"Nor Strange It Is" by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Soundtrack to this episode

Text of poem:

Nor strange it is, to us who walk in bonds

Of flesh and time, if virtue's self awhile

Gleam dull like sunless ice; whilst graceful guile—

Blood-flecked like hematite or diamonds

With a red inward spark—to reconcile

Beauty and evil seems and corresponds

So well with good that the mind joys to have

Full wider jet and scope nor swings and sleeps

Forever in one cradle wearily:

Like those vast weeds that off d'Acunha's isle

Wash with the surf and flap their mighty fronds

Mournfully to the dipping of the wave,

Yet cannot be disrupted from their deeps

By the whole heave and settle of the sea.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-That time Italy almost got involved in the Civil War

-Transcendentalism (or not)

-Hawthorne continues to demonstrate his good taste

-Yvor Winters? Witter Bynner? Who names these people? 

-Previous feature N. Scott Momaday

-Nonce sonnets!

-Antinomian ruminations

-Virtue vs. Goodness

-The cradle and the weed

-Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym"

-Pesky dualities

-Surfing the Tao