Richard Howard's "Oystering"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2023

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Richard Howard (born Oct 13, 1929, died march 31, 2022) was credited with introducing modern French fiction—particularly examples of the Nouveau Roman—to the American public; his translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (1984) won a National Book Award in 1984. A selection of Howard’s critical prose was collected in the volume Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965-2003, and his collection of essays Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States since 1950 (1969) was praised as one of the first comprehensive overviews of American poetry from the latter half of the 20th century. First and foremost a poet, Howard’s many volumes of verse also received widespread acclaim; he won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his collection Untitled Subjects. His other honors included the American Book Award, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the PEN Translation Medal, the Levinson Prize, and the Ordre National du Mérite from the French government. For many years, Howard was the poetry editor of the Paris Review.

Evaluations of Howard usually judge his work as a poet to be his most important contribution to contemporary American literature. However, his work has and continues to attract a wide and enthusiastic audience among readers, academics, and critics alike.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, November 27, 2003.
0:10.1	Today's poem is by the late great American poet Richard Howard, and it's called Oystering.
0:18.4	It's a longer poem, so I will say a few things about it on the front end and then read it once for you.
0:26.2	This is a seasonal poem in my mind, because I grew up with the adage that you should never eat oysters in a month that doesn't have an R in its name.
0:42.5	And I think this has something to do with the temperature of the water where the oysters are grown
0:48.9	or the danger in certain parts of the world of dangerous algae blooms.
0:54.9	Fortunately, for me, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest where it was really pretty safe
0:59.7	and practicable to eat oysters most of the year, but the adage remained.
1:06.5	And so I tend to associate the shucking and eating of many oysters with the autumnal months
1:15.4	and the beginning of the holiday season.
1:21.4	This is a great poem.
1:25.3	I suppose that goes without saying one of these days I'm going to open by saying,
1:30.4	this is a terrible poem. Here it is. Enjoy it. But today, another great poem. And it's lovely because
1:40.2	Richard Howard manages to use or
1:46.5	offer the oyster as a
1:48.5	growing
1:50.3	metaphor for life,
1:53.2	especially the life of the common man
1:55.9	or the aspects of life that are common to every man.
1:58.9	And that
1:59.6	metaphorical interpretation of the poem hovers
2:03.6	just over the surface of the images that he's painting in the language that he's using to describe
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Goldberry Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Goldberry Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.