Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem is in honor of April being (according to now-outdated tradition) the last prudent month till Autumn in which to eat oysters. Happy reading!

Self-effacing, yet having an expressive critical ability; reveling in the possibilities of fancy, though thoroughly at home with the sophisticated nuances of logic and mathematics, Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was an individual who, through his rare and diversified literary gifts and power of communication, left an indelible mark upon the imaginations of children and adults both during his generation and in generations to come. His best-known works, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There (1872) are still enjoyed by readers throughout the world and have been adapted for radio, television, and motion pictures.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.0	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, April 5th, 2004.
0:09.9	Today's poem is by Lewis Carroll, and it's The Walrus and the Carpenter.
0:15.3	There's really no way to classify this poem except as light verse.
0:20.4	However, I think too often light verse is seen as primarily
0:26.6	the opposite of serious poetry and therefore disregarded or demoted. And while to be fair, I am a teacher of young people and often have to remind them, especially
0:41.2	the young men, that wit is not its own justification.
0:46.3	Just because you can say something witty doesn't mean you should or that it will be
0:51.0	of particular value or edification to others.
0:54.9	And yet, I think sometimes this is not said enough,
1:01.1	a witty poem sometimes can be good or valuable for its own sake in and of itself.
1:09.7	And I think that's definitely true of today's poem.
1:12.6	Although there's something more than wit going on,
1:16.5	even if the overall effect of the poem is insubstantial.
1:23.0	This comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, the sequel or counterpart to Alice in Wonderland.
1:33.9	And it's spoken by Tweedle D and Tweedle Dumb.
1:39.1	But I think there's something, a remarkable internal logic or pattern, nevertheless.
1:48.1	It opens with the observation of something unnatural or counternatural, the sun shining in the middle of the night.
2:00.5	Then it's grounded in the hypernatural, the sea being as wet as it could be, the sands being as dry as dry.
2:11.7	And then it proceeds to tell the tale of a both hypernatural and entirely unnatural or counternatural act,
2:26.1	that of mutual friendship and casual feasting.
2:45.5	And at the same time, the violation of the great laws of hospitality and the devouring of the helpstments.
	...

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