This is the Goretti Publications podcast; I'm Donald
Goodman.

This is the first episode of our podcast, and so a few
remarks on what we're trying to do here should be
appropriate.  Goretti Publications is a publisher; we
publish books, both original and reprints, and we publish
both original stories and original poetry.  By far our
greatest *quantity* of work is poetry; indeed, for some time
we were publishing a new original poem every week.

Poetry is often neglected, or even sneered at, as if
somehow the great art of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare,
Hopkins, Kilmer, and Sassoon were effeminate or weak.
Indeed, there is effeminate and weak poetry, just as there
is doggerel floating throughout the world.  But poetry *as
an art* is among the most ancient and the most glorious,
and we have long thought it our responsibility to ensure
that it's upheld, respected, and continued by Catholic
artists in the modern day.

So this podcast is, primarily, designed to share that
poetry---along with our stories and other art---with the
world.  Poetry is, after all, primarily an *oral* art, meant
to be *heard* and not merely listened to.

For each episode, we will say something about poetry in
general, as we have done here already; we will read an
original poem; and then we will briefly discuss it, its
form, and its meaning.  Having completed part one of the
show, we will not proceed to part two, the poem.  This poem
is titled "The Fire Which Does Not Consume":

*poem*

First, the structure of this poem.  It is structured as
four stanzas of six lines apiece; the first, second,
fourth, and fifth lines of each stanza is in iambic
tetrameter, while the third and sixth are in iambic
octameter.  But what do these words really mean?

There are many ways to structure a poem (and to be poetry,
the lines *require* structure, about which we will certainly
say more in later episodes).  In traditional stress-based
poetry, which is by far the most common type in modern
English, the lines are divided into *feet*.  The number of
feet is prefixed to the word "meter", using the Greek name
for the numbers rather than the English for historical
reasons.  So:

	"trimeter" --- each line has three feet
	"tetrameter" --- "tetra" plus "meter" --- each line has four feet
	"pentameter" --- "penta" plus "meter" --- each line has
		five feet.  Pentameter is likely the most common of
		all modern English meters.
	"hexameter" --- "hexa" plus "meter" --- each line has six feet
	"heptameter" --- "hepta" plus "meter" --- each line has seven feet
	"octameter" --- "octa" plus "meter" --- each line has eight feet

And so on, for as long as we care to take it.  As noted,
pentameter is likely the most common of all modern English
meters; however, tetrameter is also very common.  In this
poem, we have both tetrameter and octameter.

Each foot can also be of multiple different types,
depending on where the *stress* goes.  English is a
strongly stressed language; each word has a very clear
emphasis on one syllable (and, for longer words, sometimes
a secondary, lesser stress on another syllable).  The stress
isn't always predictable; it's something that is learned
along with the sounds of the word.  Consider the following:

	"EMphasis" --- the stress is on the first syllable
	"emPHAsis" --- the same word, but stress on the second
		syllable.  Doing this sounds quite wrong, and can
		sometimes even make it hard to figure out what word is
		being spoken.

Sometimes, stress can be important in the *meaning* of a
word; when I "reFUSE" something, I am declining it, but when
I throw "REFuse" into the trash bin, I'm throwing it away.
And differences in stress can also mark different dialects;
for example, in Southern American English the word
"INsurance" is often stressed on the first syllable, while
in General American it is typically stressed on the second.

A poetic foot is a pattern of stress, and the pattern gives
it its name.  Here, we have *iambs*, or *iambic* feet; in
these feet, the stress pattern is "unstressed-stressed".
Take our first line as an example:

	"a FIRE will BURN as LONG as FUEL"

The pattern here is clearly short-long, short-long,
short-long, short-long.  Imagine pronouncing it differently:

	"A fire WILL burn AS long AS fuel"

It sounds very different, and also wrong.

Iambic feet are the most common type in English; however,
some poets have made very strong use of other types, such as
Longfellow with his *trochees*, or *trochaic* feet (the
opposite of iambs:  DAH-duh rather than duh-DAH).  We will
discuss different types of foot as they become relevant.

So here we have *iambic tetrameter* (lines of four, "tetra",
feet, each of which is an iamb) and *iambic octameter*
(lines of eight, "octa", feet, each of which is an iamb).

So now that we know its structure:  what does this poem
*mean*?

Of course, some poems are simply *narrative*; they mean
exactly what they say.  But often, poetry is written to
express a meaning deeper than its simple words, just as we
often find in the plots and characters of prose works.  It
doesn't take a deep thinker to realize that this poem is
*not* dealing simply with burning wood.

The first stanza discusses literal flames, and notes how
their heat will dissolve anything they catch, and that an
object once consumed is gone forever.  Fire is an insatiable
creature---it never has *enough*---and as long as there is
fuel, it is also undying.

The second and third stanzas then note that this is simply
the nature of fire, and that it's absurd to consider a fire
that doesn't do what fire necessarily does.  We have some
comparisons to other things that, by nature, simply are what
they are:  wolves must kill, valleys must be dips in the
land, or else they are not what we name them.

The last stanza gives us a counterpoint:  something that we
often describe as a flame, but which acts in a very
different way.  Like fire, it kindles and heats; like fire,
it will continually grow, and as long as it has fuel it can
never die; but unlike fire, it *doesn't* destroy what gives
rise to it.  Indeed, this "fire" is special, a great light
and guide; it "guides the moon and sun and all the other
stars".  This guidance of the heavenly bodies is an ancient
analogy for divine Providence; one sees it quite prominently
in Dante, among other places.  And this makes it clear that
we're talking about *love*---that is, *charity*---that is
God, by which God guides the universe, and by which we can
grow and unite with Him.

I hope that this reading and discussion has helped you to
better understand this poem, and to grow in your love for
poetry in general.  Until next time, this has been the
Goretti Publications podcast.