“A Ragged Patch of Glow”: Recent Episodes
Wyoming Catholic College
Reflections on works of great lyric poetry from Dr. Glenn Arbery, President of Wyoming Catholic College
In honor of Father’s Day, Dr. Arbery reflects on Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays.”
In today’s episode, Dr. Arbery discusses a poem that has been much in the public consciousness of late, William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming.”
After a brief hiatus to host a successful in-person graduation for the Wyoming Catholic College Class of 2020, Dr. Arbery returns to his beloved poetry with William Butler Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium.”
Dr. Arbery with the second episode in his two-part series on Wallace Stevens’s “Of Modern Poetry.”
Dr. Arbery with the first in a two-part reflection on Wallace Stevens’s “Of Modern Poetry.”
Inspired by the “Virtual Poetry Hour” that poet Dana Gioia so generously hosted for the Wyoming Catholic College community, Dr. Arbery discusses Mr. Gioia’s “The Burning Ladder.”
Dr. Arbery discusses the importance of being less terrified of T. S. Eliot’s poetry, such as “The Boston Evening Transcript.”
In today's episode, Dr. Arbery recites and reflects upon a WCC favorite, W. B. Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”
Inspired by his grandchildren and their innate love of poetry, Dr. Arbery reflects on Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” The podcast episode he references, in which he fleshes out a bit more of his thinking behind “A Ragged Patch of Glow,” can be found at www.wyomingcatholic.edu/podcast#current.
Inspired by a recent article from America Magazine's Ashley McKinless, Dr. Arbery examines A. E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young.” The article can be found at www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/05/01/visit-rural-catholic-college-has-171-students-12-horses-and-zero-textbooks.
Dr. Arbery discusses heroism in the context of W. B. Yeats’s “An Irish Airman foresees his Death.”
Dr. Arbery sits in his backyard and reflects on A. E. Housman’s “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now.”
Dr. Arbery recites three poems by Catharine Savage Brosman, “Broken Landscape,” “Aspen Grove,” and “White Water.”
In today’s episode of “A Ragged Patch of Glow,” Dr. Arbery hopes that Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Spring” will prove prophetic.
In honor of Shakespeare’s birthday, Dr. Arbery reflects on Claudius’s “O, my offense is rank” monologue from “Hamlet.”
Dr. Arbery on W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.”
Dr. Arbery doubles up today, reciting Ben Jonson’s “Still to be neat, still to be dressed” and George Herbert’s “Jordan (I).”
Stealing a tiny bit of Sir Patrick Stewart's thunder, Dr. Arbery takes a look at Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 65.”
Dr. Arbery recites “one of the best poems I know for anyone who has a bad temper,” Timothy Steele’s “Sapphics Against Anger.”
Dr. Arbery, thoroughly enjoying himself with William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say.”
Dr. Arbery recites a particularly fitting poem for Easter Monday, George Herbert‘s “Easter Wings.”
For Good Friday, Dr. Arbery reflects on Gerard Manley Hopkins‘s “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief.”
Dr. Arbery recites and analyzes a WCC favorite, Gerard Manley Hopkins‘s “God‘s Grandeur.”
Dr. Glenn Arbery discusses William Wordsworth‘s “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room.”
“I have started a blog just to look at a lyric poem a day—insights, glimpses of emotion, intuitions of beauty. I don’t have a program of instruction in mind, just a way to draw on the heights and depths of the capacities of language. I hope that the poems bring a moment or two of clarity.” -- Dr. Glenn Arbery, President of Wyoming Catholic College