Beyond the Verse - The Ode Form: Keats, Neruda, Brontë & Boland

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Maiya and Joe take a deep dive into one of poetry’s most flexible and lasting forms—the ode.After Maiya’s introduction, Joe traces the form’s roots to ancient Greece and Rome, looking at Pindar’s public celebrations, Horace’s reflective quatrains, and Sappho’s lyrical songs. These classical beginnings shaped the odes we know today, from praise to introspection.The hosts move through history with Edmund Spenser’s ‘Epithalamion’, and John Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’ They discuss Keats’s fascination with beauty, time, and art’s permanence, comparing it with Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ and Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess,’ which also question what art can truly preserve. Emily Brontë’s ‘The Lady to Her Guitar’ follows, where Maiya notes how Brontë turns the ode inward, using music to express longing and loss. Joe adds that her regular rhyme contrasts with Keats’s restlessness, showing the ode’s wide emotional range.They then focus on Pablo Neruda, whose odes turn ordinary things into poetry. From ‘Ode to My Socks’ to ‘Ode to Thread,’ Maiya and Joe explore how Neruda praises warmth, love, and everyday comfort. His humor and sincerity make beauty feel human and accessible.The episode also features Tim Turnbull’s 'Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn,' which blends modern British life with classical structure, and Eavan Boland’s 'Ode to Suburbia,' which honors domestic life and women’s quiet strength. Both poets show how the ode still bridges the grand and the ordinary.Maiya and Joe close by asking why the ode endures. Its power lies in openness—whether praising an urn, a home, or a pair of socks, it finds beauty anywhere. Featured Poets: John Keats • Emily Brontë • Pablo Neruda • Tim Turnbull • Eavan BolandSend us a textSupport the showAs always, for the ultimate poetry experience, join Poetry+ and explore all things poetry at PoemAnalysis.com.

Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by poemanalysis.com and poetry plus. I'm Myron. I'm here with my co-host Joe, and we have a wonderful episode in store for you today, all about the ode form. Now, today we're going to be talking about the evolution of the form, the subject matter, and kind of key figures throughout the history of the form, including Keats, Neruda, Emily Bronte, and I for one, cannot wait to have these discussions with you, Joe. But before we get into the body of the work, Joe, can you tell us a little bit about the history of the Ode Form and kind of where it comes from? Yeah, I'd love to.

So first of all, when we're talking about the Ode Form poetry, what we're talking about really is a loose affiliation of different influences. So primarily we're going back to the ancient world, a two poets in particular. We're looking at Pindar, who's an ancient Greek poet, writing in the 5th century BCE, and we're looking at Horace, this iconic Roman poet, writing just before the birth of Christ the first century BCE. And we've also got the presence of the ancient Greek poet Sappho that Maya and I did an episode on in season one. She was also writing poems that now are kind of regarded as ode.

And effectively you have these interlocking different traditions, different influences, that form what we now know as the ode in the English language, obviously that Maya and I are speaking. A couple of key differences between these different forms. So Pindar, the ancient Greek poets, I mentioned writing in the 5th century BCE, His poetry was very much about public phrase, public praise of civic figures, of athletic achievements. It was often set to music, sometimes within the accompanying chorus. And it's a pretty straightforward poem of celebration. It elevates a particular subject and showers them with ceremonious praise.

Horace's poems are a little bit different. They tend to be written in quatrains. They're a little bit more private. They weren't as related to public performance as Pindars. And they were a little bit more contemplative about their subject. It were perhaps a little bit more nuanced than Kindar's odes. And the sapphic tradition, as I mentioned, it is different in it itself. It was much more related, again, to public performance, to musicality, but also towards

specific figures. So, Maya and I talked about the odes to Aenectoria. In a previous episode, the Shulthro wrote an ode to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess. So that tradition, again, is doing something slightly different. So when we then jump forward to the, I guess, the great writer of odes in English, John Keats, and again, Maya and I have already done an episode on Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, which I'm sure we'll mention later on. but we're going to look at a few of the different odes today.

Keats is, of course, one of the romantic poets writing in the English language. And like many, many of his contemporaries, he is very interested in that classical tradition. So he's not the only person in the English language looking back to the classical world and writing odes, inspired by the likes of Pindar and Horace. Edmund Stenser, who we'll talk about later on, Thomas Gray. A lot of the poets were looking for inspiration to the classical world, both in terms of subject matter and also in terms of form. And that's where this interest in the ode form comes from around.

the romantic era, the early 19th century. But Maya, looking at Keats, perhaps, as a starting point, where would you like to go in terms of one of the actual poems? And what does it tell us about the ode form? So I think if we're going to start anywhere, we really have to start with what I personally think is one of Keats' most famous odes, which is Ode on a Grecian Urn. Ode on a Grecian Urn is a poem that is eccrastic,

which means it focuses on specifically a retelling of an art piece. This poem addresses specifically a Greek urn. And for those who have never seen a Greek urn before, what a Greek urn typically symbolises is a story depicted in pictures that travel round the width of the urn. And in this, there is an exploration of what that story represents, how it manages to keep a very permanent sense of time. And yet there is a sense of pending mortality, I think, is probably the best way to put it. And it's really a mediation on beauty and storytelling and music and love. And it's such a fantastic poem. I think it's such a great place to start.

Before we jump into the analysis of it, and I'd love to read a little bit for our listeners today, I think it is worth noting that, you know, one of the poets that Joe mentioned, Edmund Spencer, he was writing in the late 1500s, and he was one of the first people to compose English odes specifically. And what's really interesting is that as you move through the ode form, you see a kind of consistent reflection on specifically Greek stories. That is something that comes about in Spencer's poem, Epithalamian. Epithelamian by Edmund Spencer actually addresses, is a Greek myth that we actually talked about in our last episode, so I'd hugely recommend for a little bit more context on that to go and listen to that episode. It's the myth of Orpheus

and Eurydice. And for those who don't know, it is a story about Orpheus, who has lost his wife, his wife dies, but he has given the opportunity to bring her back from the underworld. And it's a story about how he has to travel out of the underworld without looking back at her. And only when he gets to land, is he allowed to look back at her? And then she will be saved. However, of course, it's a very long journey, it's an arduous journey, and he ends up looking back and loses her forever. The ode that Spencer writes is very focused on the tension between love and loss. And I really love the fact that Odon and Ehrie and Reflects some of those sentiments, even though we're in the 19th century for Keats's work, we're really leaning

into some of those very similar undertones with the focus on the Greek mythologies here. But I'd love to read the opening and then, Joe, I'd love to get your thoughts on how you think this opening situates the poem as a whole. So, for listeners, the opening of Odon a Grecianone goes as follows. Thou still unravished bride of quietness, thou foster child of silence and slow time, sylvan historian who canst thus express a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme, what leaf fringe legend haunts about thy shape of deities or mortals or of both. I absolutely love the way this poem opens. I think the way that we talk about, the ode form is so often melodic. There is a storytelling there behind it. And the way that this

poem ebbs and flows from the beginning is something that I just think is so cleverly put together. And again, we're focusing on a depiction of a piece of art here, a depiction of a story on an urn. And the way that Keats manages to conceptualise the way that time passes around this urn, the foster child of silence and slow time, really recognises that art is something. something to be consumed by individuals, by that single person who can stare at this piece of art and take their own time with it. In that way, when you're staring at a piece of art, time seems to slow down. It does seem to stop. And yet, when you walk away, it's still going to be there. That story will continually be evolving in its own way. And I just, I love this

opening. I really do. But Joe, what are your thoughts? What do you think this does to set the scene for us? You're absolutely right, Maya. It really establishes a lot of the kind of key issues. that the poem is going to go on to explore. And this is something that goes right back to the Pindaric tradition that we were talking about earlier on. Pindar set out his oath in three distinct sections, the stroph, the antistrofe, and the epode. And this is very much that first section,

which establishes the key themes. And right away, when we read the opening of this term, we know that this is going to be an exploration, not only of beauty and of time, but of the way in which beauty and time are mediated through artistic creation. And I'm so glad you mentioned the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and obviously that's in relation to the spenta perm,

not to this one, but so many of those preoccupations are present here as well. Because obviously the way in which Orpheus is able to briefly bring his wife back and they almost get back to the mortal world before he turns back and the spell is broken is he does it because his music is so beautiful that it creates magical outcomes. He is able to build an avenue for himself directly to the underworld and back again simply through the beauty of his music. And effectively what we can view there is a celebration of both the power and the limits of artistic creation. Artists can create things that change the world, that change people's minds,

that inspire generations. But there was also, of course, things that art cannot do. Art cannot prolong any individual's life. Art cannot bring people back from the dead, even though sometimes people are rendered so beautifully in arts that it seems as though they have been. And all of those preoccupations are present here in these opening lines. Keats talks, as my mentioned, about the slow time. The idea of the figures on the urn in the opening line describes them as still unravaged. What the Urn is a representation of a frozen moment in time. And everything around the urn, obviously, which is a physical object, people have used it. People have admired it for generations, the thousands of years. All of those people's lives are constantly in flux, in motion.

They are growing older. They are living. They are dying. They are falling in love, falling out of love. All the while, the figures on the urn remain fixed, remain unchanging. And there is, on the one hand, a real celebration of that permanence, that immortality that art has given these figures. And yet, Keats is also engaging in a much older literary tradition that goes right back to the work of Homer about actually is it better to be alive forever and unchanging or is it better to be like we are mortal and fallible but ultimately capable of dying because it's that finality of life that gives it its meaning. And this is something, as I mentioned, that goes right back to Homer's Iliad where there is a real contemplation of whether or not it is better to be an Olympian god full of eternal power and eternal youth, eternal beauty, or is it better to be somebody mortal? who, yes, they will die, but that mortality, that knowledge that their years are finite, gives their years meaning. And so all of these things are contained within Keita's poem, which, as my mentioned, I want to just finish on this, is a Mcfrastic poem. A nech frasic poem, as I mentioned,

a celebration or a contemplation of a piece of visual art. It could be a painting, a sculpture, an urn in this case. And there's two things I want to pick up on here. The first is that whenever a poet who is also an artist is writing about a piece of visual art, we have to view that, as metafictional in a way because they are creating artwork in response to a piece of artwork and they are contemplating an artwork. So the things they're saying about the artwork in the poem can be applied to the poem itself. So when Keats is talking about how art is able to enshrine beauty forever, there is a sense to which he's shining his own wheels. He's talking about his own poetry and its ability to transcend the passage of time. And if any regular listens to

beyond the verse are thinking, I've heard these themes before, they might be thinking back to our episode on Ossimandius, which I think is a really apt comparison. And if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I suggest you go and do it. Ozimandias, a poem inspired by a statue, an ancient Egyptian statue, but written by one of Keats' contemporaries, Percy Shelley. And again, I think so many of the themes there are present here as well. But I want to just emphasise how this is about a moment in time in British and European history where writers were very much looking to the classical world of Greece and Egypt,

and in many cases, physical objects. Obviously, Ottomandius is inspired by a statue of Ramaziz II, the Egyptian pharaoh, and this home is very much inspired by the urns that Keats could have seen in the British museum because there was this growing interest in the classical world, both in terms of physical objects, but also what those objects represent. It's so interesting, Joe, that you were like, oh, well, regular listeners might be thinking of this one, because actually the poem that I was thinking of was our episode on Robert Browning, My Last Duchess, and the kind of lasting nature of art,

and the conversation we had where we discussed in Browning's case was it a criticism of the fact that art lasts forever and it gives you a sense of being able to control what is created. And it makes me think of the closing lines in Ode on a Grecian-Earn, which is beauty is truth, truth, beauty. That is all you know on earth and all you need to know. Because of course, as a poet, as someone who is creating art, you have the power to make your own history, to make your own legacy here. And yes, when we talk about the ode form, celebration is a word that comes up a lot. But I think there is a very fine line between celebration and longing because of course celebrating someone, something that has passed an event, whatever it happens to be, you are writing that as a poet into memory. You are writing a legacy for that thing and it will probably never happen again, that exact moment, that exact feeling.

And I love the idea that this poem is kind of playing with that sentiment because of course through the poem we come to understand that this urn in the way it's described is beautiful. But there is a separation between the viewer and the story that is being told. There is a disconnect that we come to feel at the end of this poem where the speaker is quite uncertain in a sense of how to involve themselves any further in that history, in that story. And it really highlights the transience of art. Because of course, in Ozzymandius' case, in the case of the art behind the curtain of Browning Speaker's wife, we have this real impression that art can be controlled and it can. be told a story that may not necessarily be true. You know, in Browning's case, we were talking about a wife that was painted with this

slight smirk on her face by Farah Pandolf. And that was the one thing that drove Browning's speaker to insanity, to potentially killing his partner. And yet, that smile has been enshrined forever. And that is the one thing that if you apply this logic, beauty is truth, truth, beauty. That's exactly the story that is told. We are led to question whether that's true or not. And yet here, it's implied, but it's kind of heavily insinuated that actually the creation

of art is the creation of legacy and there is no difference between the two of them. So what this poem is doing is yes, it's an ode on the Grecian urn, but I don't think it's an ode to the Grecian urn. And you know I love a title. And I think that distinction is very, very important. Because as we'll go on to see, many of the other odes we talk about are odes to items or odes to people. But this is an ode on a topic that actually talks around it. But what do you think about that? Am I completely off piece there? No, I think you're absolutely spot on actually And I think the nuance of that subtle titular change

In comparison to Keats' other oath I think is a crucial one because you're right What we effectively have here is Keats laying out an artistic manifesto, a thesis on what art is And he is projecting it onto this urn Rather than drawing it from the urn And I think your comparison to Fral Pandoff, the painter in Rowat Brownings, Mightlustuches is a really important one

Because what we effectively have here is art means different things to different people And those lines at the end of the poem, beauty is truth, truth, beauty. It's really important to mention that those are quotations. In theory, those are the direct speech of the figures on the side of the own. But of course, those are Keats's words. And what Keats is doing is Keats is taking his own view on what beauty is, and he is projecting it onto these speakers who are, of course, silent.

They're just painted figures on a thousand-year-old object. But what it's a reminder of is that Keats is doing something altogether bigger in this poem than simply praising an object, what he's actually doing is through the praise of that object, he is expressing his views on what art is, what art means to people. And I think we talked earlier on about how Horace turns the ode or changed what Pindar was doing into something altogether more nuanced. And I think nuance is the word I come back to when it comes to Keats and his ode, because ostensibly at face value, what this poem is doing is celebrating an object,

what act actually doing is celebrating all of the people who have interacted. with that object and their own brief lives, their own fleeting interactions with this piece of art. And that's the thing that gives those figures on the urn meaning. Those figures are only immortal so long as there are mortal people to view them and mortal people to admire how old and how beautiful this object is. And that relationship between a static, immortal object and the flux that surrounds it, I think, is really the thing that is being praised in this ode. I couldn't agree more. And I think that's a thread or a message that carries through a lot of Keats work. I'm looking at Too Autumn now. And there's a few lines in this poem in the final

standard that say, where are the songs of spring? I, where are they? Think not of them. Thou hast thy music too. I think this inordinate focus on how your environment or the art surrounding you can actually force you to reflect on yourself and your own intentions is such a strong message to carry because of course, as we've mentioned at the top of this episode, we witness an evolution of the ode form that becomes increasingly more introspective. What I find particularly interesting, I think, you know, earlier in my research for this episode, I was comparing quite a few of the odes. And I think it's a wonderful task to do. So I'd massively recommend any of our listeners to compare and contrast, because it really brings about some interesting themes and like key

differences, really, because you look at Keats's odes. And as I've said, they're very, very introspective. They do a great job of kind of challenging the individual reader, various points directly speaks to the reader. And there is an implied listener. I suppose. That really sits at odds to a poem like Emily Bronte's The Lady and Her Guitar. And the reason I bring up this one is because it's a very, very short ode. And I know there is some debate about whether it fits into the ode form. But for me, this poem is a mediation of celebrating a loved one, celebrating someone they miss, longing for that person. But it's mediated again through music, through an art form, through the way that that missed person plays specifically a guitar. And again,

I'm going to root to a title here. The Lady to Her. guitar. And yet the guitar does not belong to the lady. The guitar belongs to an implied lover. And I think the way that Bronte handles introspection here is so wildly different to the way Keats handles it. Keats offers the reader space to think, whereas Bronte here takes it on herself to be introspective, takes it on herself to exactly set out the terms of this relationship. I mean, I love, love the stanza. It is as if the warm sunlight in some deep glen should linger stay when clouds of tempest and of night had wrapped the parent orb away. There is something so magical and ephemeral and abstract about how this wonderful relationship

comes together. The way that the speaker misses this other person and the way that the musicality of that person is wrapped into the environment, it's so skillful. And I think when you approach the ode form specifically, you know, as Joe said at the top of this episode, it's actually quite a loose form because we have a huge array of kind of poems that fit under this very big umbrella. The ode form being at its core, a celebration or a missing of someone, a dedication, you really have to cast quite a wide net. And for me, comparing contrasting poems is such a great way to see the development of forms like this and to understand how those kind of puzzle pieces fit together. Obviously, Emily Bronte, best known for writing

whether they're in Kite, but she was also a poet. And you see those differences, I think, between Keats, who was primarily a poet, and Bronte, who was also a novelist. The way that they actually interpolate the environment and bring in these kind of more magical elements is so wildly different, I think, because of the style in which they write. You'll see with Bronte, she actually casts form and stanza is slightly more important than Keats does in many ways. You know, I'm looking at this poem now, and the lady to her guitar is four stanzas, four lines, four lines. in each and it's very regular and that gives it this sort of enchanting melodic movement through the poem. So when you get to the end and you have the final stanza, even so guitar thy magic tone has moved the tear and walked the sigh, has bid the ancient torrent flow, although its very source is

dry. You have this sense of closure. It's a cyclical and quite pleasing feeling, whereas I think Keats tends to leave the reader with slightly more discomfort, at least when I read Keats's poetry, that's how I feel there tends to be these moments of challenge, as Joe so aptly put it earlier, where the reader is left or the listener is left with something that doesn't quite resemble what they walked into the poem with. I think that sits massively at odds to how Bronte makes us feel because, you know, the way that Bronte has written this poem specifically is so, so poignant and so telling of her specific relationship or the speaker's relationship to this other person. Keats offers a little bit more room for interpretation, I think. But what

do you think, Joe? I feel like I've gone off on a long one then. Well, not at all. I mean, any long rant that includes a mention of Wuthering Heights, I'm going to be happy with, Maya, you know that. I'm really glad you brought up the form, because I think this is an important point, because obviously this is one of the episodes we've done about a specific type of poetry. We haven't done loads these episodes in the past, but it's important for readers to remember that the ode form is incredibly flexible. Because even though we've talked about different traditions of ode, whether it's Pindaric, whether it's Pindaric, whether it's Horatian, whether it's sapphic. The writers in English don't have to conform to a certain set of structural

requirements like a set rhyme scheme or a metrical pattern. So that means that any decision a writer does take is entirely their own and we can really dig into why they've done that. And I just want to zoom in on that stanza that Maya read earlier on, the second stanza of Bronte's poem. It is as if the warm sunlight in some deep glen should lingering stay when clouds of tempest and of night had wrapped the parent orb away. Now, what we have here is a very, very simple alternating rhyme scheme, A, B, A, B. But what that allows us to do is really focus in on those rhyming words, because I think there's so much going on here. Obviously, the final word of the first line that stands are as sunlight, which rhymes with night, which of course is its opposite. Sunlight and

night are representatives of opposite times of day. Likewise with line two and line four, stay and away. We have the sense of somebody on the one hand drawing something close to them, on the other hand, pushing it away. And I love the way in which the decision to use that rhyme scheme encourages you to focus on the words that are being compared and contrasted, because it allows Bronte to hold different ideas in tension with one another. And again, I've mentioned the word already, Mao has mentioned it too, but that nuance of the way the form has evolved since Pindar, for example, when actually it is perfectly possible to write a poem in phrase of something that is still contested, that is complicated, that is not straightforward. And that, I think, is really what's

being explored in this stanza. Bronte's speaker is tussling with different impulses on the one hand, those impulses kind of feel akin to one another because the rhyme encourages you to view them in tandem, to view them as echoes of one another. And yet the actual word that is being echoed is the opposite of the original word. And I love the fact that her use of the alternating rhyme scheme, which again, as I mentioned, is entirely her own decision because there's nothing in the old form that suggests she had to use it, really allows her to demonstrate the complexity of the praise poem that she's writing. I think that's such a good point. And, you know, I'm conscious of time and I really want to

move on to one of the other poets that we mentioned, Neruda, but what is so wonderful about the lack of formal constraint, I suppose, with an ode is it gives so much room for movement, it gives so much room for flexibility. And I think it's really important, as you said, to mention, that there are tensions that can be held there because you can add as much formal constraint as you want to an ode and still fit within those boundaries, and it massively will change how you view the poem. And, you know, one that I really want to move on to that I think is such a good step into more modern ode forms. Is Neruda's ode to my socks? I know you will. want to talk about this poem, so I'm very happy to let you lead on this section. But I think

for listeners who are listening to us today, one line that I would really like to point out is from the final stanza. And Neruda is very open in this poem. I would call it an ecphrastic poem. I would call it a dedication to an art, which is this pair of socks that have been hand knitted. And even though it isn't a Grecian earned, the time and the labour that has been involved in the making of these socks, the love that is shown to them, is something that is made so beautiful. But this final stanza goes, the moral of my ode is this. Beauty is twice beauty, and what is good is doubly good when it is a matter of two socks made of wool in winter. Now, listeners will immediately notice this is a direct callback to ode on a Grecian urn. Beauty is truth, truth, beauty. And here,

what Neruda is saying is a slight disagreeal with that, but he's saying beauty is something that is experienced twice, good is something experienced twice, because it is the initial feeling of it and the memories that are associated with that. With any art form, it is the immediate reaction to the art, whether that's a slightly more abstract feeling, you know, when you look at a piece of art and it affects you and you're not sure why. And then also the reason it affects you, because of the experiences you've had or the history that you've come to associate with that work. You know, I'm sure many of our listens today will have that with a song, for example, something that transports you back to a place or a time or a person that makes you happy. You can have

that with things that make you upset, that make you angry as well. The profound impact of art on your singular person is wholly dependent on the experiences you have around that. And I think the way that Neruda manages to boil this down to simply just a pair of socks in winter, the warmth that it provides and the very literal comfort that it brings to him, as well as the memory that is associated with that. I mean, I'm sat here just smiling about it. I think it's such a lovely poem. And so sweet. And that's the thing. You know, the ode doesn't have to be this great exclamation of how wonderful a specific person is. It can be something as simple as something that you keep close to your chest. But what do you think, Joe? Well, thanks, my. That was brilliant. I just want to

jump off the back of what you were saying there about that ending because it's so interesting. Because obviously, again, you have this quite elevated callback to a Keats poem, a kind of direct answer to, no, this is what beauty is, something quite abstract. And yet the fine interpretation of that doubling, which I think you're absolutely right, it's about the act and then the memory of the act or the act and then the artistic representation of the act, is there is an inherent playfulness in this poem because it's also just the first sock followed by the second sock. And that word playfulness I think is so key here because what Neruda is doing with the ode form, not only here, but in his many, many other oaths, as you mentioned,

we're going to talk about Oat to Thread, but he wrote so many Ode about ordinary things. That was a very deliberate choice. So obviously we've got here, Oat to Sox, Oater Tomatoes, all kinds of different things. And I want to start with that. sense of playfulness, because I think what sets Neruda apart from the great ode writers who came before him is that commitment to the ordinary, sometimes a commitment to the trivial, because what he's doing is he's democratising the form. He's saying an ode can be inspired by anything. And of course, Sox is such a great example. Not only is it a mundane item, but it's an item that almost everybody in the world owns. So that sense of the subject matter for poetry belonging to

everybody. The obvious question that Nuder is asking is, why can't poetry itself belong to everybody? If everybody is capable of putting on a pair of socks or eating a tomato or whatever it is, why can't everybody have a stake in the poetry inspired by those everyday objects and everyday actions? And I think it's such an interesting exploration of how the old form has changed. Because if we go right way back to ancient Greece again for a moment, it was about celebrating achievements that were already great. It's about representing greatness that already exists, whether it's an athletic achievement or a victory in war. What Neruda is doing and what writers are increasingly doing with the ode form is why can't we find the greatness in things that were not already considered to be great?

Why can't I take some of that shine and that elevatory status of the ode form and apply it to something else? And it massively opens up the possibilities of the form. I mean, a pair of socks is not a traditional source of poetic inspiration, and yet Neruda shows it is as worthy of that as an object from the ancient world or a great athletic achievement. And I love the way he does that. And when I was in visiting Chile last year, I was lucky enough to actually visit Neruda's houses. He has two houses, one in the capital Santiago and one in Valparaiso. And this is so typical of him as a poet, this commitment to objects, to simplicity, to finding the beauty in everyday things. I mean, there were all these stories in his houses about how he had to, he only,

served drinks out of coloured glass because he was convinced it tasted better. And this really eccentric figure who had this absolute commitment to ordinary objects. It's so interesting. I hope any listeners, I mean, we're touching on the odes here, but any listeners who haven't read Neruda's work before, is remarkable Chilean poet won the Nobel Prize and lived a really exceptional life, you know, helped refugees get the Spanish Civil War and various other things. So, you know, I do encourage you to go and read more of his poetry. But I think that's what I would look to focus on. We're going to talk about this in Oates of Thread as well. is the way in which he's able to transform the possibilities of what an ode can be.

And I think it's about taking the question of greatness and finding it rather than simply reaffirming it. But Maya, talking about O to Thread, where would you like to go? And how does that poem differ from Ode to My Sox? I think it differs quite significantly. It's interesting that so much of Neruda's work is focused on this kind of everyday simplicity, the beauty and ordinary objects. And actually what I think he manages to do in Ode to Thread

is something quite vastly different to what he manages to do in Ode to My Sox, because in Ode to My Sox, obviously, we have this hyper focus on these two individual objects. The way that they're described is made so much greater than what they are at the core. Actually, I think what Ode to Thread does is almost the opposite. He uses an extended metaphor of this thread. But what the thread actually is is it weaves through every single human life. It weaves through poetry, literature, art, animals, nature. I mean, the list goes on.

The way that the thread of life, I'll call it, is explored in this poem, is again, taking, it's called a very simple item, a thread, and weaving it through all of these much, much greater kind of motifs and symbols. But what it serves to do is, you know, you might disagree. Instead of taking something small and making it great, I feel like the use of a thread, something that is used to pull something tighter, is actually what we see happen in this poem. The thread goes through so many of these objects and pieces of nature

that actually what it serves to do is pull all of them closer together. You know, this poem feels a bit like a hug to me. It feels like it brings you into it. You are invited into the world of the poem. And I think what Ode to Thread does, that is so different to many of Neruda's other odes, is that it really focuses on everything all at once. It doesn't focus on one singular thing.

You get a lot of movement in this poem. You know, we move even in the first couple of lines. I'm looking from poetry to shrew. sheep to flocks, heroes, minerals, love, fire, a mountain. There is this real speed to the way that Neruda manages to navigate the landscapes of the poem. And what it does is it brings all of those things in a light tension for sure, because of course these things are not naturally next to one another. You don't have love and fire, these abstract kind of passionate emotions with a very physical mountain or a quite literal sheep. But the way that he manages to push all of these into

I say the landscape of poetry, but a singular field, let's say, of thought, is really wonderful. And what the ode does in that sense and the way that the ode functions here is to elevate all of those things to the same level. There is no preferential treatment here, but instead everything is united. It's a very universal poet. But I'd love to know your thoughts on this poem. And, you know, if you disagree with me, please let me know. No, not at all. I think you're absolutely right that obviously if we think about what a thread literally is,

it's an object that we use to bind things together. And of course, what I love about the poem is we can therefore view it as an extended metaphor of the thing that Neruda is praising is nothing individual about the human experience. It is the singularity of the human experience. We are all incredibly different. We all live different lives and we practice different faiths and we love different people. But we all have hopes and dreams and we all love and want to be loved, etc. And it's that focus on the uncelebrated thing that binds us together rather than the sum of our existence. And I think, again, in much the same way that I talked about with Keats, the thing that he looks to is art. I mean, right from the opening lines of this poem, this is the thread of poetry, he says. And as Maya says, it actually turns out to be the thread of everything. So what he's saying here is that everything is poetry. And to paraphrase one of my great poet of Kiro's John Cooper Clark, who is himself paraphrasing somebody else. All art tends to poetry. I think poetry, speaks to something about the artistic process. So what he's really saying when he says, this is a thread of poetry is, this is the thread of human artistic creation. And therefore, the thing that does unite us is the ability to create,

the ability to inspire and be inspired. And I just absolutely love the fact that every time he mentions an object or a geological phenomenon, the sky, the sea, the mountains, what he's actually talking about there is not so much the physical presence of those things, but the way in which they have themselves been

understood through artistic creation, we think about mountains and almost every mountain in human history has a mythological origin story about how, I don't know, it was dragged up from the ground by some god or, you know, the waves were the charging horses of Poseidon or whatever it is, he is looking at the world around us and he's saying, what unites everybody on this earth? It is our ability to create stories inspired by random geological rock formations, for example. And it's that commitment to the artistic act that I think is at the core of this poem. and what this poem is doing, it's such a wonderful ode. What I really want to kind of draw listeners' attention to today

is that, of course, a lot of the poems we've been talking about on this episode are quite grand in their outlook, even talking about Neruda's socks. We have these descriptions that are quite bountiful, and they create these quite dramatic landscape, dramatic ideas. But I do want to impress that the ode form doesn't have to be that. You know, we've talked a lot about the freedom that it provides and the lack of limitations, really. Excellent example of this is a fundamentally British poem is the way that I would describe this,

is owed on a Grayson Perry earned by Tim Turnbull. Now, for a little bit of context for listeners, as I'm sure many of them won't know who Grace and Perry is. Grace and Perry is an English artist. He creates ceramic vases. You know, we're talking about the Grecian urns. He does tapestries, but he's also kind of a contemporary critical thinker as well. He talks a lot about prejudices, fashion, his thoughts on, like, what Britain is and what it stands for. And what I think is great about Turnbull's poem is that not only is Grayson Perry a kind of British icon, but he also explores in this poem a lot of British stereotypes. I mean, I'm looking at Burberry clad, Manchester to Motherwell or Slough, the Queen's Highway, hatchbacks tuned to UK

garage. Like, these are incredibly specific experiences to a very specific part of England. You know, I'm from the north of England. These are things that, like, I grew up with. You see a car racing down a country road and they're blaring some of the worst music. You can imagine in your whole life. And it's this real sense of specificity, I think, is what I want to kind of impress on listeners right now, is that a lot of the poems you talked about are grand. They have these very universal themes and feelings, but an ode doesn't have to be universal.

It can be specific to a time, a place, a person. And what makes it an ode is a celebration of that fact. Yes, this ode on a Grace and Perry earn is so incredibly specifically British, but it also celebrates all of those things that make that moment or that place wonderful, even though they are portrayed in some ways as dangerous. You know, I'm looking at the screech of tires and squeals of girls. These are paralleled because they offer a sort of danger or excitement or nervousness. And yet it's a celebration of those things.

It's a celebration of growing up, of being a young person in the UK. specifically in Manchester or Slough in the northern part of the UK. And, you know, for me, this is a poem that speaks to me significantly more than maybe a Keats poem would or a Neruda poem would because those are experiences that I've seen. Those are experiences that I've had. And I love the way that Turnbull really managed to utilise the ode in a way that is so specific that he shows that it can be simple and quiet and understated.

And you can pick up on these things that I'm sure one in ten readers understands this poem and maybe nine out of ten have never had that experience in their life. So it can be as simple as an ode for you and you only, for the poet only. And that's what makes it so universal and so beautiful. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, Joe. No, I agree. I think I love that point you make about specificity. And it brings me on to the final poem I'd like to discuss before we close out the episode,

which is doing something very, very different. But what I love about this form and hopefully listeners have got a sense of this over the course of the episode is its range, both in terms of subject matter, but also in terms of its grandiosity or its kind of playfulness, its self-referentiality. I mean, you can do so many different things with this form. And I think this brings me on to my final poem I'd like to discuss, which is Ivan Boland's Ode to Suburbia, which is doing something very, very different, Ivan Boland, one of my favourite poets, Irish, 20th and 21st century poet, truly, truly remarkable writer. And what she's doing with this poem is she is kind of rewriting the story of the form, which has historically been written by men about

male accomplishments or indeed artworks like Ota Grishina and probably made by a man. And what she does initially in this poem is so interesting because the opening stanzas portray this space as dominated by women, suburban domestic spaces. And initially she presents them as kind of horrifying. She talks about varicose veins and gardens and this kind of really unsettling image. And yet the Celebration comes through her finding the things about that environment that's a really defiant and really subversive. And I just like to read the end of that poem where she takes something as simple as a household cat and transforms it into something really, really amazing. And she says, by this creature drowsing now in every house, the same lion who tore strips once off zebras, who now sleeps small beside the coals and may on a red letter day catch a mouse. There is this wonderful ability to rewrite a tradition that is typically dominated by male writers about male concerns.

And I use those words in inverted commas. By focusing it on something domestic, more traditionally feminine, and by writing something really defiant, both initially because of its kind of horrifying imagery, and at the end of it, because of its willingness and its ability to elevate everyday objects or everyday animals like a household cat, to something fierce and aggressive like a lion, shows once again how actually what she's, doing with the form is very different to the Grayson Perrier poem, because what she's doing is she's trying to use this poem as a means of speaking to a much broader societal concern. So there's nothing about the ode form that means it has to be about grand subjects, but there's also nothing

about the ode form that limits it. It can be a poem designed to have major social change or change public perception on an object or an idea, or it can simply be a celebration of your favorite pair of socks in winter. I mean, it's the versatility of the form that I come back to again and again. I think it's the same reason that poets continue to come back to it. I mean, the Grayson Perry earned poem that you mentioned were published as recently as 2009. So this conversation is still ongoing. If we were to re-record this podcast episode in a year or 10 years or 50 years, there would be new odes. I mean, somebody out there probably is writing an ode to TikTok as we speak. And that's a wonderful thing. The conversation continues. The thread, as Neruda

would say is unbroken. I think that's such a wonderful way to put it and a great way to close out today's episode. I really enjoyed our conversation and I can't wait for the episode in five years or ten years or whenever it is where we have a million more odes to talk about. For now that is all we have time for. And next episode we will be talking about the man with the saxophone by the poet I. I am very excited for that one. I think it's a really rich poem to get into so I can't wait to sink our teeth into that one. But for now, it's goodbye from me. And goodbye from me and the whole team at Permanalysis.com and Poetry Plus.