Submitted by Jen Kling on Wednesday, February 8, 2006 - 17:20

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So we've been brainstorming a lot about our podcast in class, and I think we've hit upon a fun, final idea. The plan is to do our podcast like an old-fashioned broadcast of a dime store novel--it's going to be like one chapter of a story, or rather like a short story, about a detective/investigative journalist trying to solve the mystery of what "The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens actually means. We're thinking we're going to make it very film noir-ish in terms of how the narrator speaks, etc.

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. Of course, this carries with it the thought that you might go totally in the wrong direction, or be led down the wrong path, but there is always the hope that you'll be able to, using the various clues scattered throughout the poem, come to a satisfactory conclusion.

At any rate, this is the plan at the moment. Any comments would be appreciated.

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