For other podcast summaries, search 'podcast summaries' in any podcast apps.
Or if you're on Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/5-min-summaries

Original episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-longley-the-vitality-of-ordinary-things/id150892556?i=1000514401807

1 quote:
"If you don’t have anything to say, say nothing, silence is part of the enterprise, silence is sacred too."

Key ideas: How one can be too self conscious, revisiting the same places & how something of no use can be valuable.

Who is Michael Longley:

Multiple prize winning poet who's known for the quiet beauty of his compact, meditative lyrics, with classical allusions to cast provocative light on contemporary concerns.
Professor of poetry for Ireland who's written more than 20 books of poetry including Collected Poems, The Stairwell and most recently, The Candlelight Master.


Idea 1 @ 27mins: 

One can be too self conscious. Michael says that Art and poetry require a certain amount of indifference.  Michael says he's certain that: You can take your poem [or your work] seriously, but you mustn't take yourself seriously.  He says that self importance engraves it's own headstone.

Idea 2 @ 21mins: 

Revisiting the same places doesn't mean you exhaust it, it means you go more deeply into it.  The beauty of going back to the same place over and over again: that you notice more and more. We often think about making sure we go to different places each time because it'd be a waste to go to the same place again, but in reality, you don't exhaust a place, you simply go more deeply into it.  Michael says: you know the phrase, “travel broadens the mind.” We do quite a bit of traveling, but I think it also shallows the mind, depending on what you do and how you think about it.  For Michael, going back to the same place in a devoted way and in a curious way is a huge part of his life.

Idea 3 @ 41mins: 

Just because something is of no use, doesn't mean it's of no value.  One of the marvelous things about poetry is that it’s useless. It’s useless. “What use is poetry?” people occasionally ask, in the butcher shop, say. They come up to me and they say, “What use is poetry?” And the answer is, “No use.” But it doesn’t mean to say that it’s without value. It’s without use, but it has value. It is valuable.   The first people that dictators try to get rid of are the poets and the artists, the novelists and the playwrights. They burn their books. They’re terrified of what poetry can do.  It means that poetry encourages you to think for yourself and to disregard church and state. It does. But that’s not exactly use. That just means it’s got value.   The image that Michael loves the most is the English critic Cyril Connolly's comparison of arts to a little gland in the body called the pituitary gland, which is at the base of the spine. And it seems very small and unimportant, but when it’s removed, the body dies.  Good art, good poems, is making people more human, making them more intelligent, making them more sensitive and emotionally pure than they might otherwise be.


1 question:

Can you think of a time where you took yourself too seriously?


Other topics in episode:

Michael reading & explaining the beauty in some of his favorite poems.
Michael's transcendental experiences through art and nature.
What does it mean to be human and how does poetry fit into all of that