I Could Think of Verse: Recent Episodes
Garfield Dsouza
Work experience seems to have been studiously kept out of this biographical summary of a career. So, this episode sifts through this Résumé to find out whether its writer hid any of that between its lines.
Warning: This episode contains language that may cause trauma and discomfort. Listener discretion is recommended.
(00:00) Warning
(00:11) The Poem
(00:43) Questioning Identity
(01:38) The Evidence
(03:34) Here Comes The End?
(05:34) Answers
(07:26) The Résumé Writer
(08:29) Wrap-up
Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse
Transcript: https://bit.ly/44ljbKn
Background Score:
Sound effects: Pixabay.com and Garfield Dsouza | Glass Of Wine: Monument_Music (Pixabay) | Deep Meditation: TazDev_music (Pixabay)
A line of dialogue that you hear in this episode is that of Bette Midler's character in The First Wives Club. The copyrights of that dialogue and its sound are owned by Paramount Pictures.
A mundane diary entry. A deciding moment at the kitchen sink. Or a reverie on a bothersome afternoon. We hold Megha Harish’sDishesto the light in this episode to see whether all of that and more cascades into the visuals she crafts in the story she tells.
(00:00) The Poem
(00:55) What Do I See?
(02:29) A Matter of Intrigue
(03:25) Hear Discord?
(05:16) Etymology?
(08:10) Megha Tells You Why
(10:47) About Megha Harish
(12:24) How to Share The World
(14:08) Wrap-up
Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse
Transcript: https://bit.ly/3wrBaCg
Sound Effects: Garfield Dsouza
Why that letter? What world? What be the message? and other such questions are what you’re going to find answers to—quite literally—on your own. Here’s the transcript: https://bit.ly/47w5dFp You’ll need it in your investigation.
And here’re the sections and timestamps at which they begin:
- The Poem: 00:00
- What You Need: 00:41
- Questions—Verse 1: 02:48
- Questions—Verse 2: 05:22
- Wrap-up: 09:33
Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse
Sound Effects: Pixabay.com
A chance conversation, a confession, and the very controversial Nobel laureate—all sit alongside one another to make sense of this poem. This six-part episode grabs them all by the collar and asks some questions in the wake of what tumbles out.
(00:00) The Poem
(01:16) The Analysis
(10:24) The Conversation
(12:03) The Confession
(13:34) The Troubadour
(14:22) The Questions
Warning: This episode contains explicit language and description of events that are deeply traumatic. Listener discretion is strongly recommended. Please do not take this warning lightly. I really mean it.
Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse
Transcript: https://bit.ly/3RQ3aHV
Background Score: We Don’t Own The Realms: @you.are.us (Pixabay) | Relaxing: Music_For_Videos (Pixabay)| Autumn Music no. 3: RelaxingTime (Pixabay) | Nebular Focus: Dan Henig
A laundry list of observations, a man startlingly similar to an automated assembly line, and the question of happiness and freedom. This episode inspects these and the threads that bind them into the themes of W.H. Auden's The Unknown Citizen.
Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse
Transcript: https://rb.gy/hv45eh
Background Score: Ceremonial Medley: United States Marine Band | Glass Of Wine: Monument_Music/Pixabay
A window in a village, Mars (of all things!), the Moon (not unsurprisingly), winds, canyons, Neptune and a skyscraper find themselves strung into a poem of 12 lines. Is that a scandal? Or what they’ve been asked by Lola Ridge to portray? This episode and the preceding two (SE01E21 and SE01E22) try to interpret that very portrait.
Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse
Transcript: https://bit.ly/3IdQV2k
Sound Effects: Pixabay.com
A window in a village, Mars (of all things!), the Moon (not unsurprisingly), winds, canyons, Neptune and a skyscraper find themselves strung into a poem of 12 lines. Is that a scandal? Or what they’ve been asked by Lola Ridge to portray? This episode, the one prior to it (SE01E21), and the subsequent one (SE01E23) try to interpret that very portrait.
Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse
Transcript: https://bit.ly/3ww5Fa7
Background Score: Fruits of Life: Jimena Contreras
Sound Effects: Pixabay.com
A window in a village, Mars (of all things!), the Moon (not unsurprisingly), winds, canyons, Neptune and a skyscraper find themselves strung into a poem of 12 lines. Is that a scandal? Or what they’ve been asked by Lola Ridge to portray? This episode and the subsequent two (SE01E22 and SE01E23) try to interpret that very portrait.
Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse
Transcript: https://bit.ly/3uP8Adp
Background Score: The Blue Pearl: Jesse Gallagher
Sound Effects: Pixabay.com
The Christ, St. Peter, and the dogmatic typical are the cast of characters in Hoshang Merchant’s The Father Archetype. On display are Peter’s fate and Jesus, the Son of God; and ideally that’s what you’d expect the poem to concern itself with. But remember, we have Merchant welding its verses together. So does it limit itself to that? Or does it crack open into spaces an archetype hasn’t ventured into before? This episode delves into that very investigation.
Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/45KEchb
Background Score: Fun Disco 1: Musictown (Pixabay.com) | Fruits of Life : Jimena Contreras | Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite: Kevin Macleod
Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Agnus-Dei-X/dp/B00QGC7W3Y
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
A King. His island. His 18th wife. Flying dragons. Stars. And ships with sails. All of them star in this poem about what the said king wore to a party. Pretty innocent a premise, really—harmless even. Or is it? Find out as Episode 19 scrutinises the verses of this poem in minute detail.
Instagram: @icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/44Z6jcs
Background Score: Celestial Melody: Pixabay.com | Sneaky Business: Biz Baz Studio
Sound Effects:Garfield Francisco Dsouza and Pixabay.
Depending on the way you look at it, this poem barely has any connection to any phoneme whatsoever; it occupies approximately three hundredth of the space this blurb does; and yet it did, and continues to, stir up quite a whirlpool of interpretation. This episode dives into that very whirlpool—that also swirls with intrigue—about Aram Saroyan’s four-legged triple-humped miniature.
Instagram: icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/3OmMBBI
Background Score: Dunes: Pixabay | Amber: VYEN | Dream by Dreams: Monument_Music (Pixabay) | On the Island: Godmode
Sound Effects: Garfield Francisco Dsouza and Pixabay
Warning: Contains explicit/strong language. Listener discretion recommended.
On a night like any other, a reader notices crumbling hints of a bookmark on Page 89. As they crumble and falter away from the reader’s eyes, they lure him into inspecting marks he has scratched into his own life. Did those marks hurt? Were they unforgiving? Was there a crime of passion involved? And did the silence in its aftermath murder the ensuing ache?
Anil Pradhan Shrestha’s Bookmark twirls its verses ever so delicately around that very mysterious reverie.
Bookmark has been voiced by Anil Pradhan Shrestha.
Twitter: @thinkofverse
Instagram: icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/3pque5d
Background Score:
Thumri: Sandeep Das, Anisha Roy, and Bivakar Chaudhuri | Cold Blue: Astron | Growing Space: Astron | Nebular Focus: Dan Henig
Sound Effects: Pixabay
A-M-A-N-I. Amani. All of five letters intertwined with three lilting syllables that knit a treasure trove of meanings in languages across continents. Ideally, such a name would have won over everyone’s tongue in a heartbeat. But that wasn’t to be.
Perhaps that muscle in people’s mouths found it hard to flex out air columns that sing that name. Perhaps the key to their voice box was lost (on purpose?). Or perhaps the culprit lay somewhere else. In this episode, Amani Saeed’s Eponymous brings you a very disconcerting electrifying investigation.
Eponymous has been voiced by Amani Saeed.
Twitter: @thinkofverse
Instagram: icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/3puemOZ
Background Score:
Hydra: Huma-Huma | Nebular Focus: Dan Henig
Sound Effects: Pixabay
Ogden Nash let loose his wit and satire in this poem to sketch a rather unholy picture of the people from The Land of the Rising Sun. Episode 15 goes back in time to 1938 to find out why.
Twitter: @thinkofverse
Instagram: icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/3CsUZIS
Background Score (Pixabay.com): Asian Cinematic: Lexin_Music | Quirky Comedy: The_Mountain
Usually, an Indian bazaar always dresses up—no matter what be the occasion. Its dress code involves reams of cacophony, streams of colour, and a sea of some of the most exquisite items to bargain for. The consequent diversity in sight and sound allows for many an interpretation of its ambience and vibe. Episode 14 takes you through one such interpretation of a shopping spree that Sarojini Naidu undertook In the Bazaars of Hyderabad.
Twitter: @thinkofverse
Instagram: icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/3MqiKav
Background Score: Khan El Khalili bazaar, Turkish open marketplace ambience, Indian Gungroos Ankle Bells Improv: Pixabay.com | Raag Bageshree and Raag Pilu: Sandeep Das, Adhiraj Chaudhuri, and Bivakar Chaudhuri | Tabla Compositions in Teentaal: Sandeep Das
Araki Yasusada survived the 1945 Hiroshima bombings, wrote poems about it, and became a poetry-of-witness sensation in the 1990s. His Mad Daughter and Big-Bang keeps the opulence of melodrama miles away while it sketches his anguish at the loss of his daughter in those bombings. The poem is punctuated with muted sorrow and lined with heart-wrenching shock—at least that’s the impression it leaves you with…
Episode 13 picks its way through Mad Daughter and Big-Bang and tries to uncover what appears to be the persona of Yasusada…
Twitter: @thinkofverse
Instagram: icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: https://bit.ly/44jelNr
It consists of seven letters, looks like a misspelling, and hit the headlines sometime around 1969 for being very very ‘expensive’. So is Aram Saroyan’s lighght a poem at all? Or is it some whimsy that, on a whim, picked up a cheque of $750 from the USA’s National Endowment for the Arts? Episode 12 tries to find answers to those very questions.
Twitter: @thinkofverse
Instagram: icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: http://bit.ly/3JOtiNT
Background Score: Nebular Focus: Dan Henig | Waltz of the Flowers: Tchaikovsky | Fruits of Life: Jimena Contreras | Nevada City: Huma-Huma
There’s a bad poetry contest ‘dedicated’ to its poet. It has been parodied often enough—and not by way of flattery; and for all practical purposes, it has been dismissed as being archaic and sentimental enough to be considered meh poetry.
Even so, does Trees, written by Joyce Kilmer, have something in its verses for you to savour? Episode 11 reads, and reads between, the lines of the poem to see if that's a possibility.
Twitter: @thinkofverse
Instagram: icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: http://bit.ly/3KYa2zW
Background Score: Longer Distance: TrackTribe | Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite: Kevin Macleod
Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Agnus-Dei-X/dp/B00QGC7W3Y
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
The mirror. That silver pool in which you look at your self over and over. You consult it when you want the truth that the world shies away from telling you. It seems to be adequately honest—most of the time; and yet, I’m sure you may have wondered whether the mirror, like the human being you are, is being a bit too honest with its opinion of you. Sylvia Plath’s Mirror picks up this pool of silver and takes us beyond what lies in its reflection. And Episode 10 is just delighted and fascinated with what Plath unravels.
Twitter: @thinkofverse
Instagram: icouldthinkofverse
Shownotes: http://bit.ly/3HZlRmq
Background Score: Cold Blue: Astron | As You Prevent Do: pATCHES | On the Island: Godmode
Four verses. Jack and Jill from your nursery days. And an introspection. Vikram Seth dices and chops all of those with more than a sliver of humour and his tongue perhaps somewhere firmly in cheek and serves up Dubious.
Episode 9 takes a closer look at Dubious and tries to dissect what flavour those ingredients lend to the poem (and why).
Shownotes: http://bit.ly/3ZKSGLN
Background Score: Nebular Focus: Dan Henig | Retro: Wayne Jones | Industrial Music Box: Kevin MacLeod
Industrial Music Box by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100812
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
l(a. Yes that’s the title of the poem. The open bracket does form part of it. And no, it’s not one of the acronyms or initialisms bandied about these days, and I’m talking about the days such as they are in the year 2023.
What it is is the first line of a poem: a poem spread across nine lines with its longest line a mere five letters.
If that’s all we have and the fact that E. E. Cummings is its creator, the poem lends itself to an interesting exercise of interpretation. Episode 08 dives into that very exercise.
Shownotes: http://bit.ly/3XefqlG
Background Score: Nebular Focus: Dan Henig | Russian River: Dan Hening | The Voyage: Audionatrix
The Voyage by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Artist: http://audionautix.com/
Yes, it’s quite a list of instructions. They are all quirky and allow you —nay, invite you—to think them ridiculous.
Perhaps they had a purpose way way back in time— when Irani cafes had just begun to beat with the pulse of the city of Bombay. These days, that beat within the walls of these cafes has miniaturised itself into a phoneme but stopped short of becoming a gasp. The instructions though still remain on some board somewhere with a story of their own to tell. Episode 07 tries to dust off that very tale from the quixotic exterior that they’re clad with.
Shownotes: http://bit.ly/3vMuCug
Background Score: Nebular Focus: Dan Henig | The Voyage: Audionautix
The Voyage by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Artist: http://audionautix.com/
The first few lines of Nissim Ezekiel's 'The Professor' sketch a rather harmless chance meeting that a student might have to endure and a professor, orchestrate. Which has you expect nothing but mundanity from the poem. But as its resulting monologue takes its chances with its participants, it unveils a portrait that’s as amusing as it is a wee bit melancholic. Listen in as Episode 06 inspects the colours and moods that sketched that very portrait.
Shownotes: http://bit.ly/3XdmKO5
Background Score: Bansure Raga: Doug Maxwell | Nebular Focus: Dan Henig
It’s pre-independence India and Bombay is one of the reasons why a woman in Goa is neglected. The lack of sex is another. And of course, love seems to be in perennial short supply. Joseph Furtado, a poet from Pilerne, Goa, lets the woman talk in his poem and doesn’t strangle her narrative with the demands of patriarchy. Episode 5 travels with him into the world of the wife and finds itself face to face with Furtado himself.
Shownotes: http://bit.ly/3IB2py2
Background Score: Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite: Kevin Macleod
Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Agnus-Dei-X/dp/B00QGC7W3Y
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Insects, animals, the senses, and of course, love. All of those dress up 'Beginning My Studies' as a poem about one's love for nature. But can such a poem—that sallied forth from Walt Whitman into his rather autobiographical ‘Leaves of Grass’—be content to remain just a poem about nature alone? This episode looks at that very possibility.
Background Score:
‘Brandenburg Concerto No4-1 BWV1049 - Classical Whimsical’ : Kevin MacLeod; licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100303, Artist: http://incompetech.com/; ‘Drifting at 432 Hz’: Unicorn Heads; and ‘Feels’ : Patrick Patrikios
It’s all of two stanzas and yet manages to accommodate the eccentricities of a conversation well within itself. Small wonder then that Elizabeth Bishop calls the poem just that: ‘Conversation’. Episode 2 is all about that very ‘Conversation’.
P.S.: It’s no small wonder Bishop wrote it though: the aesthetics of this poem are second nature to her.
Background Score: 'Amber': VYEN | 'Nebular Focus': Dan Henig
What do you get when a man steps onto a subway station and is captivated by the faces he sees adrift in the milling swarming crowd? Well, you get ‘In a Station of a Metro’—with a little help from Haiku coupled with the brilliant ethereal imagination of the very very controversial Ezra Pound.
Background Score: 'Length of Light': Amulets | 'Under Cover': Wayne Jones
Oh it's just a press conference of an introduction. The usual questions asked and the usual answers given, with a slight bit of temper and patience lost in between! :-D Enjoy!