From the latest batches, a couple of draft podcasts. both of these adjust the assignment. The Case of the Missing Meaning uses a mystery metaphor to consider ways of learning to read poetry. Jennifer Kling explains in some of the brainstorming

The reason we decided on this idea is because really, it seems like a good way to think of how one ought to go about explicating poetry--if you think of it as a mystery to be solved, you're more likely to get somewhere because you're open to more possibilities.

I really like the way the podcast puts the poem into play through the responses of the interviewees--takes it down a notch and moves the story along. It's also nice how the project takes the teaching, rather than reading, poetry angle. I like that. We ended up having to splice in the clips after the live recording session.

The second podcast, Greenlaw Poets, works more as a community snapshot, capturing a current slice of what is happening in the building with faculty poets. Again, the clips woven into the podcast, in this case poetry readings, give it oomph. Zach Jepson added the clips and audio post-recording.

We're realizing that podcasts open lots of questions about intellectual property. In Greenlaw Poets, for instance, Jim Seay reads the poem “Flat Out in 5/4 Time” with "Take Five" in the background. Jepson reports that Seay wrote the poem with the song in mind

He was inspired by a Paul Desmond performance. It’s an unusual piece because it is done with a five/four time signature and it’s a little bit defiant. And because of that he purposely wrote the poem with iambic pentameter and iambic tetrameter lines.

During the reading, Seay plays the song in the background the entire time--it is a live performance using a copyrighted work. We have incorporated that into the podcast. If you listen to Seay's reading, and to Jepson's explanation of the relationship between the two works, you get a sense for why it seems completely appropriate to insert the reading.