Scott Cairns' "Musée"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2024

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s poem is inspired by one of our favorites here at the Daily Poem.

Librettist, essayist, translator, and author of ten poetry collections, Scott Cairns is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Missouri. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Image, Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and both have been anthologized in multiple editions of Best American Spiritual Writing. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and the Denise Levertov Award in 2014.

His most recent book of poems, Lacunae, is available wherever books are sold.

-bio via Paraclete Press

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.
0:04.5	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, April 26, 2004.
0:09.7	Today's poem is by Scott Cairns, and it's called Musei.
0:14.1	This is a poem inspired by or in conversation with the famous ecstatic poem by W. H. Auden,
0:23.3	M. de Bozar, which you can find in our daily poem archives.
0:29.3	Auden's poem begins about suffering, they were never wrong, the old masters,
0:35.2	meaning the Dutch masters painters.
0:38.7	You'll hear that opening line of echoed and taken up in the beginning of Karen's poem.
0:45.9	The poem itself is really more like two voices layered over one another.
0:53.2	So I'll read the poem in its entirety, but then I will go back through and I'll read
0:57.7	just each of the two voices.
1:01.2	One being the voice of the imagined Dutch masters themselves, and then the other being the voice of a speaker commentating.
1:15.3	Here is Muzé from Scott Kierens' 1998 collection recovered body.
1:25.3	The old masters seldom wrong about anything, never quite able to admit it when they were.
1:33.0	Notice, please, the execution of the wretched figure.
1:37.3	That, I suppose, is the most fraught disadvantage in being, Master, especially an old one.
1:43.0	All but veiled by Gerosciro and the prominence.
1:46.9	Still, when it came to suffering, they had the most reliable perspective, compelling
1:51.1	credentials, of the winged tormentors whose features nearly radiate.
1:57.3	They came to it as they came to everything else.
2:00.2	Practice, repetition, unwavering habit.
2:04.5	With pleasure taken in such consummate facility.
	...

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.