"Marriage As A Problem of Universals" by Dick Davis

Topics discussed in this episode include:
 
-The joy of comparing like-minded poems 
-The Platonic dilemma of romantic love 
-Heroic couplets 
-The Problem of Universals 
-Plato 101 
-The contemptus mundi of Platonism 
-The Renaissance vogue for Platonism 
-Petrarch and the legacy of the Western love lyric 
-Poetic structure as the mirror of thought structure 
-Marriage is inherently anti-Platonic 
-Plato vs. Aristotle 
-Deduction vs. Induction 
-Malachi, Heraclitus, and the Buddha 
-Cyclical vs. Linear enlightenment 
-Marriage as spiritual practice 

Text of poem: 

Marriage As A Problem of Universals

For Meera and Navin Govil 

Marriage is where 
the large abstractions we profess 
are put gently in their small place— 
the holist’s stare 
in love with Man has managed less 
than eyes that love one aging face. 

Marriage believes 
the universals we desire 
are children of a worldly care— 
while Plato grieves 
for stasis, the refining fire 
men pass through is the lives they share. 

Marriages move 
between the symbol and life’s facts, 
from Beauty to this troubled face— 
though what we love 
is Truth, Truth flares and fades in acts 
of local, unrecorded grace.