"Hap" By Thomas Hardy

Topics mentioned in this episode:

-The Ohio Poetry Association -Milton: Anapests or nah? -Revisions of elisions -Bach deserves some rubato now and then -Thomas Hardy: Poet, novelist, romantic, modernist, man of mystery. -Shout out to those weird inbetweeners Robinson and Frost -What "hap" happens to mean -The Dante Rossetti of sonnets -Lear, Job, and other sad, god-smacked men -What exactly is in this ecstasy? -The awkward moment when you realize that both the horrific theological scenarios you talk about accurately describe the Christian god. -Cool it with the spondees! -A bad god is better than no god -Where mete and meter meet. -Cretics and Amphibrachs? Somebody stop me! -Hardy has some assumptions to answer for -The real difference between believers and atheists -The fractal dance of chaos and order in the universe -The universe desires order via us. -Two kinds of "dice" are twice as nice -Two kinds of "doom" threaten and loom -Scansion to bacchic excess -Bill Coyle! -As usual, the Greeks did it first

Text of poem:

Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

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My favorite poetry podcasts for: Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet: Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /) Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u) Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /) Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u) Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u) Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /) Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u) Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)