and review her online assessment tool, the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator.

23 December 2021 WayPoint - Theophile Gautier’s “Clarimonde” A reading of Clarimonde, an appropriately creepy story befitting the tradition of Winter Solstice ghost stories. This story in French is titled La Morte Amoureuse. For Waywords Podcast subscribers, think of this as a moment of shifting. In contrast to the idea of captivity explored by Chopin in “The Story of An Hour,” Gautier turns his ideas about upon a very different power dynamic. How do these two viewpoints interact in terms of t...

How do digital art experiences change our reading of original works? Should they be considered a new genre to read?

Why do we defend a canonical "original?" Where does such an idea come from? We discuss what we mean to place a text with authority and visit The Lord of the Rings and "Fur Elise" along the way.

How does one read a story which creates its own rules? What else should we ever do? A sociological look at Adichie's intersectionality.

12 November 2021 Supplement - False Consciousness: Authoring Good and Evil A discussion of our urge to simplify our thinking and reading, including its impact of misinterpretation and loss of compassion. https://waywordsstudio.com Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/adichie-tomorrow-is-too-far/ Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:18 007 and Chinua Achebe 04:46 I Author Me as Good 08:22 Berlin’s False Consciousness 10:22 Character Formulas 12:25 Reading the World 15:01 Take-aways an...

5 November 2021 Episode 2 - Fowles in the Frith How do we determine the meaning of a work which has no author? And what responsibility is there in authoring our own interpretation? We examine the potential meanings of this poem, dig at length into the different ideas of medieval authorship, and find we may have not have wandered yet that far, at all. Foweles in the frith, The fisses in the flod, And I mon waxe wod. Sulch sorw I walke with For beste of bon and blod. https://waywordsstudio.c...

28 October 2021 Supplement - Intentional Fowls and Fallacies A discussion of the Intentional Fallacy in determining meaning. Are the early theorists right that all of the meaning is in the text alone? Is the author irrelevant? What does that mean for me as a reader? https://waywordsstudio.com Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/anonymous-fowls-in-the-frith/ CHAPTERS 00:00 Title 00:19 Intro & Definition 01:59 Poems and Puddings 04:41 Doubling Down on The Fallacy 09:37 Resi...

WayPoint: A reading of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market." wondering how her work might respond to Chopin, how she anticipates the role of author and reader.

Where do we place the tragedy in Kate Chopin's short story? Is it in the protagonist's failure to escape or her failure to believe she can?

An introduction or review to the concept of irony in literature, helpful to those who want to better understand the "twist" ending to the story.

20 September 2021 Episode 1.1 - Reading of “The Story of an Hour” A reading of the short story in anticipation of our first full episode on the Kate Chopin short. story. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully.” === Chapters 00:00 Introduction 00:22 Reading 08:03 Outro https://waywordsstudio.com Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/chopin-story-of-an-hour/ === The Waywords Podcast is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywor...

11 August 2021 Episode 0.1 - Trailer Join me, Steve Chisnell, as we find and lose meaning across modern and classic tales, through ancient and distant verse, atop everything in our many cultures which might be read. I can’t promise what we’ll find along our paths each time, only that you and I will meet it together. “Not all those who wander are lost.” === The Waywords Podcast is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, wit...